Chemicaust (Mad Element Saga)

by Daniel Moore

his questioning which had not been wielded against him that morning. He spoke like a red-guard: “You hide your pregnancy well, the thick cloak, and the stooped walk. It’s difficult to see the curve of child, harder for your lack of acknowledging it. And your son, he keeps his sickness out of the way – you both act the strength which you lack.” They entered the kitchen as they spoke. Luke opened the fridge and retrieved a bowl of food. He sat down and paused to bite into a hardboiled egg. The woman said nothing, but reached to the counter where her rifle lay and placed it to lean gently on the table at her side. In the next room Daniel coughed in his sleep. “Is it authorized?” He laid the question on the table like a warrant for search and seizure.

  Katelyn smiled stiffly and shook her head no. “Should I give the boy to the guard?” The question saved her. Had she told him she would not give the child to Michael, he would have taken her to the guard. Had she called Daniel, he would have killed them both. Had she made a decision, Luke would have reacted. Luke’s indecision protected her, didn’t know how to answer. Yes, his training told him, yes, the neural network would have supplied, but he could say no. Instead, he gave the woman no commitment, just as he had when told to pick a name.

  “I do not know.” He offered. Her face softened and the demeanour of the Red Guard was lost to Luke. Conversation flowed again but the interrogation didn’t end, power simply shifted sides.

  “Did you enjoy the army?”

  “Yes, it is simple and complete. Nothing lacks in life.”

  “Did you sicken?” Katelyn spared a glance towards the room where her son lay asleep.

  “Never. They gave us more chem then we had need for, we needed no sleep, no food, and little water.”

  “Where can I go-” she considered her question, “can you take me, to enter my child,” she glanced down at her stomach, the first Luke had seen her acknowledge the pregnancy, “and my son? To enter both?”

  “Enter them in the corps?”

  “Yes.”

  “I could do this, it would be better.” It might not be better, but it would be right. If what the corps, and what his God Michael had taught him, if these things were hollow, then what was not? He knew nothing else. “Yes. It would be better – it is a short trip from here, just deeper into the city.”

  “Sansolace is not a safe city. How deep?”

  “Two miles? Three? I cannot judge as well as I once could. We might ask the priest.”

  “Yes. And your God will grant my boys safety?”

  “Yes.” I must believe that he will.

  Then we will leave, soon. First you can rest, and we can prepare. We need not go until the child is further along. Luke smiled. It was what he wanted, and she had decided the course, a relief to his muddled mind. Time flickered forward. The moments he shared with the oranges were ripe, sweet and delicious; food and conversation. He gave them stories of the corps, of hunting and victory, of freedom from sickness, and from weariness and hunger. Freedom from freedom. Luke taught Katelyn and her son that freedom was not sacred, not a blessing, but rather a curse given to the world by the false-gods, the Benefactor and others – false gods which the corps hunted and killed. Time flickered forward. Luke talked to the priest, mad and unable to lead. With Katelyn’s rifle in hand he questioned the mad man, he found a map of the city and was given details which would lead him to the corps recruitment center.

  Luke killed the priest, held the rifle to the side of the blind man’s head and pulled the trigger. There was a toothless smile on the old man’s face when he died, and as word of the priest’s death spread, so did word of the man who killed him. Luke began giving sermons from memory, and crowds gathered, such as Sansolace could offer. Time flickered forward, and Katelyn’s late-month came, and the time to leave. Luke blessed those who heard his last sermon and brought a man forward, the first after Daniel and Katelyn who had woken to Michael’s word. Cutting his palm in a sharp ‘x’ Luke blessed this new priest, and bid this man continue the word of Michael in his stead. One more day flickered by, and halfway through Katelyn’s eighth month, they started the move further into the city.

