by L. C. Mawson
“Don’t turn on the lights,” Jealousy warned them, though it was clear that it was meant for Claire, since she was the newbie. “Access to the electrics might draw suspicion.”
“Know where we’re going?” Hate asked her before flinching at the echo her voice made. Everything in this corridor felt too loud for a stealth mission.
“I’ll figure it out,” Jealousy told her, sounding completely confident in her abilities.
Claire and Hate followed Jealousy silently - or, at least, as silently as the echoing hallways and metal floor would allow - through the facility. She seemed to be able to easily navigate, impressing Claire, who had no sense of direction whatsoever.
When the metal gave way to stone, it was sudden and unnerving. The tunnel opened up so that it was now big enough to allow a monster through. They had entered the nest.
“Can you make them turn back if they spot us?”
Claire focused on the almost imperceivable note of fear in Hate’s voice. She focused on her need to eliminate that fear. To make her safe.
“I think so,” Claire said, not wanting to sound more certain than that aloud, though she was. There was no question. She had to protect Hate.
The tunnel opened out once more, and Jealousy had to push the other two back to stop all three of them from walking over a ledge.
“What the...” Jealousy muttered at the sight before them. The centre of the nest. Or, at least, they assumed that the large cavern filled with unhatched monster eggs in front of them was the centre. They hoped. Only, in the middle of the cavern, there seemed to be provisions for a humanoid being. A bed and a terminal with a chair. The terminal screen was huge. Large enough for Claire to easily see the video being shown.
A young woman with silver-lilac eyes came into view on the screen, flopping down on a chair in front of the camera.
Hate let out a low hum of confusion before turning to Claire with a frown. It took Claire a moment to realise why, but then it clicked. The woman looked exactly as she would with different colouring. Olive skin and white-blonde, shoulder length hair, instead of Claire’s long black locks.
“Day three since I ran off,” the woman said sarcastically to the camera in Rena. It took Claire a moment to decipher her words. Her Rena was rusty at best.
The woman sighed, running her hand through the waves in her hair. “We’re just barely within range of the com-net. Part of me wants to see what they’re saying back home. Are they scandalised? Their little darling Jia running off to stand in the way of the Science Institute for some backwater species... I wonder how Father will spin that one. Call me a rebellious teenager, maybe. Call me naive. He might be kind enough to tell them that I’m simply too soft to bear seeing anyone hurt, even lower lifeforms.”
“We should make our way down while there are no monsters around,” Jealousy said as the woman on screen let out a soft laugh.
“I’m not being soft. I mean, yes, Hu... Is it Humin? Is that what they’re called. I forget.” She shook her head dismissively as the three Aspects reached the lower level. “Whatever. They’re a sentient species and should be protected. Of course they should. But this isn’t about that. This is about us arming ourselves against our own people. There’s no other reason to breed these creatures. I can see it, and those growing discontent with the Dishar,” she waved her hand in front of her eyes, “can definitely see it. This will escalate into all-out war if we don’t stop it. But no. We escalate. Father is a military man through-and-through. And he’s going to lose his crown over it.”
The video ended there, going to static as they approached.
Jealousy frowned, looking around. “There’s nothing here. As if someone cleared out before we got here.”
“What about the terminal?” Hate asked.
Jealousy moved over to the keys and started typing.
“The system was wiped, but it looks like the wipe was halted partway through.”
“Why?”
Jealousy shrugged, thinking on it for a few moments before responding. “If I had to guess, I would say whoever was here figured out we were coming and fled. They packed up their stuff and wiped the system, leaving before the wipe was done. The monsters might have interfered and stopped the wipe by accident. That might also explain the playing recordings.”
Jealousy cracked open the terminal, removing a black and silver rectangle. “This is the hard drive,” she said before putting it in her pocket. “We can examine it when we get back to the Tower. It might have the answers we’re looking for.”
Before Claire could respond, there was a high-pitched whistle through the air.
It took Claire a moment to identify the sound as a blaster shot.
Jealousy was already on the ground when she turned, her chest a mosaic of red.
Hate ran off in the direction of the shot and Claire could hear the familiar sound of her lightning strikes.
But Claire couldn’t take her eyes off the way Jealousy’s chest was shuddering, trying to draw breath.
“We’ll get you back to the Tower. Em can patch you up.” The words came out of Claire’s mouth but she was sure they belonged to someone else.
Jealousy shook her head weakly and seemed as if she was about to say something, but she went limp after one last shuddering attempt to draw breath.
“We can’t save her.”
Claire heard the words but they didn’t register. She looked up to see that Hate was back, clenching her jaw as her eyes watered.
“We have to get her back,” Claire told her.
Hate seemed about to say something, but all that came forth was a whimpering noise, followed by a sharp gasp of air, possibly intended to centre herself.
She’s trying to stay strong for me, a part of Claire realised. She didn’t want that. Hate should cry if she needed to. She could be the strong one too.
“We have to get her back,” Claire repeated, though this time it was to the figure looming over Hate.
