In Eden's Shadow

by Amanda Churi

  Embry didn’t quite understand based on her expression, but she consented. Raising her bow and positioning it appropriately, she played a different tune this time—one that was upbeat and fast, encouraging all-out dancing.

  Actually, I had heard this before, but I didn’t know where. I could only guess that it had something to do with the runt inside me, especially when Mabel cast me a side-glance with large puppy eyes.

  Embry drug her bow across the last, high-pitched string with ample force, and then her eyes went aglow, forming their own projection before our faces. The language on the screen was so queer that the closest thing it resembled was—well, nothing. It was like someone ran their face across a plate of ink, slammed it down on a scroll, and hoped for the best.

  “What a cool way to do passwords,” Flye noted.

  “Open Justus’ invention blueprints,” Pinion instructed.

  Embry bowed to her will, directing her eyes to the corresponding destination, and after a little digging, odd blueprints were popping up one after the other.

  Pinion made a smirk worthy of the Devil. “Perfect…” She pointed at Sage and me, a mad glint shining in her crazed eyes. “Congrats, you two; you’ve just been promoted.”

  Was she serious? “Thought you hated me.”

  “Very much so, but you two have knowledge related to forgery, it seems. Find something in there that you can use to get us back into the empire undetected.”

  “And the wage is?” I teased.

  “Your fucking life.”

  Guess that was fair.

  “And don’t screw around. We don’t have time.”

  Sage stood with their nose touching the projections, observing sketch after sketch. “Ummm, where would we get the supplies we need for this stuff? I only have thread and cloth.”

  Pinion’s eyes doubled. Guess she didn’t think that one through.

  “Eh hem.”

  I looked at Korbu, who graced us with one of those rare, rotten smiles of his. “I believe you forgot something.”

  “And that would be?” I wondered.

  He scoffed. “Proves right there that hoarders really don’t need all they own if they can’t even remember it.” He grabbed his ribcage and snapped open the doors, a heavy stream of nails, springs, and a million other items pouring out onto the ground.

  “WHOA!” Sage dropped down before the growing puddle, lifting several pieces of cloth into the air and gawking like a child on their birthday. “Look at it all!”

  “Ok, ok!” Pinion ordered. “Close it before you drown us in his shit!”

  Korbu locked his chest to dam the flow, but I focused on the more important matter. “Shit?” I repeated. “How dare you.”

  Pinion winced with disgust. “It doesn’t matter what form you come in; you’re just more annoying than the last.” She picked up a bolt that had rolled over to her, twisting it before her illuminated eyes. “Here’s the drill down. We leave in three days; make whatever you can so long as it gets us over those walls in one piece.” She let the bolt fly, flicking it at my face.

  I caught it firmly between my claws. She would have to try harder than that if she wanted to get rid of me.

  “Three days…” she repeated. “That’s all you get. If you don’t prove your worth by then, then I have no reason to keep you around.”

  Her faith in me deserved a smug grin that I was not afraid to let shine. I squeezed down on the loose hardware, letting it fly back at her; she too managed to catch it before it collided with her lip, holding my eyes in a deadlock.

  It may have taken thousands of years, but I was back, and never was I more eager to show all of them just what I could do. After all, when this was over, each one of them would personally be working in my factory and helping me build whatever I so desired. “You’re on.”

  Eighteen

  Stolen Voices

  The lockdown was crippling, and no one knew why.

  All entry points had been sealed; no one was allowed to leave neither the empire nor the district they occupied once the shutdown went into effect. It was not a matter of a stricter curfew nor restriction on already tight food rations; this one mandated the streets be kept abandoned—that all stay within their homes. Any who set foot out of their door, tarp, whatever it was to that particular person, would be killed on the spot.

  The enforcement came so quickly that there was no time to prepare; Haxors and Elites alike had raided the streets, shoving each person into the nearest area of confinement with the instruction to stay there until further notice—any who would not submit or were too far away from shelter became the unfortunate vents for their anger, slaughtered where they stood.

  Never did the relief order come. Strangers, people who had learned to trust no one but themselves throughout the entirety of their miserable lives were crammed together like cattle, waiting in the darkness for what they knew would never happen.

