by Jade Lee
They came. Steve's magelight dimmed. Apparently he couldn't keep up the floodlight intensity for very long. Gradually, the harsh lighting muted to the soft brightness of a single candle, held high above Daken, showing his people the way to their king.
One of the first people to step forward was a huge, hulking figure of a man who, despite his size, still showed the signs of starvation in his hollowed out eyes and drawn face. Daken didn't see him at first. He was busy watching a pregnant woman, her body emaciated except for her bulging middle, as she walked on trembling legs out from behind the pile of rotting fruit. But Jane saw the man, and she worried about the strange gleam in his eyes, not knowing if it was excitement or madness.
She gripped her dagger.
Then he spoke, his voice booming over the noise of hundreds of people getting ready to escape. "You are not our king, little brother, but we welcome your rescue nonetheless."
Daken spun around, his eyes wide with hope. "Tev! You're alive!" He walked straight into the larger man's arms, and they hugged each other as only two bears can. "By the Father, you're thin."
"Bah," Tev said, spitting his disgust at the floor. "Tarveen aren't gracious hosts."
Now that they were next to each other, Jane could see the family resemblance. Though Tev was darker and thinner, they had the same body build, the same chiseled features.
Daken drew back, and Jane read the slight tremor of fear passing through his expression with his next words. "What about Mother and Father?"
"They're well. Or as well as you can get in this cursed place. Come on. I'll take you to them."
Tev started to draw him forward, but Daken held back, hesitating as he looked at Jane. She shook her head. "You go on. Steve and I will lead the people out."
She saw him stiffen, and his eyes grew cold. "Steve will show them out. You will stay."
She lifted her chin, glaring at him, defiance in every line of her body. He wanted her to direct him to the Tarveen nursery, but nothing he said or did would induce her to help him murder children. Even Tarveen children.
She turned her back on him, going to assist a brittle woman with a small child. Behind her, she heard Daken curse and move away. As he retreated, Jane looked up, focusing on a door barely ten feet from her.
It was the one to the nursery, and likely the first one Daken would try when he searched on his own. Jane looked away. There was nothing she could do.
Steve worked with some other men and women, quickly building a scaffold to the ceiling. From all around, they pulled out netting and ropes. No ladders.
"The Tarveen can't climb rope very well," explained one old crone.
Because of Steve's neon trail, the boy wasn't needed to lead the way out. Like Jane, he stayed behind to help the weaker ones. Jane picked out the strongest-looking man and told him to go first. She explained about the boat, warned him about the squirrels, gave him a big smile and pushed him on his way. He didn't need any more urging. He scrambled like a large, furless monkey up the rope network, then disappeared into the shaft. A moment later, she saw him reach down for an infant, before helping the mother.
Behind the little trio, a long line of people waited for their turn. Like spiritless refugees too shocked to absorb their rescue, they stood waiting without moving except to maintain a loud humming noise.
Like the people of Toedo, they knew the Tarveen didn't like noise. It would no doubt be years before any of them grew used to silence once again.
Glancing up, Jane saw more and more people disappear on their way to safety, and she felt a surge of joy. It had begun. The rescue was underway.
Still, she felt a vague unease, growing stronger with every minute in the factory. She wandered to the edge of the light, letting the gloom surround her even as the horror began to well up. She was close to Dr. Beavesly's memory. Whatever he suppressed grew stronger as the light grew dimmer. She almost had it. All she needed was to immerse herself more and more in the world of the Tarveen.
But the memory skittered away.
Then it happened. Not more than eight feet from her, a Tarvite appeared from a side door, scuttling in on all fours before rearing up on its hind legs. She heard a scream, and for the first time, she got a close-up look at Daken's enemy.
