In Eden's Shadow

by Amanda Churi

  “I’m not sure…” they finally said. “Maybe because it hurts me?”

  What in Heaven were they talking about? “Hurts?”

  “Not knowing anything about where you came from. A daddy brings life; I used to see it all the time. Everyone comes from a daddy and then a mommy; he gives life, and mommy grows it. Meee?” They exaggerated a whimper. “I’m alive, so Daddy—my daddy—touched me, right? But I didn’t come from a belly; I came from dirt! So then do I have a mommy? Was I not good enough to be given one?” They bopped their chin on my head, sighing. “Maybe I just want to ask him why I got nothing… Or maybe why I’m so different? I dunnooo!”

  They didn’t say more, and I didn’t know what to say either. Them hanging onto me like a silent koala, though… That couldn’t have been more awkward, and there was no way for me to get rid of the crybaby. They had proven that well.

  But did they really think that everyone had parents? That fathers always stayed? Mothers? In fairy tales, maybe. But even I didn’t have a mother—just Daddy—and now, I didn’t even feel like I had that… I only had one thing left, and I wasn’t even sure how I felt about it.

  “What’s your name?” I asked under my breath.

  “Huh?”

  They were really going to make me ask again? “Name. Did Daddy at least give you a name?”

  They laughed, so high-spirited and innocent that it hurt. “Yup! It’s Sage! Did he give you one too?”

  I didn’t want to take the next step. My hands felt weak, my stomach too. I didn’t love my own “Daddy” anymore, and I was sure that was also true vice versa. Still… Out of all of us who had fallen, that was just one more lie that we had been fed—and one more thing that made me different. Lucifer was now Satan. Reina turned to Azuré, Jonah to Korbu—me?

  I had to find my strength to continue—most certainly to answer him. “Yeah… He did… He named me Eero.”

  Thirteen

  Phantome Limbs

  The grimy sky that carried the world’s largest threat was so sick and utterly miserable that it did not even wince as the airship passed through its ill body. It glided on at such a significant height that it was invisible to the groundlings far below, but certainly not undetectable.

  It made little noise within, but outside, the plasma-empowered chambers glowed and hissed; gears whirred, and blades ripped the vulnerable sky to pieces. Haxors were glued to the window-flanked walls, the AI within their visors scanning every grain of dirt below. The Elites did not take shelter inside like their lesser ranking companions; from the rails beneath the ship, they squatted with frigid chains buckling them in place, waiting. The half-dozen airships behind them, the lead, followed the same protocol.

  A select group of Haxors was tucked away in the heart of the warship, surrounded by panels of glass and tracks of controls. There were cliché holograms of maps, videos, and text flowing in, falling down the face of the screen as would water, and the Haxors knew every inch of them, moving swiftly like mill workers and not even thinking about where their fingers went. However, the makeup of said contraptions was unique. The glass wielding these images was one-way, but not in sight; it was molded so that those unauthorized could not pass in. The illuminated floor of an ice-glass composition churned with a sea of encrypted code—currents of vital information that reflected the status of each minion within the empire—that only the upper-ring of soldiers could snatch up with their fingers and decode in the air.

  But some of these rapidly moving particles were not white and translucent like the rest; they were red, blinking, indicating a servant with either irregular body-related levels or one whose information refused to update.

  In other words, a removed chip. A rebel. A Glitch.

  In Gannon’s white eyes, those specks of resistance represented opponents, and with each dying ember, he was one step closer. With an elegant, ivory throne grounded behind the commanders of the airship, he sat erect, impatiently tapping his fingers against his knees. Safe he was, as always, shielded by the biased permeable walls, but he itched for action, for results—to fix what everyone else thought of as unfixable.

  Below his large feet encased in snug, steel boots, he watched the forest crawl by. Radars and scopes zoomed across the landscape, trying to separate the humans from the lerials, but even their unmatchable intelligence could not find the locations of the inactive—assuming they were there.