  Three days it had been… And in their conditions, three days without food was undoable. In a tight shack of stone, one measuring perhaps one hundred square feet, twenty people slumped—not sat—wall-to-wall, and of the initial twenty, four weren’t slumping out of choice; it was the position Death chose for them.

  “I say we eat them…” a young, withered woman grumbled. “What’s the difference, anyway? We eat humans as is. That right there is an offering.”

  “No,” a man who had grayed into his mid-twenties protested. “We wait it out.”

  She scoffed repulsively. “You dumb piece of scum… We will be dead!”

  “I will not eat someone! It’s different when it is prepared and distributed to us; you can’t tell who or what part of the person you’re eating!” He looked to his side, shoulder to shoulder with one of the dead—a boy who looked as though he had just emerged into his teens. “I know his face. It would haunt me forever if I did.”

  “Softie Player…” a different male criticized.

  The Player narrowed his eyes but did not retort, instead peeling his back off of the metal stove he sat against. “Whatever… Let’s see how much water is left.”

  With an exhausted heave, he hurled open the rusty doors to reveal a final clay pot tucked in the very back. It couldn’t have held even a liter of ice, but they were lucky enough that the house they were shoved into had anything to hold them over at all. The harrowing screams echoing from the slums around this sector of Aphrite proved just how severe the situation was for most all. However terrible the situation was, they were fortunate.

  “Here you go.” The Player passed the jar to a woman flanking his other side, who could only stare at their dwindling lifeline. “Just take a lick and then pass it around. This is the last mug; it needs to last as long as it can.”

  With distasteful moans, the frozen water was passed around, but the Player continued to rummage through the empty belly of the stove.

  “What are you doing?” one wondered.

  “Trying to see if there are any more of those dried paper shreds to suck on or something…” He scanned the farthest corners, scraping the black filth that had gathered over time and trying to find even the smallest crumb under all the dust and grime, but the hunt proved unsuccessful.

  “Fabulous,” he whispered. “Why can’t there be one more—?” He stopped, his chipped nail catching onto something in the back.

  He made no sudden movements, casting a tiny glance over his shoulder to make sure no one was paying him any attention as he leaned his head farther in, all the while keeping his finger in place.

  The polluted light filtering in from the crumbling shack gave him little to work with, but being in darkness his whole life, he had somewhat adapted. Stealthily, he wiggled his finger and felt out the microscopic crack that he had stumbled upon, taking a small breath and tugging on it. A wide, rectangular piece of the stove bottom immediately gave out, falling into an open hole in the earth.

  “What the heck you up to?” someone sharply questioned.

  “J-just looking!” He reacted qu
ickly and tossed out a stray piece of broken glass. “There’s a lot of shattered stuff back here, you know. Morsels could be hiding somewhere.”

  “Whatever.”

  He nearly fainted out of relief; and with itching hands, he reached down into the hidden compartment.

  He was met with a texture unknown to him. It was soft yet abrasive along the edges, but the middle dipped in and was significantly stiffer than the outside. He had not the slightest clue what it was; he certainly could not match the details to any item he knew.

  With firm hands, he gripped it along both sides and lifted it through the trap door, so surprised that he nearly let it go. He had heard about them and had seen modernized versions, but this… It was the real deal.

  A book—one that weighed several pounds and was vastly aged, but the cold had preserved it.

  Trying to not make noise, he hastily brushed away the surrounding gunk on the stove bottom before placing the book down. He risked another glance back, thankful that they were still engrossed in the ice jug, and with his heart racing, he carefully turned over the cover, exposing water stained, yellow pages, but nevertheless, intact ones.

  He had to lean in close due to the lack of light, but even so, he realized he couldn’t read it. This language… It wasn’t English; it wasn’t even print. It was handwritten and decorated with fancy swirls; looked pretty enough, but completely illegible.

  Stifling his disappointment, he carefully turned several pages, but it continued to let him down. The words just ran on and on, certainly valuable, but to him, they were meaningless. It had to be like that for over a hundred pages until, finally, he noticed the language begin to change… An older form of English it was, laced with whatever had been spoken prior, but pieces could finally be made out. Amazed, he began to read what he could:

  24 Juno 1385

  …Kin Revere…langid change a dis calls Inglish… Non sense makes it. No uncertin am mes abot wot father want mes escrib… Him I miss.

