by Rose Francis
“Great. Do those maps mark the ratlings lairs? The dogmen traps? All of the ten thousand deadly things that live in the wastes?”
“No, mistress, I do not believe they do. Please, we must save her. She is the dearest friend I have. If there is a punishment to be meted out, I volunteer in her stead.”
Lucia sighed. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We need to find her first. Listen, meet me out back in fifteen minutes.”
On foot they’d never catch the fox shifter. She had too much of a head start and the winds would soon erase all sign of her passage. They needed an advantage.
The baron’s men—those associated with the criminal side of his enterprise—favored dive bikes for their illicit errands. The machines were quick and nearly silent. Elegant sculptures of metal and glass shaped like arrows with narrow sails on either side, the bikes were incredibly dangerous. The desert was not a road. The sand hid unknown obstacles, secret cliffs. The baron had given Lucia a lesson once, before her aunt had fallen to his claws, before the darkness took his heart. She recalled flying over the sands, the thin blades of the dive bike whispering in the morning air. Her uncle sat behind her, a comforting presence back then, his hands on the controls. The science of the bike was beyond her understanding. But the controls were simple enough to grasp. Although when she grasped them they wrecked immediately as she took a turn too quick and hurled them both, laughing and screaming across the sands.
It would be different this time.
The shed where the bikes were stored was unguarded. No slave would be crazy enough to steal one. The fence would stop them, for one. And if they steered through the main entrance the armed guards would make short work of them. Why bother locking the shed then? Why waste manpower on a fool’s errand? Her uncle’s thriftiness occasionally worked to her advantage.
Lucia chose a bike with sand colored markings. The name “Hushabye” was stenciled on the side. She fired up the engine with the press of a button. Fans whirred to life, sending eddies of sand and smoke wrapping around her legs. The bike lifted off the ground until the thin blades that served as guidance tapped gently on the surface of the earth. Nearly weightless now, the bike was no problem to push out the rear of the shed. The guards would be in the midst of their morning meeting. A skeleton crew at the front gate was the only worry. Lucia saw no one on her way to the slave quarters.
At the rear, near the toppled door, Triptongue waited.
“Is that a dive bike?” he fretted. “I have never ridden such a contraption. Aren’t they hideously unstable?”
“Yes,” Lucia said, fishing a helmet out the rear compartment.
“Aren’t they incredibly dangerous?”
“Yes,” Lucia agreed, tossing another helmet to the thin fox shifter.
“Then why must we ride this? Surely there’s a safer way to catch up with Foxtail?”
“If we catch up to her first,” Lucia threw a leg over the bike, feeling the hum of the pulse drive echo through her body, “then maybe the baron won’t kill the both of you.”
“You could just let me go after her alone,” Triptongue stared at the helmet in his hands as if it was a bowl of inedible food.
She could. She could say that she collared the slaves. They they escaped on their own. She could blame the ratlings for the whole mess, saying it was another evidence of their slow sabotage of her uncle’s business. She could, but she wouldn’t. It was her mistake. Her responsibility to make it right.
And anyways, Triptongue wouldn’t last a day by himself on the wastes. Letting him go off alone would be as good as tearing his throat out herself.
“We go together. Get on and strap yourself down. I don’t want you falling down a gully when we skirt the ridge.”
“Oh dear, what a bother Foxtail can be. Some days I don’t understand why I married her.”
Lucia gripped the control stick and then let go as if it was on fire. Butterflies swarmed her stomach. If she left now, would the baron forgive her? Was this really the best way? Could she control the bike?
What choice did she have?
Leaning close to the bike chassis, aiming the arrow-shaped nose of the craft at the hole Foxtail cut through the fence, Lucia took a deep breath, gripped the humming metal with her thighs and eased the ship forward. “Hold on, Trip.”
Behind her, the fox shifter lay face down on the narrow seat, his arms and legs wrapped around it like a kitten on a tree branch. He shivered with fear and whispered prayers in his high reedy voice to any god that would listen.
