by Quil Carter
“N-no…” I rasped. I took a step towards Killian. My voice was weak and without power but I tried to say it as loud as I could. “I’m – I’m Elish’s… I’m Elish’s… Reav-” I choked and fell to my knees in front of Killian, and witnessed a splash of fuel get thrown onto his face. Killian’s eyes squinted and he let out a cry.
I put a hand on his shoulder and buried my face into his neck. “S-sorry, Killi.” I coughed and tried to hold him to me, hoping the flames would burn me and not him. If I covered him, perhaps I could have him first die of smoke inhalation.
Killian tried to answer back but he was too dazed. His words were slurred but desperate, and my heart broke for what I knew he was going to endure – pain worse than when he’d been burned in Sky’s lab… followed by what could possibly be half a year in the white flames.
Suddenly behind us there was a bright light and a loud explosion. I turned around just in time to see dozens of Blood Crows flying up into the air, with a cloud of smoke and fire around them. I watched, stunned and confused, as they flew higher, their bodies mixed in with debris.
They all met the ground with loud thuds.
Then I saw a small black object fly past my head and land right where a mob of fleeing Blood Crow were running to. It bounced twice before landing unseen by everyone… and a moment later there was another ground shaking explosion that brought, not only residents, but chunks of concrete and median, up into the starry sky.
Man on the Hill, who I was now sure was Mantis, and all of the others, turned towards the explosions. I saw Ceph running ahead and grabbing Nero as the debris rained down on all of us.
A severed arm landed beside me, but I was so puzzled at what I was seeing I only stared at it; and when there was another low thud of a second body part falling from the heavens, I didn’t even turn to look at it. The chaos was coming quickly and suddenly, the screaming and running around to my right were overloading my chimera senses and rendering me, for the moment, struck dumb. It was like someone had turned a stereo on to full volume after spending a day inside of sensory-deprived darkness.
Then I heard a scraping and heavy breathing to my left. I looked over and saw a figure wearing an executioner’s hood over his face and dark sunglasses. He was dressed in a black leather jacket and black jeans and…
… and he had my M16 on his back and Killian’s satchel.
“Get up! Get up!” I recognized the voice but couldn’t place it. It was enough to at least give me the mental shove to push this stunned haze out of my mind.
I jumped up, running on pure adrenaline, and picked up Killian. I took a look behind my shoulder and thanked the universe that everyone was distracted by what I now knew were thrown grenades, and nodded to this mysterious person. “You have my gun. Do you–”
“I have your quad. I’ve been following you,” he said hastily, and he started to run. Killian kicked himself out of my arms and I realized with relief that he wasn’t as badly injured as I thought.
“The gate was open when I went to get it,” our saviour called as we both sped towards the main road. “Hurry.”
I took Killian’s hand, both of ours sticky with drying blood, and we ran with him. I had no idea who he was, but I knew when he took off the mask I’d recognize him. The voice was familiar, very familiar.
The relief I felt when I heard the quad rumbling in the distance was enough to banish the throbbing pain that had rooted itself into several different areas of my body. Whoever this chimera was, he would be my best fucking friend. He just saved me and Killian from at least five months of resurrecting, and god knows what sort of situation we’d wake up to. If there was one thing I could say about my family – we had fucking good timing.
I went to jump onto the quad but the man stopped me. “I have a house I’ve been living in; it’s ten miles from here,” he said. “It’s solid and it has a garage for the quad. They won’t be able to find us. Let me drive.”
He might’ve been saving our ass but I immediately didn’t like his suggestion. For all I knew he would be leading us to Silas, or Kessler’s husband. But it was dark and we had no place to go; no way we’d be returning to the plaguelands at night, not with those worms still out there and an infected whipwolf on the loose.
So I made another split-second decision to trust this ally. I put Killian half on my lap, so we would all fit, and sat behind this man who had just saved us. And although I knew he was a chimera, just from the fact that I recognized his voice, it was confirmed when the headlight of the quad turned off, and my, and I knew his, night vision took over.