It didn't look human. That was her first thought. Except for its size, about five feet tall, it didn't look human at all. It looked like a cockroach. Its body was black, its limbs covered in dirty, thick hairs. Its torso had the oblong shape of a beetle with a heavy, leathery casing nearly three feet wide in the middle. Just above the thickest part, there were two coiled protrusions of unknown purpose, one on each side. Its head was small in comparison. A little round circle with bright bulging beetle eyes, and from its jaws extended claw like mandibles clicking ominously.
She absorbed the sight in a second, barely having time to register the Tarvite's presence, but the people around her were more familiar with it. They scattered like leaves in the wind, but one poor girl wasn't so fast. She'd been hurt, her leg gashed and infected, and the Tarvite turned to her as she tried to limp away.
Jane was already moving forward to intervene, though what she planned to do was beyond her. There wasn't even time for her first step before it happened. The coiled protrusions at the Tarvite's belly snaked out. Like twin whips, they wrapped around the girl and reeled her in. There wasn't even a moment to scream before the Tarvite landed full body on top of its victim, its mandibles ripping out her throat. Blood spurted out, covering the Tarvite and the dead girl, but the thing didn't notice. It ate on top of her, its heavy mandibles making short work of the body.
Jane covered her mouth against the scream coiled in her throat. No human ate like that, cannibal or not, but from somewhere deep within her came the awareness of human life within the Tarvite. The thought was irreconcilable with the sight before her, but from somewhere—from the core of Dr. Beavesly's knowledge—was the certainty that he had a kinship with these horrible Tarveen.
Dr. Beavesly's memories were thick and heavy against her mind. What she struggled so long to find suddenly became an overwhelming vomit of emotions and impressions she fought against. She was suffocating beneath their weight.
She fell to her knees, fighting an inexorable pull like a lead weight, dragging her under the sea of these memories.
From somewhere to her right, she heard a scream.
Looking up, she saw the door to the nursery open. Another Tarvite, this one larger than the other, reared up onto its hind legs. Not more than two feet away from it stood Steve, his eyes still transfixed by the remains of the young girl.
He was oblivious to the danger beside him.
The new Tarvite swiveled its beetle head, focusing on the boy.
"Steve!" she screamed.
He turned too late. The protrusions snapped out, wrapped around him, and drew him in.
Chapter 17
She didn't think. There wasn't time. She simply reacted.
She didn't even realize she'd pulled out the Beretta, snapped off the safety and shot all in one quick move. And then shot again.
She didn't know what she'd done until she saw the Tarvite on its back, its head blown into a thousand pieces, a thick ichor draining from its body onto the wall.
Steve hauled out a knife. Even from this distance, she could see his hands shaking. He cut away the protrusions and stepped away from the Tarvite.
Then the relentless pressure of Dr. Beavesly's memories drew her under.
* * *
Pulling. Something pulled her away. Far, far away. No, she told herself. Dr. Beavesly was being pulled. This was his memory, but even knowing that, she relived it, every nerve-curling agony, every mind-numbing pain, she felt it as he had almost a century ago.
Dr. Beavesly was content with his computer. Even as a spirit, he managed to set up the solar cells, giving power to the millions of microchips that had become his world.
Until he felt the call.
It started out like an itch, and he had
n't felt an itch since he'd been alive. But within moments it was a passion, a need so strong he'd never felt the likes of it before. He needed to go, needed to find out where and who called him. It possessed his thoughts, ruled his mind, this all-consuming need.
He skimmed through the optic lines, and when they were broken, he hopped over to the power cables. He zipped along at the speed of light, pulsing with a drive that climbed exponentially the closer he came to his destination.
Barely registering the distance he traveled, he guessed he was somewhere in Detroit, maybe a university or a factory, given the computer equipment through which he raced.
He was nearly there. Nearly—
Then he saw her. A beautiful woman with a strange light in her eyes. She looked young, her blond hair glistening in the candlelight of the dark room, but when he looked at her face, into her eyes, he saw great age. Not her physical age, but of the knowledge she held, the spell she wove about her as she used a power different than the surrounding radiation. Or rather it was and it wasn't.
