The Shattered Genesis (Eternity)

by Rudacille, T.

  “Good, because we're running out of time.” Alice told him as we crawled out of his tent. “There's no time for questioning anything. Let's do this.”

  They walked ahead of me and I stood staring after her with my mouth agape. If any of the three of us was like a Marine, it was Alice. She was charging ahead, mission in mind, with courage swelling in her chest. Elijah was connected emotionally to the task but Alice saw it through the clear eye of a soldier.

  I followed after them, grinning despite my nerves beginning to respond to the situation. Her bravery inspired a great admiration in me. Our love was maturing from that of an adolescent romance to something real, something much deeper. Ever since we had landed on Pangea, our bond had been stronger, feeling at times to be completely unbreakable.

  I hoped someday she could see me with that same admiration. Once both of us reached that level, then I would know what I had always suspected; we were meant to be.

  She hung back to grasp my hand. We walked along, smiling at each other as though we were simply taking an early evening stroll. Then she stood on her tiptoes, kissed my cheek and whispered:

  “You're the bravest man I know. Don't forget it.”

  Faith. It was a different kind than what we had discussed earlier but it felt no less divine.

  XXX

  We stood, peering around the end of the ship as the first signs of night began to descend. A silence came over the forest that the three of us knew preceded the arrival of the natives.

  “I told my other sister that if they come while I'm in here, they need to run into the woods. We'll have to look for them. But we'll find them. If anything should happen to me, they'll find James. I don't know if I can trust the guy but I know that he's better than my father.”

  Alice and I both knew that he wasn't telling us that to supply us with the information. He was reminding himself. Through that reminder, he was reassured that even in the event of his delay or his death, his sisters would be taken care of. I had seen his younger sister, Violet many times. She appeared to be only a year or so younger than us but there was a selfless quality to her that neither Alice nor I had acquired yet.

  I watched her hand over a bottle of water to a child dying of thirst. She hadn't known whether her father would give her more to drink but she had known Brynna would sacrifice her own. I was becoming fascinated with their family. I was fascinated by their quiet kindness. How Daniel Olivier's children could turn out so good when he was anything but baffled me.

  “How are we going to get past the guards?” Alice whispered as she craned her neck to see how many were standing by the folded down stairs that led onto the ship.

  “Why are there guards in the first place?” I asked, “Do they think someone is going to try to break her out?”

  “No,” Elijah replied, “They think the natives are going to try to blow up the ship.”

  “But if they want us to leave, then why would they blow up the ship?” I asked.

  “Because if they can't get us to leave, then they can blow up our supplies so we won't be able to survive for very long.” Elijah answered in a voice devoid of emotion. “I can't shoot them without people hearing.”

  “Wait here.” Alice told us.

  “Allie!” I called after her in a loud whisper as she approached the guards.

  “Hi!” She called out. She waved cheerfully and I could hear her smiling, “Hey, I think someone robbed my tent. It's so funny, though. They only took my pads.”

  Oh, Lord...

  “Your what?” The man asked in slight horror. Typical male response to a woman bringing up that awful thing that happened to them once a month... I would have stammered out a response, too.

  “My pads. Like... for my end-of-the-sentence,” Alice laughed in fake embarrassment, “I'm really going to be needing them, though. I was wondering if I could go into the storeroom and get another pack.”

  “No civilians are allowed in the storeroom, sweetheart. I'm sorry.”

  “Then can you go get them? It's kind of an emergency. The flood gates are opening, if you will...”

  To watch those guards squirm in discomfort was more than amusing. It was downright hilarious. I was cracking up and struggling not to clap my hands in triumphant glee. Even Elijah was grinning as he watched.

  “Go get them, man.” Another guard told the one Alice was addressing.

  “Kids share way too many details these days...” He muttered as he walked up the high metal staircase to the door of the ship and scanned his key card.

