by Rose Francis
Flicking back to my screen options, I locked onto the bio-rover, setting my jaw and marched to the front entrance, forcing steel to my guts and reaching to draw down its lever. The bunkers in the outposts were manually operated – administrative costs and all, according to the Advisory Council, but they were anything but practical in situations like these.
Guess that was where the bio-rovers came in. They were meant to prevent threats from drawing close to the door in the first place.
I sucked in a breath when the door slid open, thankfully with quiet, and panned the visible area from my current vantage point. Stepping out of the bunker with one smooth movement, I pressed my back to the outside wall immediately.
The wind whipping my hair into my eyes, I drew up my hood and quickly tucked it in to prevent it from happening again.
I could see the bio-rover peripherally.
Now to face whatever it was holding off to my left.
Resolved, I turned my eyes in the other direction and met with a sickly-green fright, almost paled with the look of death, the likes of which I'd never seen before. Time slowed terrifically then, and I held my scan-serv at the ready, pressing the manual read button on its side. Hopefully, it could give me something solid to go on in good time. This creature was obviously hungry. It made that clear with the baring of its jagged teeth. All seventy-five of them – if I had to guess at the number of them overcrowding its mouth.
A hybrid, but not like any I'd been made to study. Maybe this was one of the ones that broke out of the repository. There were plenty of rumours about those sorts of beasties.
A chill surged through me as its eyes seared into mine, slits with reddened whites, and I immediately saw intelligence in them, planning. It was fucking laying out a strategy in its head; I was sure of it.
Steadying my breath amidst the clamor of my throbbing heart, I glanced at the scanserv and the rolling dots that told me it was still scanning the archives. Of course, it was. Not like we needed to have faster data draws in life or death situations or anything.
Mouth going dry, I locked myself in step with the bio-rover, the lumbering simulation of once-man turning its half-robotic head in the direction of the thing in harmony with my assessment, catching what I did not.
Still dataless, I scrambled for the right fumes to throw, a line of state-of-the-art potion bottles lining the inside of my coat. I didn't even know what I was fighting. I'd never seen anything like it before.
It didn't even have a fucking nose.
Classifying it as man was out, but it wasn't a beast in the general sense, either. It stood strong on two legs, possessed two functional arms, even ten fingers. Ah, but there was a tail. I saw it as I took a slow step to the right.
A tail and a smooth, bald head covered in skin told me that it was at least a cousin to that of reptiles, only smoother...
Sweat beading my brow, I took another careful step to the right. If I could at least make it to the port-cover, I could scramble into the underground bunker. I bit back a curse when the ...thing's eyes followed and narrowed, anticipating me.
I could feel it as it leaped then, leaving not another second to chance, intent to lock onto me as hunter to prey. The creature loosed a ravenous howl that physically shook me, and it was all I could do to conceal my fear. With no idea how he hunted, it was difficult to tell if he could smell my fear – a very challenging thing to hide without advance preparation.
Biting back against a growing hollow feeling, I dodged him, locking quick steps in time with the bio-rover as it sent a crashing blow toward the creature's head. Fuck, the beast was fast. My gut clenched as the bio-rover missed its mark by the barest hint of an inch.
A cold dread coursed my veins as the creature cocked its head at me, and I took a cautionary step back. Almost teasingly, it took a step forward, as if daring me, knocking the bio-rover aside when it stepped in to intervene.
I gathered the growing feeling this was going to go sideways very quickly.
With no strategy, I was left to luck and uneducated guesses. I had some seriously great potions, all of which I'd been immunized for, but no data to direct me in the best way to utilize them. Perhaps the data-gathering for this creature would have to take place now.
Coming up behind the thing, the bio-rover yoked it up by its neck, but I was held in a state of pre-emptive caution, not daring to taste the elixir of relief. A moment later, I realized why. It wouldn't be so easy. I realized that when the bio-rover released the thing, as if struck with fatigue, and crumbled to the floor.
I spared the barest glance at it, checking to see that its eyes were open – they were- and reached for the first of the potions. The shiny Halt bottle that would delay the thing.
Anticipating that it might mimic me, I took a step back, and in its step forward, I shot the small bottle to the floor, its thick mustard yellow ooze loosing a cloud of noxious-smelling vapor as it shattered.
A growling warning escaped the creature that made it clear it was undeterred, and this time it lunged for me again.
Remembering its speed, I forced myself not to let my fear paralyze me. My hands closing around the Bind potion next, I yanked it from the latch of my coat's lining, casting it just as it nipped my heels.
Mercifully, I was met with a partial, if momentary, success.
With a chest heaving breath, I spied that that one at least had some kind of effect. It wasn't the answer though, and I stepped carefully beyond the mustard cloud closer to my door as I cast the third, fourth, and fifth potions, all of them in a row, bursting on impact against the path laid out ahead of the thing, forming a temporary shield – one I wasn't sure would last the night.
Which was fine.
If I could get myself and the rover back inside, I could go into the underground bunker and barricade myself.