The large, winged beast with jet black scales and glowing red eyes.
“Shit!” Hate exclaimed, scrambling back from the monster and towards Claire, though she didn’t strike out. Not when the beast responded to Claire’s words by lowering itself down, its head bowed in deference.
Claire wasted no time in hoisting Jealousy up onto the creature’s back, before climbing on behind her, gripping the creature’s shoulders tightly.
She turned to Hate, staring at her expectantly.
“You’re...” She paused, seemingly lost for words. “Are you sure about this?”
“We have to get her back.”
Hate simply nodded, gingerly climbing up behind Claire, gripping her tightly around the middle.
“We’d better not plummet to our doom,” Hate muttered into Claire’s back as the beast carrying them got up and began to rush out of the nest.
“THERE’S NOTHING WE can do.”
Claire had expected the words and had steeled herself against them on the short flight back.
She nodded silently.
She wasn’t expecting Empathy to wrap her arms around her middle, but she didn’t object to it either. Em hugged properly. It didn’t hurt when she did it. It was an awkward mishmash of limbs, but it didn’t hurt.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save her,” Claire eventually said, finding her words.
Em shook her head against Claire’s side. “You can’t save everyone. We can’t save everyone.”
“I know,” Claire said, though she wasn’t sure that she did. Her mind knew, but her heart refused to accept the knowledge. As if simply willing it would make it untrue.
Em sniffled into her side and Claire remembered Jealousy’s words. She held her sister closer, realising that Jealousy might have been a surrogate sister for her too. One she maybe hadn’t interacted with much since her real sister had arrived, but one that meant the world to her nonetheless.
When did she become the strong one, she wondered, her mind too tired to feel emotion. She always felt i
t in her eyes first. The slow deadening. She knew that she had a blank stare but even the thought of moving the muscles in her eye slightly - just enough to make them seem responsive and emotive - was exhausting.
First Hate and now Em. Everyone else was crying and she was a statue.
She’d probably feel it in the morning.
Or maybe she wouldn’t feel it at all.
Maybe the grief would only come if she focused.
If she made herself think about the fact that she would never see Jealousy again. That they would never form a closer friendship. That she would never get to truly know the girl her sister had relied on in her absence.
That was enough to solicit a tear as Claire’s throat began to sting. It hurt, but it was a good hurt. It meant that she didn’t have to justify her lack of tears to the others.
She wondered if she would now see first-hand the raw devastation that had followed after Love’s death.
And then she wondered if her thoughts, cold, logical, and completely detached from the tears rolling down her cheeks, were inappropriate. Wrong. Cruel.
Em momentarily held her closer.
“Don’t let anybody tell you how to grieve,” Em muttered against her. “Your way is no more wrong or right than anyone else’s.”
Claire nodded, grateful.
She was right. She did feel it that night. She felt it over and over in the repeating nightmare where she lost Jealousy over and over again. To a gunman they didn’t anticipate.
She would have preferred to stay numb.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A week passed and things still weren’t quite back to normal.
Claire had ignored any media coverage relating to the Aspects since she'd joined up. She knew that she probably couldn’t live up to the previous Love. She didn’t need talking heads dissecting exactly why.
But then there had been the Channel 1 tribute to Jealousy. A compilation of the best footage they had of her in battle, interspersed with a mix of people she'd rescued and celebrities talking about how much they liked her.
“I really liked her grounded style,” she remembered a girl band member saying as she flipped back her carefully-straightened, bleach-blonde hair. She didn’t remember much else from the tribute, except for that. She’d found it funny, though she couldn’t quite explain why.
No, she remembered the news report far more clearly. As usual, Mademoiselle Bennett had only sent the press a notice to say that Jealousy had died in service to the people of Earth while on a mission in the Wastelands with Hate and Love.
The Aspect who had died, the location of the death, and who had been with her. That was all the press got.
That was enough for them to pick apart, apparently. At first, they simply discussed how unusual a trip into the Wastelands was. Speculation about why the Aspects were venturing out there. Poorly reigned-in excitement at the possibility that the Aspects might be trying to reclaim land. Maybe for another city. Or maybe with a view to reclaiming the Earth altogether.
After a while though, they started to speculate about the circumstances of her death. About how she'd been killed. What had gone wrong? Whose fault was it?
“Look, let’s face it,” a slim man in his late twenties, with perfectly styled dark hair and bright blue eyes, said to his pretty, blonde-haired co-host, “Three Aspects can handle themselves in the city, but the Wastelands are a different issue.”
“Not to mention, one of them is fairly new,” the woman next to him chipped in.
“That’s right! Love has only been on the job for a few months, and her power hasn’t been the most reliable in the past.”
“Do you think her powers let them down?”
“I think that Hate’s power has always been reliable and Jealousy is an accomplished fighter. Love was most likely the weak link.”
Claire felt a jolt of pain through her jaw, drawing her attention to the way she was clenching her teeth.
She got up to leave, ignoring the concerned looks the other Aspects gave her.
