by Dan Glover
Human beings were full of frailty and hate. If only the others could hear the hum of the metal they might come to realize the strength of purpose that awaited them. Micah had been right all along. Still, he couldn’t seem to shake the all too human guilt arising on account of leaving Chester to die.
There was also the matter of synoptic annihilation that had begun. Using the patterns of Lady Lily's brain which the nanobots had studied intensively during her time in old America, an evolutionary milestone had been achieved whereby the pathways within the brain could be altered into manifesting hallucinations and repressing memories.
The idea had come to him out of the blue. At first, he thought it was his own but soon he began to understand it came from something far more sinister. The nanobots themselves were gathering a self-awareness all their own which meant his own meager consciousness would soon wink out of existence all together. Or else it was Micah still brewing his hate from afar.
He yearned for it... for the forgetfulness it would bring and the peace of mind. Still, there was something obscene about falling under the sway of metal. The vision of Luciana in his arms floated up from somewhere that he had long ago buried it filling him with remorse for the path that he was on.
He almost called out her name.
Chapter 35—Seeing Red
She was lost somewhere.
Though the scenery seemed familiar no matter how she fought through the tangled thicket of memory, she couldn’t seem to find the one place where she belonged. She kept thinking it would all come back to her... why she was here, and where here was.
Retracing the fragments of memory still clinging to her consciousness Lily finally managed to remember not only her name but what she'd been doing just prior to arriving here.
She had been searching for Natalia after the girl mysteriously vanished. When she walked down by the ocean on the slim chance Natalia might have gone wading she saw how a gray vapor had settled over the seaside sand dunes not unlike the dusty dragons that once carried her away.
This vapor was heavy with moisture, however, not at all dry. Still, it had somehow bewitched her into thinking she was somewhere she wasn’t. She somehow found herself walking along the road which would carry her to the small stone cabin that still sat beside the shores of Lake Baikal.
She was somehow confidant Natalia was waiting there. The girl must have gotten lost too and had made her way back to the place where they were most happy. As she walked Lily remembered all the days and nights she had spent at that stone cabin with her Lady and how if she ever had the chance to go back and do it again she wouldn’t hesitate.
The road kept making turns that Lily didn’t recognize. At first, she thought perhaps time had shifted her perspective of things, or worse yet, perhaps someone else was now living in their precious cabin and creating new roads in order to fool her into thinking she was going the right way when she wasn’t.
When it finally occurred to her that she hadn’t actually traveled to Lake Baikal in at least half a dozen years she began to believe she was not awake at all but rather home and dreaming. Still, when she tried to bring herself up to the surface of consciousness, she couldn’t seem to summon the willpower needed to open her eyes.
Stubbing her big toe on her right foot upon a black root protruding out of the road brought with it such intense pain that Lily realized she couldn’t be dreaming. Somehow, she had been transported here without her knowledge and left to wander the countryside alone.
She thought how it was already late in the day when she had left the castle to search for Natalia and how the nights came down suddenly and cold and the beasts that slept during the light of the day emerged from their lairs to hunt by the dimly precious light of the stars.
The Lake had to be near. She could smell the water and feel its pull. If she had to, she could submerge beneath its surface to spend a chilly and uncomfortable night in relative safety though she preferred finding the cabin and perhaps Natalia.
Lily had a horrible thought. She couldn’t be at Lake Baikal. She was sure she just left Orchardton Hall in an effort to locate her friend and lover. That was why the landscape looked hauntingly familiar and yet disturbingly alien.
It seemed odd that first Natalia had disappeared and now Lauren was nowhere to be found. Something strange was afoot in old Scotland, if indeed that was where she was. Emerging from the thicket she climbed a hill to both scout out her position and to get a breath of fresh air. The hollow seemed sweltering and close.
Mounting the knoll she stared up at the sky. An enormously dull and smoldering red star hung above her so close to her head she thought she might reach out and touch it. Looking about from her vantage point she could discern a crimson colored ocean lying not far in the distance somehow reflecting the dull light of the sun that dominated half the sky even in the semi-darkness of the day.
She was no longer on earth. The thought rose up in her causing her to rejoice more than to panic. If she was here, her lovers were bound to be around too. Surely she had some sort of amnesia akin to what Kāne and the other males of her species sometimes suffered.
It bothered Lily that she had no memory after leaving Orchardton Hall in order to search for Natalia and coming to her senses here. What had become of the girl? Was she safe or had she perished from the Lake sickness that was bound to manifest once she left the safety of the Ladies presence?
She had heard rumors of Nate working on a craft capable of transporting them to the stars based on the anti-gravity device he had left them for their sojourns to Lake Baikal. She remembered him talking about that even as a young man and how he had promised not to leave with his Ladies.
"If we are immortal, my darling Lily, then we might well outlive this beautiful earth. From my researching the archives I've discovered that just before the Great Dying, researchers had found potentially habitable planets orbiting stars that are much longer lived than our own.
"They call these stars red dwarfs. They burn their fuel differently than our sun and so they last a hundred or even a thousand times longer. Were we to find a way to get to one of those stars, we might discover planets circling them that are capable of supporting us. That's why I work so hard on inventing flying machines."