We sped, full speed, down the road, and I was pleased when the man pointed to Killian’s satchel, tied to the side of the quad, and yelled over the motor. “I filled it with grenades. If anyone follows us… you know what to do.”
I nodded and slipped a grenade into Killian’s pocket and one into my own. The other one I held onto in case anyone was dumb enough to try and follow us.
Poor Killian was shivering in my arms. I tightened my embrace and kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry, baby. I won’t be that stupid again,” I said to him. Killian didn’t answer back but he craned his neck to try and look at me, or at least I thought he was until his lips twitched and I realized he was trying to give me a kiss.
I couldn’t reach his lips but I kissed his cheek and squeezed him tight. He was injured and in a great deal of pain, and so was I, but we were safe and about to get our asses far away from this crazy town and those fucked up immortals and chimeras. I had no idea what Mantis had done to Nero but it wasn’t my problem. Fuck him, he can be a zombie forever. This experience had only driven in the reality that we had to be careful. It was only dumb luck that Nero had had shit done to him and that Mantis didn’t know who we were. We’d come dangerously close to being found out and it was my fault for letting my bloodthirst get a hold of me.
That just doesn’t happen to me… I don’t lose control like that.
Another way that Nero and what he’d done to me was fucking me up.
What was happening to me? I had been secure in my authority, and as confident as they came, but now I felt like a teenager taking stupid risks because he wanted to prove that he was okay. I fucking had nothing to prove; I had earned my stripes… but Nero had taken from me what I hadn’t thought was possible. What I didn’t even know someone could take. Now I was such a weak piece of shit I had to bully my boyfriend to try and force him to believe I was okay. I was desperately picking him apart and plucking out every strand of bravery I found in him, and it was leading to a knotted string of bad decisions. It just made me sick.
And not only sick…
… it worried me. It made me not trust myself and that was a scary reality. My entire life I had felt like I could only rely on myself, and the prospect of me not even trusting my own judgement was a lead weight in my stomach.
I had to figure out how to fix this. No matter what it took. I had to fix this at all costs.
Fuck. This was worse than I thought – and I think tonight that harsh reality that had been chasing me, had finally lunged and sunk its teeth into my neck.
“How long?” I asked the kid, half an hour into our journey. I kept checking behind me. The lights of Melchai had disappeared and there was only blue-tinged darkness around us, and the faint shine of the moon and stars; but my eyes were always peeled for the glint of headlights on the horizon.
“Ten minutes,” he called back. Then he pointed ahead.
We were on a double-lane road with thick black trees and shrubs on both sides of us. There were houses in the distance and ahead which was good. If we were heading into an abandoned town they’d be more likely to look for us there. But a dime-a-dozen house in an area broken up by smaller side roads, black trees, and shrubs, it would be harder for them to find us, especially if we could hide the quad in the garage.
The house was just what I had hoped for: a small rancher tucked in the middle of a thick forest, well thick for the greywastes. There was a ste
ep slope behind it too, with large rocks below that must’ve fallen off of the cliff sometime in the past.
From what I could see of the area, the top of that slope would give me a view of the main road we had travelled down, before detouring to the smaller suburban streets. I would be able to see anyone coming towards us, and the slope behind the house guaranteed no one would ambush us from the back.
Whoever this kid was, he had chosen the right place to hide out.
Attached to the rancher was a single car garage. It was made out of worn but sturdy-looking red brick with a white metal door that was now discoloured, dented, and scratched from the fine bits of greywaste ash that blew around during the rare winds we had here.
The kid stopped the quad and hopped off of it. He grabbed onto a blue rope that was tied to the door’s handle and pulled it the rest of the way up as I drove inside. I killed the engine and jumped off to gauge my surroundings.
The garage was cleaned and freshly swept. It had metal work tables up against the left wall with a warped corkboard that had once been there to keep the tools organized. The corkboard had become too brittle from age though, and all of the tools had fallen down, leaving gouges in the brown wood that were clustered and close together like honeycomb.