She hadn’t been back to the communal space since then. She'd expected Em to drop by, but she didn’t. Then she expected Hate to check up on her, though that turned out to be more false hope. She eventually began to expect Vengeance or Justice to come to pester her, reminding her that she hadn’t been training, but neither of them came.
All that came were the nightmares.
A week had passed and she was starting to miss people. She rarely missed people. She could avoid other people for days and never notice.
But now she missed the others.
“Lita?” she eventually called.
“Yes?”
“Where’s Empathy?”
“She is currently in the Control Room.”
Claire nodded. She shouldn’t have expected anything else.
THE TOWER FELT EMPTY. Claire didn’t expect to see anyone, but even when she was alone before, the Tower felt... vibrant. Now it felt like she was suffocating in an endless void. She briefly wondered if it was like this before she'd arrived, in the aftermath of Love’s death. Had she arrived in the wake of this kind of devastation? It felt worse now, but she couldn’t imagine why it would be. Had the others pulled themselves together for her arrival? Pushed through their pain to prevent alienating her? Would everything start to return to normal when the new Jealousy arrived?
The journey to the uppermost floor was just long enough to make Claire’s skin crawl. She didn’t want to be alone anymore. She couldn’t be.
Em was sitting at her terminal as usual, though she had a new look. She was currently a small, Filipino woman with greying hair.
“Hey,” Claire greeted softly.
“Hey,” Em replied, though she didn’t take her eyes from the terminal in front of her.
“I haven’t seen you.”
“I’ve been reviewing the data you retrieved.”
Claire nodded. She'd assumed as much. “Find anything of note?”
Em moved her hand over the keys, bringing up a video on the screen.
It was of the same woman as before, except she looked older now. More tired. She was tucking her hair behind her ear in a way that showed an Aspect Band on her wrist. The same one Claire wore.
“I... have a problem.”
Her tone was halting and strained, her eyes darting nervously across the room.
“Maybe it’s not a problem... We were beginning to wonder how to... We can’t reclaim this planet within our lifetimes. That much has always been certain.”
There was another long pause.
“I wasn’t going to stay here,” she admitted. “I wasn’t going to stay on this planet. I just wanted to show the other Dishar. To draw attention to the Science Institute’s work in the hopes of derailing it before things escalated. Earth was a tragic loss, but an acceptable one.”
Acceptable? Claire thought to herself, but kept watching instead of voicing her thoughts.
“But now things have escalated anyway. Despite my efforts. The last message we sent to the com-net returned unsent. Communications disruptions... They’re never a good sign. I worry that war might have already begun. I don’t want to join my father. I don’t want to fight my people. But I am Dishar.
“My crew will follow me whatever I decide. Most of them do not wish to return to a war either. But Earth isn’t our home. It never was.”
She paused, her hand moving down to her lower abdomen.
“But it is Mohinder’s home. Which means that it’s the home of our child...”
A few more moments passed as the woman gave a faraway look.
“Our species weren’t supposed to be genetically compatible. They still might not be. There’s nothing guaranteeing that I will be able to carry this child to term.”
The video cut out after a few more moments of silence and Claire turned to Em.
“How many of these videos are there?”
“Hundreds,” Em told her. “Captain Jia kept a detailed log until she died.”
“Captain Jia?” Claire hadn’t recognised the name in the first video, but now she did. Captain Jia had been the one to lead the Rena to Earth. To fight the monsters. She was heralded as the Saviour of the Human Race.
“She had a Half-Blood child?” Claire asked. There had been so many Half-Bloods born, and so much destruction in the days following the Fall, that there were no detailed records kept.
“Our ancestor,” Em told her, bringing up another file. A family tree. “Whoever is hunting us has been here a while and they’ve been compiling a list of all Jia’s descendants.” She highlighted a branch of the tree which was greyed out. “They’re missing some information.” She moved over to highlight another section, with red lines through the names. “And some they’ve already... taken care of.” Then she moved over to a section with two more than familiar names, side-by-side. She clicked on Claire’s, bringing up a file with her school photo on it.
Name: Claire Misra
Age: 15
Next in line.
Has taken the mantle of the Aspect of Love. This negates her Half-Blood status.
Top priority.
“Next in line?” Claire asked. “Next in line for what?”
“Captain Jia was Dishar.”
“Okay. What does that mean?”
“As far as I’ve been able to gather, the Dishar are essentially Rena royalty.”
Claire frowned. “Royalty?” There hadn’t been such a concept since before the Fall.
“People who are given the power to rule based solely on their blood.”
“That’s... strangely backwards.”
Em shrugged. “It’s complicated and heavily entrenched in their religion, which we don’t have as much information on as would be ideal. Their Goddess - or perhaps one of many, it’s not clear - bestowed some of their power to a Champion to defeat a Great Evil before they were Enlightened-”
“What’s ‘Enlightened’?”
“It’s what they called the renaissance they had when they discovered FTL travel.”
“FTL...?”
“Faster than light...” Em replied with a raised eyebrow which told Claire that she was expected to grasp that from context.