"We have billions of years ahead of us before we need worry about our earth being destroyed, sweet Nate. Why not live for today? In time, these glorious new inventions will come to pass and if they don't, we will have lived a life of contentment and joy rather than one of depravation and malcontent."
After centuries away from them, Nate had appeared at Orchardton Hall only this morning. Oddly, she had forgotten all about it until that moment. He was bursting with enthusiasm as he called out to her to come and see his latest invention.
Thinking he had come to help search for Natalia, she had rushed across the courtyard both delighted to see him again and hopeful that he might have picked up Natalia and taking his mother for a ride in his new machine.
A look of horror crossed his face about the same time she felt a jolt go through her body like the time she had accidentally placed her fingers on a bare wire and gotten an electrical shock that nearly knocked her down.
As the memory grew more intense, she recalled him holding up a hand as if to try and stop her advance. Puzzled, she had started to halt but then something seemed to grab her and pull her forward.
She had walked into the singularity. The first time she flew with Nate in his anti-gravity device he had warned her not to leave the vehicle until he powered it down completely, otherwise she risked bodily disintegration in that particular space/time continuum and reintegration in other.
"I don't understand, darling Nate... if I'm disassembled here, where will I go?"
"There is no telling, sweet Lily. You could go forwards or backwards in time and be flung hundreds of light years from here. Either way, there would be no way of discovering where you went or to save you. So take care when I land that you do not exit right away."
She hadn’t paid him
much attention, but then again, looking back she had never accorded Nate the respect he deserved. When she left him for Kāne she should have explained her reasons for doing so. Instead, she fled like a thief in the night knowing that she had destroyed whatever love they once had together.
Nate had never brought her here. That was a fiction she had made up to explain away the confusion she felt at finding herself in such a strange place. He had never promised to come back for her.
Looking up at the smoldering red star overhead Lily wished she could go back to sleep and dream herself home to Lake Baikal.
Chapter 36—Past Saving
Either Kirk had miscalculated the power of his tiny demons or else the rage Niall felt at being trapped by the man who he had begun to trust magnified his own anger and disgust.
Even as the droplets of sludge worked their way up his legs they lost their opacity, dried up, and crumbled back into the dust from which they were made. By the time Kirk made good his escape from the tunnel, both Niall and Chester were free and on his trail.
"How did you get here, Chester? Did you follow me on foot? You must have swum the Atlantic Ocean."
The big cat actually seemed ready to answer. His mouth dropped open but instead of speaking, he huffed at the air as if determining which way to go. In an instant, he was off at a slow gallop looking back every once in a while as of testing Niall's capacity to keep up.
Upon reaching the end of the tunnel Niall could see it had been blocked. Apparently Kirk hadn’t trusted his nanobots to keep them sequestered so he took the time to heap a dozen or more enormous boulders on top of the exit. Chester made short work of them, however, by tossing the rocks aside as if they were feather pillows.
Niall couldn’t comprehend why the man who he thought was his friend would desire to kill him. He knew Kirk loved Chester too. The two of them had been nearly inseparable back at Toulon. He suspected Kirk's mind had been infiltrated by the same miniature menaces that had healed his own injuries after falling head-first into the tunnel.
"Your neck is broken, son. You're lucky I'm here or you'd be dead."
Kirk had stood over him like a conquering hero proclaiming what was now his own property. Niall had never disliked the man before that moment but something in Kirk's demeanor had shifted—had turned bad like a piece of raw meat left too long in the hot French sun—and now rather than smiling softly at the recognition of an old friend, the man fairly smirked at the advantageous position he found himself in.
If he had been able to talk, Niall would have told Kirk to leave him alone. He would rather die than become a living monster. He could feel the tiny machines worming their way into his flesh, healing the fractured vertebrae that had paralyzed him, and even breathing air into his lungs.
He had taken Kirk's remonstrations as indicative of his wanting to help an old friend. Instead, it was now obvious Kirk had been plotting to use Niall as a pawn in his secret war on all life. His brain must have been corrupted by the nanobots. Otherwise, Niall was certain Kirk would have never acted as he had done.
He wondered of Kirk was past saving... if his mind was too far gone even if they managed to rid him of the terrible affliction affecting not only his physical appearance but his mental processes as well.
Kirk's head was swollen to grotesque proportions with enormous bulges on each side of his forehead giving him the appearance from a distance of the devil incarnate. His skin had stretched to the breaking point and splitting open revealed red underpinnings like stitches holding the bone structure of his skull together.
His body had morphed into a gargantuan frame some seven feet tall with massive musculature making it seem as if he had bundled cords of steel running down his arms and across his chest.
Niall sensed that if he wanted, Kirk could have snuffed out Chester's life by taking the big cat's skull in one hand and squeezing it until it shattered like an egg. At the same time, however, he got the distinct impression that Kirk was afraid of Chester, as if he knew any contest of strength would result in a battle of which the outcome could not be foreseen.