A strangled howl shook the air that I swore would knock down the last of the border's standing trees, and horror filled my chest as the beast tore through the first of the shields.
A pack of red wings took the sky in a retreating swarm then, bloody against the teal-indigo veil of night.
Even they sensed how deep the shit was getting.
The creature's teeth snapped, taunting me, and I watched the saliva drip from its growling maw to sizzle the ground it landed on. That was when I drew courage from wherever it had been hiding.
Flicking the data search off the scanserv screen, I switched on the camera and took a moving image of the thing. Whatever happened in the next few minutes, there at least needed to be a record.
Something for the others to study.
I sucked in air, mechanically careful to keep the rhythm of my breath just beyond the realm of hyper-ventilation and fell back against the wall of the bunker, breathless and fire-blooded ...but desperately empty.
Passing out wasn't an option, but my body threatened the possibility.
This creature was obviously a horde leech. The closer it drew near, the more my life-force left my body.
Stuttering out a command, I reached for the gold-star of potion bottles hanging from the hooked lining of my coat, willing it to do its work efficiently.
“Fire a warning flare and return to camp,” I ordered the bio-rover carefully, as it drew up, having regained some semblance of its energy back.
The flare would be for any others that might be lingering about, looking for a snack. God, I hoped there weren't others. Not tonight. Not while I was alone.
When the creature broke through the second of the barriers, I began to count.
I counted the amount of seconds it would take for my door to reopen, the amount of steps it would take for me to enter and close it behind the bio-rover, and just how long it might be before I set this bitch aflame.
If this fucker could withstand magical fire, we were all in very deep shit.
Drawing a gust of air when it broke through the next barrier and lunged, I hurled the remaining two defensive potions with as much strength as I could muster, running for my
life to the door.
My heart thumped ridiculously as the creature took to the licking flames, and my hand closed around the lever, yanking it down.
Rushing in, I counted, either the number of seconds it would take for the doors to close, or the number of seconds left to my life.
And as fate would have it, when its scaring the shit out of you for one reason or another, the creature got within inches of the door as it finally slid shut and sealed.
But it hadn't been fully aflame anymore, I realized, in the confused haze of relief and dread descending over me. It was already, somehow, dousing the fire from its skin.
Nightmare shit.
If there were more where this fucker came from, and of course there were, we might be well and truly fucked.
“Prepare evacuation to the lower bunk,” I ordered the bio-rover between jagged breaths.
Grunting, the tech rover moved quickly, gathering the store items into their trunks while I sludged through gathering my clothes. He returned to a standing position by the port-cover, bent, and lifted it open, waiting for me to enter first.
At the ramming of the front door, my head snapped back to the entrance of the bunker, and fire took my heels, snapping me out of my exhaustion. I rushed through the small hole then, down the clinking steps with my bags, hoping against hope that the bio-rover would make it down with me.
The ramming grew louder and increasingly more tinny, signaling a dawning breach, and relief flooded me entirely when the bio-rover drew down the trunks and then itself, closing the port-cover tight before sealing it electronically with the deft pull of the lower bunk's lever.
“Good work.” I huffed, drinking down air. “Rest.”
Grunting once more, the bio-rover took a position by the wall, in that unsettling way it had, and let its eyes slip closed. I couldn't believe even manufactured things took comfort in sleeping while standing like that.
Shrugging, I glanced the port cover warily, though I knew we were safe now.
We were.
It was unwise to pave a path for doom in my head after all that had just passed.
Drawing in a steadying breath, I prepped the sleeping cot in the lower chamber, taking comfort in the reinforcements that made it down with us to the underground bunkers. The bunkers were made to withstand just about anything, but the fact was, they couldn't hold us for more than a week without us running out of air.
I could only hope the distress call the bio-rover would have already sent would have someone out here before the following night. That thing seemed like the type to come back just to prove a point.
I was in the wild, and the wild was in its blood.
Adjusting to the hardness of the barely used cot, I finally settled, laying there wide-eyed, dreamless, and ice-blooded... for the remainder of the night.
2
“You alright there, boy? Heard you had a bad one sniffing around these parts.”
Ed.
Lifting my head from the last of my shelves, I managed a shaky smile. Ancy, I'd made my way back up from the lower bunk, surprised to find the beast hadn't ripped a hole in the front door, after all. It was small solace, but at least it meant I didn't have to contend with my mind while I waited for the hours to pass by before I could board the rail back to the repository.
I do best when I'm busy.
“Wasn't as bad as the council radio's probably making it sound. He was nasty, but... I'm in one piece.”
“You're fortunate there wasn't a horde of them. Even two of your noxious fogs would have done little to deter that. They'd have sucked you dry.”
I let his words fall on a solemn silence. I knew too well the dangers of working the bunkers, but I was strong enough to handle the job. Had chosen it for a reason. It's not like this was my first time around the block or anything.
