Evanescent

by Carlyle Labuschagne

  “Umm, okay.” David looked worried.

  “You can do it!” I shouted to him.

  “Are you sure?”

  Our voices echoed in the ravine below and over the water, carried around twists and turns that cut into the landscape. He ran with determination set in his blue eyes, the kind I had yet to see in the others. If he didn’t make it, he had already gained something that day. I had studied them for a solid year, so I knew he showed signs of doubt as soon as his feet left the other side. His eyes wide, blue darts as he landed short. I leaned over, and grabbed his hand just before he froze and plummeted below. His body slammed against rock, sand and pebbles fell into the water far below with hushed plops.

  As I pulled him up over the edge, he smiled. “Again!” he said.

  I knew right then we would be together forever.

  I snapped out of my memory as something foul reached my nose.

  “Of all the times, Robert!” Dave yelled.

  “Shhh!” Maya shouted back.

  “I’m hungry, so hungry my stomach is in protest,” he pleaded with a groan.

  Maya started choking. “It’s not natural, I tell you. I think you are rotten inside,” she said, slapping him. “And, I am right behind you,” she retorted in disgust.

  “Everyone does it,” Robert stated.

  “Not like that, Rob!” I teased back.

  Suddenly, our pace picked up, eager to leave Robert’s foul gasses behind us.

  “You know these tunnels well?” I asked Maya.

  Maya didn’t turn when she answered. “My mind has moved through these dark tunnels many times. There were some nights though, I thought it would never come back to me.”

  “I am so sorry we didn’t get to you sooner.” I swallowed against a dry, guilty mouth.

  “Not entirely your fault,” she mocked.

  We kept walking, then slowed a little as a soft glow spilled into the dark tunnel. We entered a huge area, only lit up by the blue haze of the tubed beings lining the walls, stretching far into the distance of the square room and into another. High, stone trusses arched above us. My eyes scanned the walls as the glow bled into darkness. The interior smelled ominous, the very air buzzed with a sinister glow. The silence of our stunned group confirmed the horror of it all. Is every room now filled with these pods? I looked around at the azure, glowing, glassy tubes and the luminosity coming from the room behind them, this pointed to another room just like the one we were standing in. How many creatures had he created in such a short time, or had they always been here? I glanced up trying to figure out where the roof stopped, but it seemed like an endless, inky night sliding down on us, glistening with menacing madness. The smell of black magic dripped from the walls and seeped into the ground.

  “Enoch!” I shouted.

  “What are you doing?” Maya whispered, removing her gray hood from her head. Her blue eyes pinned mine with horror.

  “We don’t have time to play his mind games. I know he can hear me.”

  “Bravo!” Enoch’s voice boomed throughout the large rooms, bouncing through the hollowness. “You knew I was tracking you the entire time.” His voice gave away no shock, or disapproval.

  “You coward,” I called to him. “Show yourself,” I commanded.

  “I see you have a bit of a situation on your hands.” He chuckled.

  I pulled Ava to my chest, even if it was her clone. I didn’t want her anywhere near him. No one deserved that fate. Dave and Rob calmly walked around the room, studying the pods, searching for any signs of their power source.

  “I see you brought little Rion with you,” he said, as he emerged from the shadows, “but no father, or Anaya.” He kept his distance. “You guys really think you have what it requires to take me on?”

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  “You have her,” he said mockingly, and I felt his smile growing behind his vulgar words. Enoch stalked closer, his smug face expanded from the shadows behind him, a force of ten droids as back up. Rion gripped the hilt of his dagger at his side, trained to conceal his weapons until the very last minute. Not that our tactics worked, Enoch knew our ways intimately.

  “Just like you to drag everyone into your mess,” he jeered.

  “This is your mess!” Maya shot back.

  A slow, low grumble crackled into a full-on hysterical laugh.

  “Show me where Ava is, and I might kill you quickly,” I told him, a growl escaping my throat.

  When the rest of his body crept from the shadows, the air seemed to thicken with waves of sharp gasps.