She used black magic, joining the power of the ancient spells with the radiation that both destroyed and now fed the world.
A book lay open before her, and she chanted words that pulled at him. The words that brought him here.
He came forward, wanting to speak to her, but in that moment he was caught. Looking down he saw a pentacle on the floor. He was trapped in its confines.
Dr. Beavesly was a practical man, never given much to magic or spirituality, but what he had seen in the last century had given him pause. Even with the slow workings of a ghost mind, he studied the changes in the world around him. He'd seen souls merge with entirely different life forms. He suspected he too, in some unknown way, had merged with the computer he devoted his life to maintaining.
But now he was here, with a woman who continued to knit a trap around him. He felt it weave about his soul, binding him tighter, closer to something.
But what?
He twisted, fighting her spell, but still feeling himself drawn downward, lower, to the center of the pentacle.
He looked down and saw his destination.
Cockroaches? They were large things. Mutated roaches or beetles. They were black and hairy with huge mandibles and extra long middle legs.
He drew back, horrified, sickened as understanding began to light in his spell-drugged mind.
She tried to bind him to the mutated cockroaches. The witch used a spell to unite him with those disgusting bugs. And the new form, the joined cockroach/man would be under her command. As their creator, they would be bound to her, tied to her bidding.
And she wanted an army.
Dr. Beavesly reared backwards, putting all his energy into his revolt. He would not be used this way. He fought, spiking all his thoughts into a dagger of energy designed to cut away the bindings of her spell.
He pulled it back, then thrust forward, stabbing at his restraints.
He heard her gasp, her chanting momentarily suspended. But then she resumed, her voice louder, stronger, and the bindings drew him down, sucking him into the pregnant cockroach. Little by little, he felt his spirit conform to the roach's body. His mind became flooded with sensations. Cold, sluggish blood. Prickly, hairy arms. The clicking, tapping mandibles, and the drive for food. The all-consuming drive for food.
No!
He reared backward again. Below him, part of him, the cockroach twisted and ran, spinning in circles, fighting the restraints and the heavy pressure of a soul entering its body.
No!
Dr. Beavesly pushed back, pushed away, but the binds were too tight, too strong, and he was sucked in. His eyes began to dim, his sight splitting, shattering into the fractured images of a thousand lenses in bulbous eyes.
No!
He clicked his jaws.
No!
He reached for his last hope, his last anchor in a world twisted into horror. He grabbed for his home, his computer. Part of him was still linked to that. Part of him still ran with the energy pulsing through the mainframe, and he drew on that now.
Like a man swimming upstream, he clawed at the power, dragging himself up it while the river ran into the cockroach.
Hunger more. Feed more.
He heard the words, the thoughts of the cockroach. He didn't dare look behind him. Didn't dare see what happened to the insect. All he could think about was escape.
Home. Go home.
Outside of the pentacle, the witch screamed. He heard it as a man would hear a bird behind an inferno. One sound lost behind roaring destruction.
Still he ran, gaining headway. A small measure of escape, but only because he fed the cockroach his energy, the energy of his computer.
He knew the insect was changing, expanding, mutating in some hideous way. He knew it, but he didn't care. He had to escape.
He felt the witch begin to die.
Her energy beat around him, a brilliant flash of life and death. He felt the witch's soul throb in the bonds restraining him, joining the energies that fell into the insect.
The book!
She wanted the book. It was her last hope, but it could not help her. Her mind fragmented, the last of her energy absorbed by the insect. Then she died while the cockroach struggled unthinkingly toward her tome of magic.
It was over. And yet, Dr. Beavesly was still trapped. The spell did not slacken. It held him, binding him to the cockroach, no longer tightening, but not releasing him either.
Then the computer power began to dry up. He'd exhausted the energy he'd been able to draw from the machine. The power cells were drained and still the cockroach demanded more, pulled more. Soon it would pull him in too. He would be sucked in with the last drops of the power.