  And oh, he knew they were.

  The world’s most feared henchman stood beside him, honing in on the Returned below and waiting for the slightest sign of human activity. Typo’s fedora was pulled low, as always, his gloves of throbbing bloodlust shoved deep down into his pockets. The stakeout could not have been more boring… And no matter how much he despised the Glitches, he was quite impressed with their ability to resemble the most obedient Bots. They had disguised their existence so well that it made the urge to detonate the forest all the more appealing.

  Gannon glanced at his hunter, sharing the same feelings of itching impatience, but he held a far higher level of reasoning—the highest amongst all living beings. “We cannot make the forest a second Pikë,” he coldly reminded his soldier. “I need them alive.”

  A complaining groan roared in Typo’s hollow chest. “Why? Where is the sense in letting a sure opportunity to finish them slip away? Why not end it all in one fell swoop?”

  “Because I am God now,” he calmly replied. “Imagine what I could accomplish with their powers… To hold not only ice but fire in my palm, as well as every demon across the spectrum. Not to mention the benefits of harvesting an angel’s heart—immortality: the key ingredient for any God.”

  Typo’s clenched fist trembled. “Mabel and Seek, I understand… But taking Eero is not necessary. I am the only demon you will ever need, sir.”

  The Lord brushed him off with a scoff. “Yes, obviously; we see who proved stronger in your last standoff—the last two, actually.”

  Typo grumbled and lowered his head.

  Gannon tapped his heel on one of the closest circulating Glitches, opening their files. It projected all enclosed information right before his face: a picture of a thin girl who hardly looked unique, but the Lord knew that was no longer her appearance. “And then you couldn’t kill her either. Since you gave her a piece of Hell, she’s been one of the biggest threats within their tattered forces. Where was your airy head?”

  “I did not do so with purpose,” he mumbled. “She is the only mortal to have ever resisted—”

  “Do not give that traitor the luxury of being called ‘mortal.’ She has a piece of demonic DNA, and that makes her just as much of a demon as you.”

  Typo dipped his fedora lower to shield his failure.

  “But I know she will never submit,” the Lord elaborated. “No matter how useful she could be to the demonic army, trying to convert someone so loose would only be in vain.” He swiped his heel to the side, closing the current screen and instead bringing up what he had been pondering over for months now. The very image raised Typo’s darkened head and made his venomous being fester.

  The Lord’s face slightly fell reading it, trying to project the blue emotions he kept shoved down; he immediately clenched his jaw and locked them back into the cell of his chest where they could not mingle with his brain. “You know, the whole world hates me just because I kill… It tries to play with me sometimes, but then I remember that He has done it too—and plentifully. Part of being God means that I have to stay impartial to all because my thoughts are pure and elevated by the highest of reasoning.”

  “Indeed…” Typo quietly agreed. “You are carrying the weight of the world… But God or not, you are only one, and currently restrained in the body of a human. You must not aim too high too fast.”

  “But I cannot be too lax nor move too slow either. The world is depending on me, and the final acts of this dragging play are finally in session. And this…” He leaned forward, lightly touching the words hovering before him. “It is our redemption
as the human race…

  “In a time of need, hope shall appear

  Driven from past, watched over by gear

  Full of sin, they ally with those defeated by pride

  For when the future is at risk, these worlds will collide

  Embrace… Do not fight

  In time, all shall fall from this smite

  Those left will be tested, and continue to be undone

  And it will remain as such until the war is won.”

  The Lord chuckled to himself. “‘A time of need…’ But for what? Change? Yes… My change.”

  He rose. The Haxors lining the windows and walls, the pilot and intelligence at the controls, the Elites below and the henchman adjacent… They all couldn’t help but befall to fixation at his notoriously powerful and inspiring figure.