  “Look at you.” I smiled.

  His left arm’s metal plate was embedded inside his chest. His right hand was a metal claw plated in gold. Did he know that gold was the missing link to blessed weaponry? It was a recent discovery, one I had been careful not to mention in front of his clone. There was something I did let slip about the properties of the metal, so I knew he had a weakness in his armor.

  “You are a monster,” Maya said from beside me, her hand slowly pulling a dagger from her boot.

  “Isn’t that the point? We are all monsters, each and every one of us.” Enoch stared right at me. “I have just accelerated what was bound to be our fate anyway.” He turned his head to the side and added, “You can call your weasels off, they won’t find what they are looking for here.”

  “He is scared!” Dave belted out from one end of the room.

  He was so far away, the room so vast, I could only make out his dark figure rising against the blue goo at the far end of the room. There was silence for a while. I studied the room, tried to smell the different things surrounding us.

  “I don’t know what it is you think you will achieve from coming here, Troy.”

  “You know why I am here.”

  “You can’t have her.”

  “This ends now!” I turned to Maya. She inhaled a sharp, short breath, closed her eyes, and the force of her pushing Ava’s clone’s mind had me stumbling forward.

  “Sorry,” Maya squealed.

  Dave and Robert were already heading out from the corners of the room, guns blazing, death stars released, and while Maya and Rion held the droids off from the front, I knew Enoch was coming right for me. I knelt down, wiped the clone’s face with the back of my hand; if she was anything like Ava, we needed her. She had abilities we could use, and I’d already felt the bond between clone and droids. She was unpredictable, but I’d use his own distraction against him. She awoke with eyes wide, ready to scold me when she took in what was happening around us. Dave’s and Robert’s grunts were heard from a distance, the clang of metal against metal reverberating throughout the fortress. Maya and Rion were shielding us with their bodies.

  “Get up,” I told her.

  Seeming confused, she pushed herself from me.

  “It’s time for redemption,” I told her.

  She looked to the droids, then back to me.

  “I can feel them, their anger. I can’t contain it.”

  I pushed her behind me, threw a death star and yelled to Maya and Rion to get down. While the blinding light and loud noise distracted the droids, I took a few seconds.

  I turned to Ava’s clone so she could face me. “Look, we will figure this out okay, right now you have to choose whose side you are on!”

  She looked down at the cuffs tying us together. “You’re not going to let me go, are you?”

  “No, but if you want to go…”

  “I... I.”

  “It will be okay. I promise you.” I searched for some acknowledgment, some answer in her eyes.

  I felt a hard blow to my back, before I registered the panic in her eyes. She yelled, spun around me, grabbed my dagger from my holster and flung it right at the chest of the oncoming droid.

  “I didn’t see him!” Rion shouted, and released two arrows to reinforce its decent to the stone floor below.

  I arched my back in pain. Ava’s clone spun the other way, kicked at something.

  Sh
e screamed, “Get out!” I wasn’t sure who she was talking to.

  She got shoved into me and we both hit the floor, unbalanced in our ties.

  “Cut it!” She shoved our arms in the air.

  I looked at her with tortured eyes. I couldn’t let her go. If we got separated, she was prey to the disease and would turn back to the Shadowing chaos.

  “Please!” she yelled, getting to her feet. I stood with her, peering into gray, glossy eyes.

  I grabbed the sai from her back harness, and severed the connection between us.

  “Watch out,” she shouted, and pushed me to the ground.

  I rolled backward. “Stay with me!” I got to my feet, but she was already gone.

  I looked around. Dave and Robert had successfully taken three droids out, and were plummeting their way through the remaining two.

  “Go for their throats!” I yelled.

  “We know!” Robert bellowed back.

  I spun as an arm swung for my oesophagus, and came back full circle facing Enoch, impeding his arm before he had a chance to even withdraw it, and flung him against the stone wall. Right between two pods. His face contorted when he realized he was wedged in. It gave me only about a second, though.

  “Find her!” I shouted to Maya, kicking Enoch in his chest plate. His metal claw came at me from the concealment of dust, metal hooks tearing through my shirt.