The thrum of the pulse drive loosened her worries. The tempo of the vibrations increased, the rhythm growing steady as she piloted the bike slowly across the sand, over the shattered concrete, and then through the hole in the fence. The electrified edges came within inches of the bike and her arms but it was just large enough. Breaching the boundary, Lucia expected to feel terrified. She was plunging into the unknown. On her own in the wastes. But instead it was like her fear remained trapped behind, chained to the baron’s estate.
She was surprised to find herself smiling. Grinning into the harsh sunlight. Lucia pulled goggles down over her eyes, stopped the bike long enough to tie a cloth over her mouth and nose. “Ready?” She asked Trip.
“I doubt I will ever be ready, mistress. Though I do appreciate the worry.”
“Don’t let go,” she said as she aimed the nose of the bike towards the Durance Ravine and jammed the controls forward. Like an arrow loosed from a bow, the bike sang through the desert air. The wind whipped at her face, her ears, but otherwise the trip was silent. Silent but for Triptongue’s terrified wailing.
“I knew I’d die in the desert! Confound that woman and her secretive ways! Why must she always do this to me? I swear if I see her again I shall not speak to her at all. Oh dear me, I do hope she is okay.” And so on.
Lucia was surprised to find the bike easier to handle now that she was older. She could feel the swell of the sands through the bike, could read the land. The pits and hidden piles of sharp rock that once had been buildings were obvious to her. With ease she swooped around them, avoiding all obstacles. Even more surprising, Foxtail’s tracks had not yet been devoured by the shifting winds. The shifter hadn’t avoided the piled wreckage of the past. The escaped slave had wound her way through the shattered homes and businesses of the pre-cataclysm structures, oblivious or uncaring to the danger that hid within. But even taking a wide path around such obstructions, Lucia had no difficulty picking up the threads of the fox shifter’s trail. It was as if the desert spoke to her, as if it wanted her to know.
The craft took all her attention, but a nagging suggestion played at the back of her mind. She still held the memory crystal, the alpha’s claw, in her belt pouch. How nice would it be to take a break on their journey. To stop and sip cool water, to eat the dried cactus strips that were her favorite, and to look within the crystal at the prince’s wonderful life. As the bike grew more familiar to her touch and the melody of the path became known to her, Lucia fantasized about a life where she lived with the prince. Where she wore gowns of crimson silk and danced in ballrooms carved of crystalline ice. Where servants—not slaves—served delicious fruits on platters and everyone was kind and beautiful and interesting.
It was during one of these fantasies, hours upon the wastes, that Lucia nearly collided with Foxtail, at the base of a rocky outcropping.
She’d been cresting a dune, nothing but sand in all directions, and then diving down the other side, her mind absent, the fox shifter suddenly there, surprised as she sat on her haunches and nibbled a disc of salami.
Lucia jerked the control stick hard to her left, trying to swerve around the woman, but she over maneuvered and lost control of the bike, flipping it over into a nasty roll, hurling herself and Triptongue across the sands at terrible speed.
She tumbled end over end, her helmet cracking against rocks hiding just below the soft sand. The face cloth ripped away and salty waste sand filled her nose and mouth and eyes. Coughing and sp
luttering, bleeding from a dozen gouges on her arms and legs, Lucia looked up to see Foxtail standing over her.
“Hurt?” the woman grunted.
Lucia shook her head. Her shifter gifts knit her torn skin back together in an instant.
Triptongue wailed. “I could have been killed! What were you thinking, coming at us like that out of nowhere? Why if mistress hadn’t been such an excellent pilot we would have run you straight down and then where would I be? Alone in the universe again!” The fox man threw himself at Foxtail, wrapping his spindly arms around her in a wracking, sobbing hug.
“Missed you,” the woman said.
“I should hope you did! What were you thinking, charging off by yourself in the middle of the night? You could have been killed out here. Eaten by horrid beasts or captured by those rude rat people!”
“Have a mission.”