  Once it was open, Alice's falsely sunny demeanor vanished. If I wasn't in awe of her before, I definitely was when I saw her switch into Tomb Raider mode. She grabbed hold of the first guard and threw him against the hard, metal exterior of the ship. With one hand she held him firmly to the wall and with the other, she grasped a handful of his hair. As Elijah and I watched with our mouths hanging open, she banged his head into the side of the ship twice with only enough force to knock him unconscious.

  The two remaining guards had stood completely dumbfounded at her sudden changeover and at the unbelievable strength that a girl half their size possessed. But after that initial shock wore off, they sprung into defensive mode. The one on the ground grabbed her from behind and held her arms to her sides. She jerked her body forward and flipped him off of her back before jumping down onto him and hissing in his face.

  Elijah and I were watching like moronic spectators at a football game. But when I saw the man who had opened the door pull a knife from his pocket, the animal in me awoke as well.

  I charged forward at a speed that would make Olympic track stars pack up their gym bags and go home. I leaped through the air and collided with the metal railing at the top of the stairs. I hurtled over it to tackle the man backwards but we tumbled over the railing on the other side and hit the ground hard. The fall knocked the wind out of him but I felt nothing. In what seemed like one fluid motion, I kicked him so that he flung onto his back, jumped on top of him and pinned his arms above his head.

  The feeling of my teeth elongating to the shape of fangs was definitely the weirdest sensation I had experienced up to that point. Admittedly, my heart flung itself upwards in nauseated surprise just as my hands flew to my mouth to touch them. The only teeth that had grown were my canines; they were almost how I would expect vampire fangs to be. The only difference was that my new teeth were much thicker and as a result, more durable. In that quick second of prodding my finger into the bottom of one fang, I managed to draw blood. Not only were they long but they were also very sharp.

  As I touched the new, very strange additions to my mouth, the guard saw his chance to bring me down. He thrust the hand that held the knife forward, going right for my throat. I dodged the attack in a blur of movement and grabbed his wrist in one hand. I couldn't believe that he had tried to cut my throat; the thought infuriated me. At first, I hissed just as Alice had. Then, a soft growl rumbled in the back of my throat as I snapped his wrist in half with just a slight tightening of my fingers.

  Just as he let out a wail of pain, I brought back my fist to punch him hard in the face. His scream choked off and his eyes closed. In a frenzy, I looked around for any curious survivors that might have come around the end of the ship, searching for the source of the noise. I saw no one and breathed a deep, cleansing sigh of relief. In that breath, the instinct to fight and kill soothed itself and I could have sworn, though this sounds insane, that I smelled the pepperoni, onion, mushroom and sausage pizza that my mom, dad and I ordered every Friday night for as long as I could remember.

  “Quinn!” Alice exclaimed in a loud whisper. “Come on!”

  The amazingly vivid smell disintegrated immediately, leaving me sniffing the air somewhat wildly. I begged for it to appear again from wherever it had come because I needed the peace that had flooded through me the moment I smelled it to return. Instead, I had only the urge to run, fight and sink my newly acquired fangs down into the vital arteries of anything that stood in
the way of saving Brynna, a girl I had not met but cared for because Alice did.

  Elijah hurtled the railing the same way I had. He jumped into the open space as the metallic door began to slide shut. He pressed his back to one side of the doorway and kicked both feet up to hold the door open.

  “Quinn, let's go!” Alice was shouting.

  I scrambled up the stairs and we ducked under Elijah's legs. Once we were inside, he rolled sideways, landing gracefully on all fours before pushing himself up to a standing position without moving his feet at all.

  “You have to admit,” He grinned, “it's kind of awesome, right?”

  “Hell yeah.” Alice beamed brightly. All of us were trembling from the adrenaline rush our fight had stirred to life. I could see how people became addicted to thrills; as we faced death and pain, we embraced a perhaps nonexistent invincibility. In that invincibility, we were truly alive. We possessed the strength of bulls and the fighting prowess of lions; we were becoming more like animals everyday. For the first time, I was excited about mutating. In the eyes of my two companions, I could see the same enthusiasm for our new animal nature.