  He wore no crown nor broach to flaunt his position; his appearance did that on its own. Scars of lightning dressed Gannon’s skin from head to toe, creating beautiful, violet inscriptions. Muscles adorned his gifted skin, morphing such hard-earned tattoos, and he radiated heat in the cold world. Platinum conductors in the forms of cuffs embroidered his biceps and the base of his neck—there to assist his physical powers, not mental ones. The powerful, coursing energy in his veins bleached his eyes white, and both halves of his skull were burned by the abundance of grace in his sacred blood; the only hair that he had left was a narrow, slick path of shining white that hung before his all-knowing eyes.

  “That prophecy was created in the image of Reveres,” he boldly proclaimed. “The past was a perilous, unrighteous one, full of inequality and pain. When my far distant father joined with mother Calla, he began a new reign that would no longer rely on a system of biased judgment. He was a king that saw all humans for what they were—sinful and wronged, and all at the clutches of emotion.

  “He wanted to change humans at their core—such was his mission, and he strived for that even upon his elderly deathbed. Robots, machines, they’re emotionless—given correct instructions, perfection itself, unable to be judged because they are only capable of doing what they are told. But emotion…” He closed his fist. “There is no good one. The seven vices are said to be the most destructive of all, but happiness? Love? Sympathy? Negative emotions spur from those so-called ‘positive’ ones. We feel love because we know the torment of hatred; we recognize joy in the absence of despair… Good and evil are supposed to be balanced, but that has never been the case; it takes far more strength to bring about a smile than a frown, for dark spirits and thoughts gorge upon the light. Of this, Desmond was right, but he and all my predecessors got one thing terribly wrong…

  “In trying to control humanity, they were ignorant of Earth. Encasing the world in ice… It was a wonderful ploy to begin breaking the spirit, but in the end, it put a timestamp on just how long we could survive. Everything beyond the rift fell to the gripping cold—innocent nature, innocent creatures; only what was carried into the empire lived. Yet humans continued to expand; continued to produce and invent, burning fossil fuels and pumping out toxins that had no way of being purified by leaves long gone. They continued to take—travel into the lands purposely destroyed by Reeve and exploit the timber, the ore… Everything. And once it’s gone, once they notice they are in trouble, what do they do? Pull back the powers—abandon the rest of Earth and seal themselves away… Cowards, unable to accept their consequences.” He dipped his head—stifled a growl to keep his flawed emotions at bay.

  “They killed the ozone, those fools… Never thought of the consequences to come from all their wants. Humans are careless. Greedy. They destroy everything given to them—and because of that, we are confined to this region. But now, gentlemen, it is up to us to undo the damage and restore the Earth to its former glory—no, better.

  “Because division will exist so long as a single, emotionally driven man stands. When night invades one who has lived amongst day, inwardly, they die, bit by bit—but if all one ever knows is darkness, is it really dark? The only median for existence from here on out is to exterminate the grays—make the world a road of black and white where there is only right and wrong without morals and circumstance that blur the line. The world must be brought back to its roots before we found corruption and began to tear down Eden piece by piece. Separating the obedient from the rebellious is key; sift through the world to pick out the indefinitely loyal who will have no chance of succumbing to temptation as did our original bone…”

  He spread his arms and leaned forth, bowing to those at his command. “You are the prototypes of perfection, driven to solely act on innocent reasoning without the ability to be swayed by deceitful hearts—and, in turn, you have the power to make this world your own. I keep your pure bodies confined for now, others too, but once the last of the plague has been smitten, you shall be released, and the rebirth of this world will be up to us, and you will have an active, sensible God to guide you. Bots will be all, and then we can enter a new era of freedom where logic prevails and flawed emotions are no more. All minds alike, there will be no war, no poverty, not even death when we reach our prime.”

  He slammed his solid arms down at his chiseled waist. An electrical current tickled at the edge of his cold, skinny pupil, yearning to break free and capture all that he had been chasing. “I am the final Revere! All-standing, soon-to-be forever immortal, and your only God!”