To the right was a blue tarp that was covering old boxes. I could see brittle papers and a red figurine sticking out of a brown tote, and behind that, a rusted freezer, a pile of bicycles, and what looked like a lawnmower.
The kid appeared with a blue lamp, the cold glow reflecting off of his sunglasses, making him look like some masked marauder. He caught me looking at him and, interesting enough, he shrunk down.
He motioned towards the open garage door with his chin. “Do you want to close it?” the kid asked. “I… I don’t want you thinking this is a trap. So just tell me how you want to go about this.” Before I could ask he took off my M16 and handed it to me, then his hands went behind his back and he stared at his shoes.
This… this reaction was interesting to me. My mind had been focused on getting out of Melchai, not so much this kid’s identity.
“You’re not capable of taking me,” I said to him. I scrutinized his body but he was covered from head to toe in black. Where his leather jacket ended, there were black leather gloves, and even the rolled up cuffs of his jeans held laced up black army boots. In a way he reminded me of how Jade dressed, except with more clothes, and I knew he wasn’t Jade. I’d recognize that little knucklehead in an instant, and he’d never hide from me.
The kid took in a deep breath. I gave him another analytical look and helped Killian off of the quad. I noticed right away that Killian was breathing in short and rapid puffs, and I wanted to get him inside.
When I looked behind me, I saw an open metal door and a white wall above a grey carpet. I didn’t want to bring Killian inside without first figuring out who this kid was, but this situation I had found myself in was one I had control over. I saw no tracks coming to or from this house, and I didn’t smell anyone else inside of here. If this kid was the bait for an ambush I’d salute the asshole who had managed to pull it off, because it truly did seem like we were alone.
I picked up Killian and motioned to the door. “You first. Do you have power?”
The kid nodded. “I have some charged Ieons, but no generators or anything like that. I have a SolarSky that’s attached to the roof, and that gives me enough power on sunnier days to recharge the Ieons, but… it’s not much. Enough to use a hotplate, my laptop, and some small electronics.” He walked inside and I followed with Killian secure in my hold.
The house was clean, really clean. All of the trash had been cleared out and it even looked like he’d been able to vacuum. I walked down a hallway and saw a shining and bleach-smelling bathroom, then to my left, what was now the chimera kid’s bedroom: a stack of three mattresses on a sleigh bed made out of black wood, and blue totes of things in a corner beside a wooden dresser. The window was still intact too, and it had been cleaned so well that, if I was a bird, I’d have broken my neck trying to fly through it.
Then the main part of the house, a good size living room with a picture window that was framed with washed blue curtains; it was dark but once day came it would light up this room well. For now, the kid’s bluelamp shone onto painted blue walls, grey carpet, and matching blue furniture: a couch and a love seat, with a wooden coffee table in between, and several credenza-type things.
I put Killian down on the couch and checked out the kitchen as well. It was amazing how different houses looked when they were cleaned, especially once they were vacuumed of the ash that blew in and the shit that fell from the ceilings as gravity and time drew them down to earth. I had never been in Skyfall, but it had blown my mind when I had been in Elish’s hidden base. If I lived in a house pre-Fallocaust with electricity and television and computers, I’d have never left my house.
There were no traps, nothing to suggest this kid had something up his sleeve. I walked around the interior and checked all the rooms and the finished basement that was downstairs.
The kid was still masked with sunglasses hiding his eyes, and when I walked in I saw him handing Killian a glass of water and a box of crackers.
I crossed my arms and stared at him. “Who are you?” I said, getting straight to the point. I hadn’t even had the time to mentally go over my chimera checklist. Elish had drilled into me all of my brothers and even my sister and her kids, but instead of checking each one off of the list, I cut to the quick.
Interestingly enough, the kid’s heartbeat picked up and he rubbed his nose before staring at the ground.
