by Conner, Jack
“Where will your friends go?” Sheridan asked again.
Avery could not tell her without her growing suspicious of why he was betraying Layanna. He would have to wait for Sheridan to beat it out of him before he could lay his trap. He said nothing.
She turned to him, pulling out the god-killing knife. Was this it? Would she carve into him until he gave her what she wanted?
“Go on,” he said. “Do it.”
She pressed the knife into his hands. “There. Now I can’t harm her. Where is she?”
He could stick it in her throat, if he was fast enough. He could kill her and rejoin the others, and he would have a weapon to use against any Collossum they came against in the future.
With a sigh, he shoved the weapon away, tucking it inside his armor, where Sheridan would have a hard time stealing it back from him.
“Why would you have any interest in finding her if not to kill her?” he said.
“Not every answer lies in violence.”
“Ha.”
“Perhaps there’s another way. Some deal we can work out.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Do you have a choice?”
He paused, then started removing pieces of his armor. He would have to take the knife with him.
“What are you doing?”
He indicated the nearest tall tree. “I have to climb.”
Twenty minutes later he came down, bruised and chafed, sweaty and sore. His arms and legs ached so much he thought his muscles might just liquefy and slither away. He slumped against the base of the tree and wheezed for breath.
“Well?” Sheridan said. “What did you find?”
“I ... saw ...” He took a few breaths. “... flowers. The ghost flowers. A line of them, one of the shoots. Going ... that way.” He gestured.
“Luckily those things glow in the dark.”
“Unlucky that that’s the only time you can see them.” He glanced at his hands; it was just bright enough to see the dark crusts of blood on his palms and fingers where jags of bark had cut him. Replacing his armor, piece by piece, and the god-killing knife, he said, “Anyway, that’s the direction they’ll be going. We can meet them where the shoots of the ghost flower vines join.”
“Lead on, then.”
Uncomfortable with her at his back, he obeyed, finding the shoot after several more minutes of thrashing around in the dark, once having to stop himself from shrieking in terror as a cloud of mutated bats whistled past, their skin rubbery and, had this been day, probably colorful.
After locating the line of white-glowing blooms, he was able to follow the floral trail easily enough, even as it dipped and bobbed over the undulating landscape, threading between great trees or passing through thick undergrowth he had to go around. Always he found the line of ghost flowers again, wondering if Layanna, Janx and Hildra were doing the same. Had all the villagers truly died? The Nisaar would likely be overseeing the bonfire that they’d made of the village, making sure every last maggot-riddled person, man, woman and child, burned. Some had escaped, though, which is what had forced both Avery’s and Sheridan’s respective parties into flight. Some might be still be out here. Wincing, he wondered if the maggots could infest animals as easily as they could people.
He wasn’t even aware of it happening it occurred so gradually, but bit by bit he realized it ...
The Atomic Jungle was ending.
The jungle itself went on, of course, but it steadily grew less and less infected, and then at last he and Sheridan passed through what was to all appearances (and it was still very dark, so that was limited) a normal, mundane jungle. No squid vines, or jellyfish trees. No great banks of coral or predators with lamp-lures. Just lush, thick vegetation, with the stench of rotten vegetable matter and flowering blooms and sweet resin all around.
“What does it mean?” Sheridan said.
“I don’t understand. We’re not any further from the nearest infected river than we were, at least if my memory of the maps is correct.”
“It is or we’re both wrong.”
They paused to study their surroundings, then ventured on, but now they moved more closely together, as if expecting ambush. Somehow the termination of the alien surroundings heightened their trepidation, not lessened it; they had come on something unexpected. Nonsensical, even.
To compound this, the line of glowing flowers continued on, leading further and further into the strangely banal jungle.
“Why didn’t the flowers end?” Sheridan said. “Unless ...”
He nodded. “Their—well, strangeness—wasn’t caused by the Atomic Sea infection, but something else. Lt. Mailos talked about there being something old out here, something that may have caused the Nisaar to mutate long ago. I don’t really believe they evolved due to any ... well, extradimensional, I suppose ... any extradimensional stimulation, but those flowers certainly did. There is nothing natural about them.”
“I thought all extradimensional phenomena originated from the sea.”
“So did I.”
Bugs chirped in the bushes, an oddly soothing sound. Further off, something large grunted, and Avery wondered if regular tigers were any less deadly than infected ones. He saw Sheridan’s hand rest on her gun butt and was reassured, but only a little.
“The flowers are used in alchemy,” she mused.
“Yes. It makes one wonder how many other alchemical substances derive from pre-Atomic extradimensional phenomena. Whatever caused the flowers to mutate could have created those other substances, too.”
“But those things can be found throughout the world, and the flower only grows here.”
“It’s a puzzle, I grant you that. Unless—”
She switched off her flashlight, leaving him blind.
“Hush,” she said. “I think I see something ahead.”