No!
He redoubled his efforts. Tripled. Quadrupled. He would not become a cockroach. Around him he felt the witch's spell, devoid of her consciousness or soul. He felt it pulse around him, break, then fall away.
He was free!
Free!
He kicked away from the cockroach, spinning around as he saw the last of the energy absorbed into the bloated hideous insect body.
Dr. Beavesly didn't stay to see what happened to the cockroach. It had absorbed an enormous amount of energy from him, from the computer, even from the witch. It would mutate in some strange way, but it was without a soul. At heart, it was still a mindless, consuming insect. He prayed it would die, but he knew it wouldn't.
He didn't care.
He was too tired.
His computer was dead.
All he could do was limp home.
* * *
"Jane. Jane, wake up."
"Oh, God. Oh, God."
"Jane, what is it?"
Jane moaned into her fist. She curled her body tight and buried it in the warm comfort of Daken's lap. She couldn't think, she didn't want to think. Suddenly, she desperately needed to believe in her mother's merciful God. A God who could and would forgive any transgression, any sin. All she could do was clutch at the cross in her belt buckle and pray.
"Oh, God. I was so wrong."
"Jane!" She felt Daken's hands, rough and hard, shake her shoulders. "You will stop this right now and tell me what is happening to you!" Despite the harsh command, she heard the fear in Daken's voice and knew he worried about her.
She bit down on her keening, gathered her courage to her in weak tatters and swallowed her fears. Even so, she knew her eyes were huge with terror, her body still shaking from the horror of her new knowledge.
"I understand now, Daken." Her voice was thready and weak.
"Understand what?"
"Oh Daken, everything I've thought, everything I've believed of you has been wrong."
His hands stilled where they caressed her forehead, his face became as blank as his voice. "Are you saying you don't love me?"
"No! Oh, no. Daken, they're cockroaches. Horrible, terrible mutated cockroaches."
"The Tarveen?"
She nodded, pulling herself up unt
il she knelt before him. "I was so sure they were part human. A piece of me was so sure. But it wasn't that. It was a spell that went wrong."
"What was?" Daken held onto her, his hands tight where they gripped her shoulders as though he tried to squeeze some sense out of her.
"The Tarveen. I thought they were human, but they aren't. They took the energy, maybe some of the intelligence, but none of the soul. None of the morality, the heart, or anything which make us human. They're insects intent only on feeding." She collapsed down on herself, drawing her arms tight to her chest in pain and humiliation. "And all this time I didn't believe you. I fought you. But you were right."
He must have understood her garbled nonsense. Either that or he saw a woman in anguish, a woman who'd suddenly realized how horribly she'd misjudged the world around her. For whatever reason, he drew her close, pulling her into the comfort of his arms, protecting her with his body.
"It's all right. You understand now."
"I'm sorry," she murmured into his chest.
"Shhh." He held her there for a moment longer, but they were still in the middle of the Tarveen storage area. It wasn't a place to loiter. She pushed away, knowing now what she would do.
But before she could move, she saw Steve, healthy, whole, and well; holding out the Beretta for her.
"Are you all right?" she asked him.
Steve nodded, then suddenly burst into a cocky, boyish grin before disappearing to help the continuing flow of prisoners out through the shaft.
Jane groaned as she tucked the weapon back into her belt. "He thinks he's indestructible."
"No," came the rumble of Daken's voice as he dropped a kiss on her forehead. "He thinks he's blessed. And given that he's the adopted son of the Oracle, I'd say he's right."
Jane drew back, her eyes scanning the room. Her gaze skittered over the remains of the poor girl then inevitably landed on the bullet-ridden body of the second Tarvite. "I understand something else, Daken. I understand why you chose your people over me."
"I've never—"
She stopped him with an upraised hand. "I killed, Daken. Steve was in danger, and I didn't think about it. I just killed because Steve was in danger."