“I was hoping that you knew already,” he said, his tone dropping. “Please… please don’t kill me. I’m all alone here and… and I have no one, Reaver.”
Killian put the glass of water down. “We won’t hurt you. You saved us,” he said. He could speak at least, but his ear was bowed and angled funny. He’d have to be dispatched tonight, and me too. “As long as you’re not hiding anyone else…” Killian looked at me. “You won’t hurt him, right?”
I shook my head, but my curiosity was piquing at the kid’s anxiety over me knowing his identity. Why would he be scared of…
Then it hit me. I knew who he was. At first I felt an overwhelming feeling of rage, a boiling anger that slammed me down like someone had dumped a semi-trailer full of asphalt onto my head; but while my fists clenched and my jaw locked, my mind was rapidly telling me to calm down and keep still.
Keep still, even with the fury seizing and vibrating every muscle I have, I had to keep calm.
I had to keep calm.
Even though Kiki Dekker was standing right in front of me.
“Take off your hood,” I managed to say, my tone plunging to bottomless chasms. Killian’s head shot to me and his expression turned to fear. “Take it off.” A twinge of pain burst from my jaw; I was speaking through teeth, not just clenched, but pressing together so hard I was waiting for the crunch of my molars breaking. It was taking everything, oh fuck it was taking all of me, not to lunge and kill him.
Kiki reached up and took his sunglasses off, revealing eyes so unworldly orange they stood out more than Killian’s dark blue oceanic pools. Then he slid off his hood, making his hair, longer now, tumble past his ears.
The cicaro pursed his lips, a soft but rosy shade of pink, and deflected his gaze. When he looked to the side I saw a jagged red scar. It started at his ear and ended an inch from the lower corner of his lip. There was also a scar on his neck… the exact shape of my mouth.
“No, you look at me,” I said to him. Killian’s expression was one of confusion. He had no idea who Kiki was, or what things I’d been forced to do to him and with him, or what he’d done to me. He’d only heard my brief confession to being forced to have sex with him in passing, and it had never been brought up again. “Look at me.”
Kiki’s orange eyes slowly lifted up from under his plucked and perfectly arched eyebrows. He was clean shaven too an
d his clothes freshly washed; although now speckled with ash and dirt. Even in the dirty environment that was the greywastes, he’d kept up appearances like any cicaro would.
I looked back at him, injecting as much disdain into his willowy frame as I possibly could, and I saw the kid slump down further from the weight of it.
“I’m sorry,” Kiki said to me. His eyes were large and his bottom lip tight. I hated, positively hated, the honesty coming from him. And I hated even more that he next looked at my boyfriend.
“Why are you sorry? You had the fucking time of your life,” I spat at him. “What the hell are you sorry for?”
Kiki shifted his weight. Killian was still giving the both of us dumbfounded looks.
“You’re right, I did. Because I didn’t know you from any of the other men. You weren’t any different, so why would I care? But I’m still sorry. Okay?”
Then suddenly I heard a piercing scream. The noise took me to Killian, thinking something was killing him, only to see a blur of blond run past me and towards Kiki. Before I could react, he had grabbed Nero’s cicaro by the jacket collar, and as I ran to stop him, he raised his blood-soaked fist and punched Kiki in the face.
It looked like Killian had clued in as to who our rescuer was.
“Killian!” I barked. Killian raised his fist to punch Kiki again but I grabbed him and pulled him away. Kiki stumbled back when he was released, and slammed into a desk by the TV stand. The rickety desk sent the cicaro crashing to the ground, taking with him a dusty lamp and a radio. But in a flash he was jumping back to his feet.
“No! Let me go!” Killian shrieked, his voice rising to a level of mania. He tried to rip himself free from my grip but I managed to hold onto him.
“Let me fucking go!” Killian screamed. I expected a sob, any sort of sad emotion, but I realized to my own shock that he was angry. Not just Killian angry, like a little kitten hissing with its fur all puffed up, but a furious rage that told me he would kill Kiki if I let go of him.