  His smile and stance registered amongst the code which triggered their cheers, and as fast as their processors could handle, their serious nature ballooned into wild, thirsty chants that had no choice but to come forth.

  Typo clapped as well. He admired his general’s ambition and vision, and although it was odd that a demon such as he would align himself with someone so intent on saving, Typo couldn’t help but have faith as well. The Players saw their merciless acts as that of cold-blooded, senseless killers, but they could never understand how much good was coming out of eliminating threats. If they disposed of the flawed seed and sowed the good, the new human race had boundless potential and paradise ahead. But none of them could see that through the beatings, the cannibalism, the kidnappings… And that just proved that their termination was necessary. They were judging on morals alone, giving no thought to their future, and that made them just as terrible and senseless as all Lords before Gannon.

  …And Gannon was the first Lord that Typo was truly happy to serve under—because he made sense. So Typo could be scorned all they wanted, but this Revere… It would be his last, eternal master, and he wasn’t going to let him down, no matter how cruel his methods.

  An avalanche of lust and hunger violently collapsed upon Typo’s gaseous form, doubling him over. It paralyzed his legs for a split second, taking his conscience away and transporting it through the forest like a bullet, through the air, trees, and then earth until it found the bleeding wrist.

  “I’VE BEEN SUMMONED!”

  Gannon spun to his henchman, unsure if he heard correctly, but by then Typo’s body was quickly evaporating and leaving his Lord’s side. The ruler knew that Typo’s carefully molded brain had made no error.

  “Get in position!” Gannon commanded. He tore from the base of his seat and over to those in charge of the ship while his soldiers transitioned to battle mode.

  The map-raised three-dimensional trees before their noses stood still despite the calling, and then, an alarm erupted, showing a single red dot on the move.

  “There!” Gannon cried. As the robot that he yearned all his servants to become, the hinge of his elbow fully extended. He threw his finger through the map, giving the order without question as would a machine. “FINISH THEM!”

  ***

  God’s chosen race had been well-exposed to the terror of living in a world that was once Paradise, but no matter how accustomed to destruction and agony they had become, the intensity of the attack shocked them.

  A squadron of white beams overloaded with condensed, lethal energy, and blasted down. Lightning snapped trees and twisted them before it
began carving apart the earth. The explosion was so massive that a storm of rock and soil raged within seconds, reducing visibility when it was needed most; and with their attack, the first forest fire in centuries appeared, trapping the rebels within their rain of death.

  The unexpectedness of the strike doomed them all, even the most battle-hardened soldiers. Earth grieved and groaned, having no choice but to swallow the continuous barrage of electricity plummeting from the wretched heavens. The beams began traveling, splitting apart to pillage all; the grievous screams of Encryptors choked the air while they spun their legs, desperate for cover.

  Seek had never seen such a level of slaughter, not even when escaping the base. Her skin suctioned itself to the nearest Returned the moment the first ray came crashing down; she was the extinct sloth’s closest relative, hanging upside down with hardly a pulse.

  “Who the fuck moved?!” Flye demanded. She rested in a neighboring Returned, perched lightly on the tips of her toes like the assassin she was.

  “I-I don’t know!” Seek squealed.

  “The source is irrelevant!” Virgil bellowed, settled on an adjacent branch in Seek’s tree. “We need to move out!”

  “If we do that, we’ll be blown to bits!” Seek argued.

  “Do you have a better idea?! They’re going to overturn the entire forest!”

  Virgil’s proposal terrified the ghoulish child—perhaps even more than the sight of her comrades combusting. “But where would that mean we go?!”

  “We aren’t running.”

  The statement did not come from their leader, rather Flye, whose face was set with her words. “That isn’t what Encryptors do! If we run and survive, we will have to live with the fact that our comrades fell because we were timid little shits! I refuse to endure shame like that!” She gripped the woody arms of the Returned, lifting herself up to get a better overview of the battle.