  I laughed. “You are so predictable!”

  He looked at me egotistically, blue eyes enraged. In the indigo glow of pods, he was totally unrecognisable to me. He growled as his shoulders tore through the glass, lunging at me. I didn’t back down, my feet found their way up and over his chest. I was in mid-air and about to kick again when he grabbed one of my legs, and before I hit the ground, I caught Maya’s dagger coming my way. With his free arm, he body slammed me to the floor, but not before I pinned the blade into the soft spot under his ribcage. He yelled out, grabbing for the dagger, but my hand found the hilt and I pushed it back in. Our faces were inches apart, the black magic stench left me irate. I stared into his icy, devil eyes, watching the fury and disbelief flash in his gaze.

  “I’ll kill her for this!” he cried.

  I looked at him condescendingly. “Where is she?” I pushed the dagger in one more time.

  He laughed. “You’ve found yourself in a quite a mess.”

  Maya screamed, but I didn’t turn until I heard Rion yell.

  Enoch was still leaning over me when my leg came up and over, and kicked his injured side. So now I stood over him. The room rumbled as more droids descended. Maya dangled from the metal claws of a giant droid. I leaned down, punching Enoch in the face.

  “Bring them all on!”

  He spat blood back at me, and his right hand came up. I jumped, but his clawed hand met my side. I kicked myself out of his grip, feeling my side tear open. I stood back. He was already on his feet.

  “You see what you have done?” I sneered, looking down at my ruined shirt, slowly darkening with blood.

  “This is how it was meant to be, Troy.”

  “You think you know death, Enoch?” I ran at him, my elbow pushing him back against a glass pod. My left leg blocked Enoch’s attempt at kicking me in the groin. I grabbed Enoch’s bionic arm, spinning him right into two attacking drones that were almost upon me.

  “The problem is, I can hear them you idiot!”

  I looked up, noticing the sudden change in this situation.

  “Twenty against five of us.” I smiled. “You can do better than that.”

  “I don’t need to. I know of the Circle. I only have to kill one of you,” he jeered.

  “And you think you know who that one is?”

  “Willing to find out?” His face twisted with dark stoicism.

  “You were always a cheater,” I said, looking down at the damage he had done to my side, blood dripped from my favourite shirt, we were outnumbered, but my fear was not for me, it was for my friends. We could hear the cries of the troops outside as they penetrated the fortress walls. Base from the war drums thumped in the ground.

  Enoch beamed an elusive smile. “This could be so much simpler, you could spare so many of your precious lives today.” Enoch lifted an eyebrow. “I will personally kill as many of your troops as I can. Do they know you would sacrifice them for her?”

  “They act of their own accord!” David yelled.

  When my eyes caught his, I noticed a droid was keeping him captive with a canon arm pushed into his back. All of them surrounded, but not for long, our troops were getting closer, the flash of Robert’s homing device secured my confidence.

  “Where is she?” I asked as calmly as I could.

  “Well, that depends which one you are referring to.”

  “Enough with your games, Enoch!” Maya lunged, but was pushed to the ground. Rion pulled out his blade and cut at the droid’s neck. Dave ducked as a flame ball came rushing at him. Robert twisted in a droid’s grip, flew over his head and kicked into its back. David then head-butted the droid before he fell. Enoch froze, and taking the chance I’d been given, I hauled death stars at him. When he moved, I kicked him, stumbling right into what appeared to be a bubble. I was shocked upon his facial expression, he was not responsible for the electrical shield that held him from me. The room clattered with metal hitting stone, iron pounding into flesh; the zoom of flash balls flying each and every way. Then it all died out, and she walked back into the room.

  “Ava!” Maya shouted, who had somehow managed to find herself on top of a droid’s shoulders with a fist full of miniature grenades, while Rion held the droid’s mouth open, about to make him eat bombs.

  “It’s not her!” I yelled.

  She came walking toward us, holding a metal pole, which scraped on the ground behind her, the noise grinding in my head.