  I turned my head from right to left. On both sides, the corridor was eerily lit with dim bulbs. Both ways were identical. We could not be sure which way to go.

  “Storage compartment, right?” Alice looked in either direction as I had. “I guess we should split up.”

  “Famous last words…” I muttered and Alice scowled at me in irritation, “Well, it’s true!”

  “Do you have a better idea?” She asked, “We don’t have much time before Olivier’s people stumble on the guards we just took out. Once that happens, they’ll be coming in here, looking for whoever did it.”

  “Yeah, we may be able to fight a few of them but he has more people than you guys think. He thinks the only way to survive is by using force. So he brought plenty of force.” Elijah explained grimly, “We can’t take on all of them. We might be able to fight but they have guns. So you’re right, Alice. We need to get in and get out of here. You two go on. I’ll go alone.”

  “No!” I exclaimed, “It doesn’t matter if we split up because we have no way of telling one another if we find her! We need to stay together! Look, let’s just take thirty seconds and try to use whatever these weird powers are that we have.”

  “What do you mean?” Alice asked and I could see that her aggravation was growing as she became more frantic to find Brynna and get out.

  I realized suddenly that I was sick of feeling like I was running out of time.

  “I don’t know. Just…” I closed my eyes and allowed the creature inside of me to take hold. It was instinctual and at times, close to knowing things that we could not possibly know on our own. They were staring at me, rendered silent by what they believed was just a stupid attempt to tap into a psychic side that didn’t exist. But I knew that I could at least gather which direction was the correct one in order to more quickly find Brynna.

  “This way.” I pointed to the left side of the corridor, “Yeah, shut up, fools.”

  “We don’t even know if you’re right yet!” Elijah called after me as we all ran down the darkened hallway.

  “I am right. Don’t start doubting the powers, man!” I called back.

  I stopped running suddenly and thrust my arm back to keep them from continuing on. The three of us carefully moved to see around the wall. With a drop in each of our hearts, we watched as Daniel Olivier began to walk in our direction, his brows furrowed in a question. He thought he had heard something and he was coming to see if he really had.

  “Elijah!” He called down the hallway, “Go back outside.”

  Elijah went to move around us but Alice reached out and grabbed him, shaking her head. However, after looking into his eyes, she let go of him. Though there was rage clearly displayed in them, it was not the rage that we had to embrace before we could hurt someone. The same way Alice had a plan, he did as well.

  “Has she eaten?” He asked Daniel sourly.

  “She had a few scraps of something. That’s all she’s getting right now. I know that it seems cruel, Eli. But I need to know what’s going on. I can’t protect you, your sisters or Maura without knowing what exactly it is that’s happening to her.”

  “And you think she knows?”

  “I do. I think she knew this was going to happen to her. I think she knows what those natives want. You saw how calm their leader was when he spoke to her. It was only after we interrupted them that he threatened us.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Dad. She just knew what she was doing. But as far as whatever made her change over to that, I don’t think it’s a threat. So you need to go get her something else to eat.”

  “No,” Daniel's voice was beginning to tremble slightly. Alice and I looked at each other, both worrying that any minute now, things were going to spiral completely out of control, “If anyone would be going to get her something else to eat, it would be you. But she’s not getting anything else. We can’t waste our food on someone like her.”

  “Someone like her?” Elijah repeated in incredulous animosity, “She’s your daughter!”

  “I don’t know what she is. But I know that if there’s one thing she’s not, it’s my kid. People are afraid of her. It’s my job as the person that is leading this group to make sure everyone feels secure.”

  “And they feel secure while you’re starving them or threatening to shoot them if they walk near the forest or try to go off on their own?”