“Mission? What mission?”
Lucia sat in the sand, holding her head. Her heart threatened to crack her ribs it beat so hard. She’d flipped the bike in exactly the way you weren’t supposed to. It was a miracle they were still alive. If there’d been a wall nearby or if the buried rocks had been at a slightly different angle, she never would have recovered. The bike, for its part, hummed happily, resting lightly on the sand as if nothing at all had happened.
Before them a great crack yawned in the earth—the Durance Ravine. A series of interlocking valleys that ages past had been buildings terrifically tall. Dozens of structures, made of glass and steel and stone, formed a maze a mile long. Her uncle said that before the cataclysm this had been a big city. That these buildings below them had housed tens of thousands of souls and businesses. Untold treasure still awaited the brave and the foolish who chose to delve into the depths. But things lived within. Half-mad shifters. Beasts twisted by the wastes into unrecognizable shapes. Raiders who preyed on anyone voyaging across the desert.
It was a dangerous place. It was a foolish place to live, even for a crazy medicine man.
The sands shifted constantly, flowing between the buildings, changing the map daily. There were stories about treasure hunters who sought the highest rooms in the towers, getting trapped for weeks by sand, or people entering on the ground floor only to find when the sands retreated that they stood fifty feet above the cracked pavement and had no way out.
A mass of blackness seemed to detach itself from the shadows of the ravine.
“What’s that?” Lucia said, pushing herself unsteadily to her feet. Her vision throbbed. Her skull felt too tight. A trickle of blood leaked from her hairline.
“Spiders,” Foxtail said, backing up.
The blackness surged out of the ravine towards them. A carpet of spiders as wide as the valley itself. A chittering mass, hungry and fast.
“No, not spiders.” Lucia said. “It’s a myriad.”
The black wave of spiders folded in on itself, crunching and screaming, merging together so that in a flash where tens of thousands of spiders had once been, one spider now stood. One enormous spider, larger than a house, stampeded toward them.
“Run!” Lucia screamed.
Chapter 3
Broken but Still of Worth
Everyone knew the story. Lucia didn’t know if it was factual, but it sure felt true.
The cataclysm that broke the world began with well-intentioned men in a laboratory out west. Scientists caught a wild shifter—a true shifter—and caged her for study. Some say she was a wolf, others claim she was a deer. Some of the more religious scientists called her Eve. Others preferred the term Aurora, for she was more precious to them than gold.
When cut, her flesh knit itself back together.
When burned, the blistered and blackened skin quickly regained its natural composure.
When frozen, she thawed.
Her body was a miracle for men to exploit.
The corporations of old went to war over her, fighting courtly battles before their magistrates in public while darker, bloodier contests resolved themselves at night. Armies of mercenaries fought in secret, trying to obtain Aurora’s blood, her bones.
No one asked what she thought of it, that much is certain. How did it feel to be caged after so many years traveling freely? Did they take her blood gently, or with terrible machines?
Did they even let her see the moon?
The doctors and scientists in the employ of the great corporations proclaimed victory in their understanding. “We have unlocked the secrets of nature itself!” they bellowed from the rooftops of their tallest buildings, dressed in gold and jewels. “From the body of this shifter we have made great medicines that will save the world from the illnesses that ravage it. No one shall suffer needless loss. No one shall go hungry. No one shall ever die! A golden age built on the red blood of this woman is before us!”
The people rejoiced. They lined up in rows miles long to get the medicines brewed from her suffering. Did they know where their deliverance came from? How much blood did it take to make medicine for all the world?
The cost was high. The great corporations demanded everything of those who took the cure for death. All worldly possessions, deed and title to their homes, years of indentured service—but if the shifter’s gifts let them live forever, what was twenty years of service?
There were no alphas yet. No true alphas at least. Did Aurora have an alpha out there somewhere, searching for her?
The blood cured mankind of disease and death, but it had not yet shifted the course of humanity.