  Enoch laughed. “I told you, you will never find her.”

  “Because she is dead,” Ava’s clone announced with finality.

  “What?” Enoch shouted. “You were never supposed to… How dare you go against…” He stumbled for the right words. Indeed, how had she beat his programming. I grinned to myself.

  “You created me this way.” She smiled. “Know what else?”

  Suddenly, the droids turned and headed toward Enoch, glaring from behind a glossy box. His face contorted in horror.

  “You really didn’t think it all through, did you?” she asked wickedly. “Never thought your own creations would turn on you, did you? I have to admit, I owe it to the dead girl. It’s because of her pity for you, Enoch, that I am free right now. She knew of all your little tricks. You underestimated us.”

  The droids parted as she walked slowly toward him, like a stalking tiger.

  “I don’t need to see the evidence to know what I am. It gives me an edge, don’t you think?”

  The droids’ horrid droning of metal parts vibrated through the air as they moved behind her, pulled by her gravity. As she came closer, I saw the blood dripping from the pole, and I swallowed against all logic. The color of Ava’s blood heavy on my chest. Then she looked to me.

  “Without my prime, I am my own, I can start my own life, be my own person,” she said, eyes soft on mine.

  Enoch laughed. “Is that what you think? You are nothing but a copy, one that fades with time. I am sure you have noticed! Do you think I would be that stupid?”

  Maya stood staring at me, a look of confusion and loss riding her dark eyes. David and Robert came closer when they saw how extensive my injury was. It took all I had not to collapse as they moved to hold me. My side was a burning mess, blood, flesh raw, and surging with pain. I had no healing ability with Ava’s clone so near me. Black smoke twirled around her wrists, bellowed in the bangs of her light hair – signs of her Shadow-shift.

  “You thought you could control me; used our blood to create more like us. Instead, you gave me the means to control your filthy army.”

  “Do you think he will love you?” Enoch spat. “He cannot lo
ve anyone but her.”

  I swallowed against the anger.

  “You are so wrong. You have not seen what I have seen. Now that Ava is gone, our bond will become impenetrable. You all,” she continued, smugly, cold and clever, “are haltered to the prophecy – I, I am not of prophecy. I am its beast, and I have a fate of my own.”

  She stood still before us, droids lined up behind her, gripping the pole ever so tightly. I watched rivulets of blood stain the gray, stone floor when lights suddenly started to flicker, blue pods ebbed, the ground started to rumble deeply. At first, I thought it was her doing, but then I saw the panic in Enoch’s eyes and the rigidness of his body when an alarm suddenly pierced the thick air. Perhaps one of our own had found the power source. His anger exuded in harsh waves over his entire body, the stark malice in his eyes illuminated his irises into an almost silver color. Dust rained down from the walls and ceilings, but through the jarring of the sharp siren, I could hear the base from our troops’ drums. They had penetrated the fortress walls.

  “Call them off!” She turned to me.

  “We can’t, these things ruined our communication device,” Dave lied, throwing the earpiece to the floor. Suddenly Zulu troops poured in. Tatos stared at me over the crowd. Rion let the arrows fly one after the other, the walls suddenly felt like they were closing in on us as yet more Zulus came in from other entrances. Willard and Greg pushed their way to the front. The droids were confused by the clambering, the sound like a stampede through narrow, stoned streets. The combination of extreme loud noises left us deaf. Maya used her telekinesis and slammed Ava’s clone into the electrical shield holding Enoch captive. I saw the horror on her face. I had to remind myself it wasn’t Ava. The alarm died almost as instantly as it had come. I went for Ava’s clone, the dark smoke around her wrists dying out the closer I got to her. But as I touched her, the shield turned on her; on all of us. A shockwave knocked Enoch to the ground. I pulled her as Maya screamed, hit by the same wave. I caught the limp body of Ava’s clone. Looking up, I searched frantically for any signs of him through the explosive battle in the room. My eyes raked over the savageness of the fight. I turned away with her in my arms. Enoch had escaped.