My father had done just this sort of work, and it's exactly what won him the masterful hand he'd wound up with... before he drained himself into a stupor. I'd learned from that. I didn't intend to follow his exact path; I was only taking up some of his tracks.
I was proud of my father, even if his true legacy was stolen by the unscrupulous sorts who'd descended like a Leeching horde in distinguished dress when his mind went soft. They sought to take credit for all of which did not belong to them. My father's genius was an open secret, but the Advisory Council's favorites were everyone's favorites by way of unspoken rule.
Ed smiled, his cheeks still red from the scorching light of the mid-day sun.
“You should wear a hat,” I offered with a smirk.
“Hats only help so much. They're the worst sorts of teases these times have to offer.”
He was right, of course. The sun brought a formidable heat that only the polarized night had the power to cool. Wearing hats and finding shade provided minimal protection when it was at its highest.
My old mentor lowered a red-labeled tin to the counter in front of me, scrawled in jagged black lettering.
A grin flecked my cheek.
“Daggers' tea?”
“The very one.”
An impressed grin ticked my cheek.
“Your ability to track the best vendors never ceases to amaze me, Ed.”
“I do have my perks.”
Pulling a matching canister from his case, he leaned against the booth counter, his gaze inquisitive and searching.
“You heading back in the evening?”
I gave him a nod, cracking open the tab on the Daggers' tea. It was a hell of a gift. There was tons I could do with it.
“The rail won't be here until the sun goes down.”
I didn't look up, but unnecessarily repositioned the last row of bottles I'd gingerly repacked, instead, placing them one by one, in the foam-cushioning even the shortest trips required of them.
I felt Ed's concern, and I did not misunderstand it, but I wasn't in the mood for lectures just then. And I knew him. Knew one was coming.
When I did lift my eyes to his, a small sigh escaped me.
“Listen-”
“You're a grown man now, Colin. You know all too well what prowls those roads in the eve. If they pick up the wrong passenger...”
“I know. I-”
“Know the dangers, all too well.”
His eyebrows lifted with emphasis, and something in me fell back from attempting to deny him his right to warn me without doing so bluntly. I deserved it. I'd surely gotten caught up with a nymph before, and I knew well the corrupted ones could suck the entire life out of a man, especially in numbers. It didn't pay to gamble one's life foolishly in a world that seemed all too willing to snuff it out.
There were fantasy traders and then there were the hollow hearted.
Locking gaze with my old mentor, I felt the sudden urge to ensure he knew that I was, indeed, registering his warning.
“That I do.”
~
The rail rattled along the curving metal stripe securing it to the main roads with unnerving clinks at regular intervals as it scaled small hills and dove into minor valleys. It was a sure courtesy extended to those of means. With so many danger-laden passages along the border, very few possessed the power, connections, or tools, to fully secure even the simple travels.
The bio-tech manufacturers had surely landed us in this pickle with their grave mistakes. The magical nature of only one found remedy had just barely managed to prevent the world from imploding altogether.
The world was tethered by a very thin cord, coiled around itself with a substantial enough illusion to help the Advisory Council pass this time off as somehow suitable enough with which to conduct a life.
In truth, we were all on borrowed time.
If fate had had its way, we might have perished for our sins upon the world by now.
The hybrid species overtaking us had developed way past what we initially brought to the table. Magicians were weak by nature and easily drained. We hid our work in potions and objects to gather as much magic as we could, errantly thinking
it made our abilities somehow practical.
But practical, such actions were not.
They only tied us to the more unscrupulous variation of humans, the sort who use brute force, horrors, and tricky delights to ensnare those who hold the real power.
Sighing, I lifted my flask of muskein brew and drew a small, but satisfactory swig. I was of mixed emotions about be asked to return to the repository. Some cowardly aspect of my character felt relief, but at heart, I wanted to overcome the beast myself, discover the magical answer that would strike it down.
There almost seemed a sort of destiny to it.
But the Advisory Council's morning response had been unequivocally clear.
Leaning back in the lush, green cushioned bench by the window, I tried to clear my mind and think of the opportunities that could come of returning. There'd surely be perks and opportunities on this climb up the social ladder. I'd hoped to come about those opportunities another way, but I'd be a fool not to seize them.
Frowning, my thoughts turned to Harlan and the friends I'd made at the outpost, the smiles I'd looked forward to meeting with day in and day out. They'd be forced to get their muskein from lesser traders now, and that didn't sit right with me.
My eyes flicking up, I loosed a tagged breath.
The scent of smoky magnolia was unmistakeable.
I rose up in my seat, immediately set on alert. I swear, Ed was uncanny in his admonishments. They seemed to manifest mirror situations all too often often after he delivered them.
It made one wonder.
When the first of the lithe beauties made their way through the heavy green drape blocking off the riding parlor from the main entrance hall of the rail, I was careful not to meet their cunning eyes.
Sucking a breath into my mouth, intoxicated by their scent, I reminded myself what I already knew of them. Nymphs held an allure from head to toe, and this band of merry brothers were no doubt on the prowl like the others.