One year after saving the human race from calamity, the great corporations warred again. Now with soldiers tempered with Auroras flesh. They’d taken everything of value from the people, but they wanted more. Their hunger was depthless.
The scientists desperately sought to wring more discoveries from Aurora, from that poor caged woman. They did unspeakable things to her in the name of progress. They stole her genes and merged them with others. Creating diseases to kill the unkillable, viruses to beat her unbeatable immune system.
Why do such a thing? Why not look out at a humanity free of suffering and call your works good and complete? Why choose to look upon your neighbor with fear, to wish new ways to end his life?
No one is sure exactly when Aurora escaped. Or if she was freed by a sympathetic soul or even set loose to bring misery to unseen enemies. What is known is that she did escape and her wrath broke the world. The illnesses grown in her body spread to the land itself, killing trees, poisoning the water.
Her lab-grown illnesses twisted the bodies of men. And so began the shifter plagues.
The plagues molded bodies like clay in the hands of an angry child. It was nearly the end of the human race. But some persevered. Some who were infected became like the shifters of old, animal aspects stabilizing their flesh. Some never got sick at all.
And some animals, taken by the plagues, were reshapen into foul, vicious things like the world had never seen before.
* * *
The spider myriad reared up on its hind legs, a chittering roar thundering from its spiracles.
Lucia grabbed Triptongue’s flailing arms and hauled him behind the dive bike. Foxtail dove headfirst into the sand, burrowing deep, her tail rapidly disappeared from sight.
“What on earth is that terrible thing?” Triptongue wailed.
Lucia’s hands trembled as she ripped through the bike’s cargo pouches. In one she found what she was looking for—a pocket stunner, useful for dumb beasts and rowdy men alike. Her uncle had drilled her on the device at a young age, in case one day she needed to defend herself. From what exactly she would need to defend herself, he’d never been clear. In her mind, it had been him she focused on when she fired at the targets. The baron himself, bloated and red faced, howling with rage as he tore her aunt to pieces.
Lucia popped over the bike, aimed at the charging myriad and fired. The recoil staggered her off her feet, but the crackling blue bolt flew true, smashing like a fist into the face of the enormous spider. Crumpled bodie
s of crushed spiders—normal sized—rained from the impact site, but the beast’s skin flowed and melted and reformed the injured area.
The myriad was a compound creature—a hive mind of animals that swarmed together. It was just one of the new forms of life brought by the shifter virus.
The stunner would do nothing. It was useless against the monster. The sand shifted underfoot. The wind was calm. It was a lovely day in the wastes with blue skies as far as she could see. What an absurd day to die.
Triptongue screamed, huddled upon himself. Terror gripped him fiercely. Lucia aimed the stunner at the fox shifter and fired. The blue bolt crackled as it hit him square in the back. The fox was asleep before he knew what had happened. If they were both to die, at least he’d feel no pain. She wished she had Foxtail’s knack for sand diving. But wolves were not foxes and it was no use hoping otherwise.
The myriad leapt over the bike, its massive bulk blotting out the sun. A cold and chittering shadow fell upon Lucia. Up close, the spider myriad’s skin wasn’t smooth. Thumb-sized spiders endlessly popped up from one spot only to crawl to another and merge again with the host.
Lucia stood transfixed by the monster. He was her death.
The myriad shimmered in the heat and where it had been was now a mob of spider-headed men, their skins chitinous and shining in the sun. Their limbs ended in envenomed stingers. Why they took this form for the kill, Lucia didn’t know.
The spider humanoids rushed her, darting their hands out in precise jabs, stinging her with their paralyzing venom. She didn’t even have time to scream before the paralysis took her limbs from her. With a heavy thump she hit the sand next to Triptongue. The fox man’s eyes were closed as he snored peacefully. It’s better this way. He won’t suffer.
The spider men chittered above her. Lucia wanted to turn her head to see, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even close her eyes as three of the men dissolved into a thick wave of spiders and crawled up her legs, weaving a cocoon from toe to hip.