After giving her eyes a minute to adjust, she inched forward through a wall of undergrowth, and he followed, feeling suddenly nervous. She paused ahead of him, peering out behind a thick tree, and he joined her. Ahead he saw what she had sensed so much sooner than him; large structures, buildings, looming out of the jungle just before them. By the light of the two visible moons, Avery saw a great structure blocking out most of his view, but dimly on either side, and just visible above it, he could see what looked like domes and towers, arching bridges ... all overgrown by ivy and riddled with trees and shrubs.
A lost city, half reclaimed by the jungle.
And by its strange angles and over-large dimensions, it was most certainly a non-human city.
“Look,” Sheridan said, pointing to another line of vines leading straight into the metropolis.
“And another,” he said, pointing in the other direction.
“The flowers come from here,” she said, excitement just discernible in her voice. “This is it, Doctor. This is our destination.”
Chapter 9
Avery half expected Sheridan to kill him then, and he hunched his shoulders, preparing to ward off a blow. His armor might save him from her first attack, unless she was willing to risk a shot, and then she had only to lift up his visor and ...
“Don’t be absurd,” she told him, reading his body language. She rose from her crouch and shuffled off toward the building directly ahead.
At a loss, Avery followed.
“What is your … ?” he started, but she shushed him again and pressed her back against the rounded wall of the building. He followed her example.
She peered around the corner, then turned back to him. “Two men just passed by at the other end of an alley.”
“What would men be doing here?”
“I have no idea. Could the ruins be inhabited?”
“They wouldn’t be ruins, then, would they? What we need is some height so we can scout out the lay of the land.”
They commenced searching for a doorway into this building or the next. None presented themselves, and Avery didn’t feel like investigating every
structure of the city’s perimeter looking for ingress. He pointed up to what looked like a window on the second or third story, one of many. Thick vines snaked up the wall toward them, thick and knotty. He grabbed one and attempted to shake it, just to be sure. It didn’t budge.
“It’ll do,” Sheridan said.
She began peeling off her armor, and he couldn’t help but watch. She wore very little underneath, save some ungainly pads that prevented rubbing, but these she removed too, as they got in the way of natural movement without the weight of the armor to hold them in place. What little she had left resembled underwear, with a belt cinched around her hips holding a gun and a radio; that was it.
He swallowed, helpless to admire her lithe form. With her hair longer than he had ever seen it before, sweaty and tangled, her face flushed with exertion, her full lips as well, and a spark in her eye, she was a compelling sight, and when she saw his admiration something mischievous entered her face.
“Your turn, Doctor,” she said. “You can’t climb wearing that.”
Suddenly nervous with a tension that had nothing to do with the dangers facing him, he starting removing his armor under her watchful gaze, aware that he was tanned and as muscular as he’d ever been, fit after all of his adventuring. When he was done, he wore more clothing than she did, but with her staring at him he didn’t feel like it.
“After you,” she said, indicating the vine.
He smiled thinly, touching the knife he’d thrust through his belt, a knife too easily reached by someone he couldn’t see.
“No, you,” he said. “I insist.”
Her mouth quirked, but she gamely shimmied up the vines, and he tried not to watch as her buttocks flexed beneath thin panties just inches above him. Her legs were long and shapely.
“Don’t get distracted,” she called down.
He gave her a few seconds and followed, reaching her at the window and sliding in behind her, not too close. It was dark inside the building, but he’d brought the flashlight, and it revealed strangely curved walls in a large, airy space, bigger than humans would likely build outside a church. This was a main hall that wrapped around even larger interior spaces, and it connected to massive stairways that led up even further. Avery and Sheridan had to help each other up the stairs, her standing on his shoulders to reach a lip and then holding a hand down for him. It took more work than he had bargained for, but at last they reached a door that spilled out onto the roof. The building seemed to be composed of some sort of thick ceramic, though a ceramic capable of enduring for countless years, and small cracks ran through the material of the roof, some widened by tree roots. Date trees sprouted up in copses all over, waving in a gentle wind.
Getting down on her hands and knees, then her belly, Sheridan wriggled to the edge of the roof. Avery waited for her to call her findings back to him, but when she didn’t he threw himself prostrate and joined her. Together they stared down into the alien city, their elbows nearly touching.
“Wish I had some binoculars,” she muttered.
They could see figures moving below, going about errands of their own, but no details.
“My gods,” Avery said, “there’s so many ...”
There seemed to be thousands of people here, and not just humans, but Nisaar and other non-human species, too, all residents of the general region. Framed against the colossal buildings, the figures seemed like gnats. The activity was mostly concentrated around a large downtown, what might have been the capitol district of the long-vanished race that had erected this city. There were five grand buildings that seemed to be palaces or the like arrayed at equidistant points, like the points of a star, but they did not seem large, as there was another structure in the center of that star pattern, a massive black dome, the very heart of the city, that dwarfed every other building in town. The dome was also the center of something else.
All the vines terminated there.
“You said your people were following the vines,” Sheridan said. “What exactly did they expect to find at the place where they joined?”