  Sansolace was a jungle. Where the buildings that Katelyn and the small community on the outskirts of Sansolace lived in stopped at three stories, there seemed no limit to the height of the buildings within the depths of the city. The buildings towered with shining mirrored glass and shattered doors. Here electricity was inconsistent – the outskirts had been blessed with limited power, but for blocks at a time within Sansolace no man-made light would be glimpsed. The going was slow and the time seemed short. Already Katelyn complained that the child would be born soon. The city was overgrown, a jungle had invaded the urban space, but rarely had the growth overtaken the road, and so going was easier. The danger lay not in their pace, but in their weakness. Two men and one pregnant woman; stops at night left them in the dark or in the flickering light of a dying lamppost while glowing eyes watched from the tree-line. Whatever lurked beyond was loathe to enter the open street, a blessing Luke counted amongst many.

  Daniel would be little help in a conflict; when forced to walk at a strong pace he would often be over-taken by coughing. Katelyn would not allow a forced march, and often stopped the journey on his behalf. Luke was unimpressed by the son’s lack of ability, but also pained that his sickness grasped at him, held him back. It will be better when he is part of the corps. As the journey continued, the sun above fading and returning and fading again, Luke renewed the woman and the boy’s spirit, making promises, buoying their humour with talk of health and chem. Katelyn he knew, was mistrustful of chem, but when the boy’s cough didn’t plague him the smile in her eyes spoke to a willingness to embrace anything which would calm the boy’s storming lungs. It was greater than three miles. Even at such a slow pace they claimed three miles at the end of the second day, but there were no blood-banners to be seen. There was no sign of the corps or of red-guards, only the eyes in the forest beyond the road, and other more intelligent eyes. Bright with understanding Luke felt them glaring down from the mirrored glass above and looked to the sky each night for a sign of fog. If the fog came then they would be forced to confront those eyes – the buildings offered the only shelter from such a death.

  Time flickered by, a wash of pavement and grey buildings and green, verdant forest. There was a flickering once, the grey of wolf-hide. It moved beyond the tree-line, a group of three with yellow eyes; another flickering, the white of gulls and several times the crunch underfoot of red snail shells. High above time ticked in the moving of constellations, but nothing befell the travellers and after days of walking, at the falling of dark, the three came upon the first blood-banner. The flag marked the beginning of the city core.

  The core of Sansolace was a fortress. High walls of solid steel stretched between the skyscrapers of an era past, and atop these walls patrolled officers of the red-guard. Above the core rose a dome of clear glass more than a foot thick. It was pocked and acid-stained by chem, but it kept the night-fog out and let the sun shine in. The door stood looming in front of Luke, an airlock for keeping the fog out on nights when it clung to close to the fortress. To either side of that fluttered the Michael’s flags, a face with no eyes on a red sea, reflecting the gold of a setting sun. It was an ill looking banner, but to Luke it spoke of home, structure and liberty from pressing decisions. The banner was release from decisions and from the need of a last name.

  The door was opened after Luke gave his number and identification, and the three companions were permitted entrance. Some little time passed before they were admitted to the recruitment center. Luke was welcomed back to the ranks of the Red Guard; he was dressed in a new uniform and given a full chem vial which shone bright purple and snapped comfortingly into his drive. Luke’s return to the neural synapses of the corps could not be accomplished in the city, but the commanding officer of Sansolace promised reintegration at Mikaelgard to the far west, or if Luke was impatient Lenossa to the north.

  Luke was
impatient: to be gone from Sansolace, and return to active duty. Despite his anxiety he waited to make sure that Katelyn’s boy, and her child, would be accepted into the corps. The baby was born, screaming and pale and red in the surgical tent of Sansolace, delivered by a Red Guard medic and wrapped immediately in warmed white cloth. The child was blessed by a priest of Michael; the old weary man pricking his finger with a black dirk such as was unavailable in the outskirts of the city, and smearing a blood-blessing on the child’s lips. All this Katelyn watched and smiled as the child was returned to her. David Orange his name was given, a name for his father. The priest recorded only the name David, and beside it in blocky script he wrote down a red-corps I.D. number.

  Luke had intended to leave after the child was born, but he found himself distracted. He was pronounced Daniel’s mentor, tasked with instructing Daniel in Michael’s teachings along with a cursory understanding of drive manipulation. Luke found it hard to describe to the boy how the drive was bent to your will, but sometimes acted on its own – how fire, and ice, water and earth might be manipulated through the drive. He described to Daniel, alongside the teachings of Michael, how