  “I am doing that for our own good! If we give rations to everyone, every day, we’ll be dead in a month! I’m not exaggerating when I say that! We did the math! We never thought that so many people would come. We never…”

  “So let people go off on their own, if that’s what they want!”

  “Yes, let’s go into the forest, Elijah! The natives have already showed us what they’re capable of, so let’s piss them off even more by going into their territory.”

  “This whole planet is their territory!”

  “So what should we do? Do you want to load everyone back on the ship so we can fly around for a few thousand miles, if we even break through the atmosphere at all? Do you want to keep going until…” He stopped and looked up as he took a deep breath. When he spoke again, his voice was firmly calm, “I am doing the best I can. I have to make the hard decisions. That’s fine, because I know I can do it. Can you say the same, Eli?”

  “Are you asking me if I can starve people? Are you asking me if I can shoot people? Because the answer is no. If you’re asking me if I can make the hard decisions…” There was the sound of impact on someone’s face and Alice and I jumped out from behind the corner to see that Elijah had rammed the butt of the gun into his father’s head, “the answer is yes. But then again, that wasn’t hard.”

  I exclaimed in stunned elation, laughing as I walked out from behind the corner.

  “That was badass, man!” I told him after clapping him on the shoulder, “Pistol-whipping him, what you said... You're like Clint Eastwood right now!”

  “I feel like Clint Eastwood right now.” He grinned broadly.

  “You don't look like Clint Eastwood when you do that.” I scorned him jokingly, “You look like Hannah Montana.”

  “Sorry. How's this?” He scowled darkly and we both laughed again despite the situation. My heart was racing and I had the weirdest urge to jump from one end of the hallway to the other while laughing maniacally. But then, I also wanted to find my own evildoer to pistol-whip. The evolutionary change was wreaking not-all-that-unpleasant havoc on my brain, too.

  “Dude…” Alice whispered as she looked down at Daniel lying unconscious on the floor, “You just knocked your dad out!”

  “Did I give you the impression that I was fond of him?” Elijah asked through another slight chuckle that was offset by the way his whole body was still shaking with fury. “That couldn’t be further from the truth.”

  He pushed open the door to the storage
room. All excitement and enthusiasm disappeared as he looked into the room where Brynna was being kept. “Wait out here.”

  We didn’t follow him into the room but we did look inside after he went in. Brynna’s head was hanging forward, her chin resting on her chest. Her face was beginning to swell on one side from where her dad had beaten her. I looked at Alice to find her looking at me. In her eyes, I saw the same question: What had been the point of hurting her? The answers to the questions he asked were lost on everyone who was changing over, including us. If her bruises and cuts were the physical evidence of a brutal interrogation, I couldn’t help but wonder if soon I would be sporting some of my own.

  Or maybe it had been personal. Maybe it was just more evidence of her father’s cruelty.

  “Do either of you know anything about First Aid?” Elijah called out to us. Alice had worked at a daycare on Earth and was certified in both CPR and First Aid. She went into the room and I followed behind her.

  “Is that normal? The way her eyes are rolling like that?” Elijah asked as he freed Brynna’s hands with the key that had been hanging by the door. The dark part of my brain that made unwelcome suggestions in tense situations told me that Daniel had left the key right in her line of vision to taunt her. I hoped that I was wrong about that.

  Alice had her fingers pressed to the pulsing vein in Brynna’s wrist. Her mouth was moving slightly as she counted out the beat, estimating when a minute was up because she had no clock or watch.

  “Her heart rate is a little fast. But that’s better than it being slow.” Alice informed us, “I don’t think it has anything to do with being hit in the head because…” Alice gently grasped either side of Brynna’s head and tilted it back. Very delicately, she pulled up one of her eyelids. We all watched as Brynna’s bright blue eyes gleamed in the dim light and as her black pupil contracted to the size of a pinpoint. “Yeah, her pupils are contracting. If she had a concussion, they would stay dilated.”