He realized he’d said too much. “How exactly are you going to deal with Layanna?” he said. “Without the knife?”
It was her turn not to answer.
He removed the blade and held it out over the lip of the roof. She watched but didn’t tense or move to stop him.
“What would happen if I dropped it?” he asked.
“That would be foolish on your part. Then you wouldn’t have a weapon to use against others of her kind.” She expressed no fear, only stating facts. Of course, she was an accomplished liar.
He slid the knife back into his waistband. She was right, and it would not avail her against Layanna anyway; Layanna would have fed by now, and he would make sure she saw Sheridan coming.
Sheridan drew away from the roof and rested her back against a date tree. After a moment, he joined her, propping himself up against a neighboring tree. With an elaborate gesture, she yawned, rucking her top against her breasts, outlining her nipples clearly. Her well-toned legs adjusted position.
“I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I’m tired. Think I’ll catch some sleep.”
“Shouldn’t we take shifts or something?”
“What’s the point?”
“How will you reacquire your quarry if you’re asleep?”
“How will I reacquire her if I’m exhausted?” She smiled. “Besides, if she does come, I expect there to be some commotion. I’m sure the screams will wake me.”
He excused himself and threaded through the various copses, coming to the other side of the roof, where he hid the knife, then relieved himself, but as he was shaking himself dry his thoughts strayed to Sheridan wriggling toward the lip of the roof, and, to his great annoyance, his member stiffened, standing as rigid as a flag-pole.
He thought about stroking it to relieve the pressure, but he didn’t want to do it while thinking about Sheridan—Layanna was not right about him—so he willed himself flaccid, which took some doing, before returning to her. She had curled up near the tree, already breathing steadily, but there was a half smile on one side of her lips that made him self-conscious.
He laid down some feet away, wishing he had a blanket or some way of keeping warm. Wind blew cold up here, and the night only made it colder. The stars above seemed distant and remote. His flesh prickled.
Despite himself, his eyelids grew heavy, and before he knew it he slept. Some time later he came awake at some change that had taken place, and realized it was simply that Sheridan had come to stretch beside him. Her heat warmed him, and he went back to sleep.
When next he woke, the sun was up, and her face was to him. Her eyes, still drowsy, were open.
“’morning,” he said, hearing the slur in his voice.
“Morning.”
She reached out a hand and caressed his chest, following some pattern, and he realized she was tracing his striations. For a moment he feared that she would be repelled, even though she had seen the markings before, and he chastised himself for worrying what she thought.
“My doctor,” she said, almost sadly, but softly, “a fish man. I don’t think I ever saw the markings under the sun before. It makes them more ...”
“Yes?”
“... colorful.”
He breathed out. “We can’t do this again, Sheridan.”
“‘Sheridan’, now, is it?”
He breathed in. “Jess.”
“Francis.”
Her mouth was very close. One of her legs rubbed up against him, and he became aware of a breast pushing against his arm. He could feel her nipple, tight and hard. Her breast felt very firm, and he knew if he reached over and squeezed it, it would be. He felt himself begin to stiffen, or rather grow stiffer; as usual, he had woken up with a hard-on.
“No,” he said. “Really, we can’t.”
“We can. You can’t finish inside me—I’m not ready for stripes of my own—but there are other ways, like we used in Laisha
...”
She leaned over to kiss him. He pulled away, but as he moved one of his hands found her breast and, as if it had a mind of its own, squeezed. He moaned. She bent forward again, tugging at his bottom lip with her teeth, gently, then rubbing her lips around his. He kissed back, turning sideways, pushing himself against her. His hand moved from her breast, around her back and down, squeezing a muscular buttock. She murmured something into his mouth.
She climbed astride him, ripping her top off, letting her breasts bounce free, and his member, straining against his underwear, rubbed the spot where her legs came together.
He sucked on a breast, licked the nipple, then flipped her over with himself on top, spreading her legs beneath him, and bent to tug down his underwear. It was then, as he popped free, that he looked up at a certain sound and saw Layanna.
* * *
Janx and Hildra were just behind her. The three stared agape at Avery and Sheridan, as if unable to figure out what they were looking at. The doorway was framed behind them, and they had obviously only just arrived.
Shock and pain crossed Layanna’s face, and a startled gasp came from her mouth. She turned away.
Avery realized he was still out (Oh dear gods) and tucked himself back in. He rolled off Sheridan and tried to compose himself, as Sheridan rolled back the other way, in the direction of her gun—too late.
Janx, his face a mask of wrath, had closed the distance between himself and the admiral. With his blackened right hand he grabbed her by the throat and hauled her, feet kicking, into the air. If she’d been less distracted and more herself, she might have been able to reach her gun in time, but as it was she was helpless against Janx’s brawn. Her nails dug into his huge hand, not trying to claw him but simply trying to take some of the weight of her body.
He squeezed, and her face turned purple. His jaw rigid, he didn’t speak, just stared her in the eye as he crushed the life from her.