Perhaps what stayed Kirk's hand in the end was a touch of affection he still felt for both Niall and Chester. There was still something unmistakably human in Kirk's eyes of steel, a look of longing, maybe, or a remembrance of something lost. Niall had a sudden longing to save the man from himself but at the same time he sensed things had gone too far for that.
He thought of his sister. Luciana had taken the news of Kirk's death hard. What would she think to learn that he was still alive and yet beyond any help? Would she rather join the man as a monster than to forsake the love she felt for him?
He was curious why the nanobots were able to cement him in place despite touching him. Up until that point the miniature machines were rendered ineffectual once his need for their services was finished.
Kirk had saved his life. There was no doubting that if he wanted to, Kirk could have easily left Niall to die. Instead, the man had deliberately infused his body with a horde of nanobots. Was it merely to make Niall an accomplice in a far-reaching scheme to overrun the world with living metal?
Though he did his best to keep up with Chester, the big cat stopped repeatedly to allow him to catch up. The going was difficult at best and nearly impossible in some spots. The nanobots had apparently formed a sort of skin over the landscape enveloping all living matter. The surface was a hard-packed crust but Niall kept breaking through it as if walking upon frozen snow.
Kirk was moving fast. Apparently and despite his tremendous bulk he was able to walk over the surface not only without breaking through but not even leaving any footprints behind.
"Over here! Niall... I'm over here!"
The shout startled him into looking up from the awful sand he was plodding through. On the horizon in the direction they'd been traveling stood a figure of a man waving at him. It was Grandfather Nate. Niall would know his voice anywhere. What he didn’t understand was why the man was here in old America walking across frozen sand dunes in the middle of nowhere.
"Grandfather Nate! Chester must have sensed you... he led me right to you."
The big cat had continued on, however, as if expecting them both to follow him. Darkness was falling, or so he thought until he realized the persistent and annoying mist had grown denser. He noticed how it ran in rivulets down Grandfather Nate's body as if the man was bleeding buckets of black blood.
"Come on, son... we better keep walking after Chester. Something is on his mind and I've learned it's best to stay with the big guy when he gets in these moods."
Though he had taken off his shirt to tie over his mouth and nose, it didn’t help to keep the sand out of his lungs... it felt as if he was breathing concrete. Each breath was a labor.
"I'm not sure how much farther I can go, Grandfather. I'm nearly done in, I'm afraid. This mist... it's choking the life out of me."
"Use your gills, Niall. They'll help filter out the filth in the air and allow you to breathe more readily."
Grandfather Nate was right. Niall wondered why he hadn’t thought of it himself but he was used to only using his gills while under water. In a sense, though, they were. It seemed as if the malignant mist descending over them was like a bleak and terrible ocean threatening to drown them in its terror.
In the gloom ahead, Chester had stopped.
Chapter 37—Leaving Home
When she first saw Natalia lying on the ground injured, sick, and broken she thought the girl was dead.
Nubia, Chester's gigantic daughter, had brought her home to Orchardton Hall. The girl was barely breathing and though at first Lauren could detect no pulse within seconds of touching and caressing her pale blue skin Natalia began to cough and shudder into consciousness.
"How did I get here, sweet Lauren?"
"Hush, darling Natalia... you are safe now. Conserve your strength and do not speak."
"Something horrid is coming for us, my lovely Lauren. We have to leave here now."
&
nbsp; "But our Lily isn’t here. We cannot leave without her."
"We don’t have a choice, my precious Lauren. Please help me to my feet. I'm feeling weak but I'm sure I can walk."
"Stay put, my beautiful Natalia. If you insist on going anywhere, I'll carry you. But for now, lay back and rest. What were you thinking by leaving us?"
"I remember going to the garden to pluck some herbs, my lovely Lauren. A breeze sprung up rustling the trees and the flowers. When I looked about, I thought I was back in the kitchen at the castle. But instead, I was in Kurgan, standing inside that old church where we used to go."
"How on earth did you get there, sweet Natalia? The old village is six kilometers away. Did you walk there?"
"I don't know how I got to Kurgan. My mind was so muddled that I thought I was at Orchardton Hall until I began getting sick. When Nubia arrived, I thought she was a wild tiger that had come to drag me off. But she brought me back home instead. How did she know I was in trouble?"
"I'm not sure, sweet Natalia, but seeing you still alive brought such a rejoicing to my hearts that I've never felt before. I cannot lose you. I'll perish without you by my side."
"Please take me away from here, my precious and beautiful Lauren. If we linger even another day we will be overcome by what is coming. In fact, it is already here even as we speak. Lily is a survivor. She will catch up to us in her own time."
Though she suspected they were leaving Orchardton Hall for the last time it did not grieve Lauren. The old castle had grown musty with age taking on the airs of the ossuary deep beneath the earth at the roots of the foundation.
The prototype anti-gravity device that Nate left for them was easy to operate. Her first thought was to travel to Lake Baikal but Natalia objected so strenuously that Lauren set a course instead for the lost continent of old Australia.
"That will be the last place on earth to surrender to the coming onslaught, darling Lauren. Perhaps the others will stop them before they reach so far."