  What…? Intrigued, he continued to turn the pages, gradually watching not only the language progress but the state of the world—events that he had never heard of.

  July 4 1726

  King Revere now calls thyself Lord. How full he is. A mockery to human creatures. Days are getting warmer… Nights colder. Tired of writing this pointless thing. Why do we continue? Why do me continue? Stupid it is.

  The entries started becoming less frequent—sometimes several years without a single word being said, yet there he was, cooped up in the oven and grossing every bit of it—every speck of what he knew to be the most hidden truth.

  They spoke of a group once called the Nobles renaming themselves the Proxez when the first prototype of the Haxor came about in the 1800s. Expeditions to the infamous land of Hell were spoken of, hordes of demons captured to serve the Reveres for countless years to come; and through it all, one demon’s name spanned the centuries of Reveres that came and went: Typo.

  Then, twelve years ago, a startling change of pace.

  Everyday. Entries for each date, sometimes multiple a day, and all at the hands of a child.

  twoandfourtenandthirtyfives

  hilo!my name is flye!my mama hand me this buuk! she say I can rite in it! cuwl! butt buuk is my seecrit shhh! sory me riteing is so wierd!

  He certainly couldn’t help but laugh—but that laughter became less and less the more he read.

  October 9th, 2141

  They didn’t come home again today. The Haxors didn’t bring them back. They didn’t bring back Gabby’s parents either. I wonder where they are… I miss them… So does Derek.

  She joined the Encryption after her brother was taken, and then her entries lessened drastically as well until, finally, he reached the last written page.

  August 12th, 2147

  I don’t think I will be coming back here for a while… Something crazy has happened! The prophets… We found them! Eight hundred years, and now, there is no more reason to fear! We have fire; we have a demonic commander; we have the blood of King de Vaux himself! A girl was struck by Typo, too… I am waiting to see if she will come through. I hope she does. But no matter what, all of my focus must be placed on the Encryption and Derek’s recovery now.

  Until next time, my lovely book!

  The blank leaves that came afterward wrung his heart that saw so little joy these dark days. How could she not return after writing that?! Albeit, this was meant for no eyes other than her own, but prophets…? De Vaux? FIRE? He needed to read more… Know more! But it was now nearing October—nearly two months since an entry, and despite never meeting this girl in person, he couldn’t help but be fearful—not particularly for her wellbeing, but for the access to the secrets she held that the rest of them were blind to. There was so much that he did not and could not understand, and this girl… She had all the answers to all the questions, and she had vanished.

  “Fucking… Encryption…” he snarled. He slammed the book shut and furiously clenched the spine. “Only thinking about yourselves… Letting the rest of us suffer while you hide like cowards—!”

  Beep.

  His tantrum was cut short, replaced by an eerie pause that crawled over his shoulders and chilled his quickening heart.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  “Huh…?” someone wondered aloud. “What’s going on?”

  “Dude, you feeling ok?”

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  Beep beep beep beep beep.

  The Player could not move, surely not speak as the hum of electrical pitches grew in frequency and speed until there was not one processor acting up, but two, three… And then so many he lost count.

  All heat fled his cursed blood, his bulging eyes stumbling across the lone book as the mechanical cries continued to build. He had not the courage to look back, especially when the mass of electronic ticks grew to such a crowd that it muffled the frightened humans beside him.

  The bones in the Player’s legs shattered with the clamp of overridden fists, and with a bloodcurdling scream, the assailant yanked them clean off. The attack came so quickly that the Player could only react in two ways: by letting loose a desperate, all-mighty scream, and by shoving the book away, watching it tumble back down into the vault as nails pierced him at the hips and dragged him out of the stove.

  Flat on his stomach, he hit the ground, screaming as his body was shred to pieces. He didn’t want to look, but it was unavoidable when they leaped on his back, laughing maniacally and continuing to pull him apart.

  One took to his rear; the other slashed him open at the shoulders. Marrow and blood ran wild, flying past his eyes and splattering around him. The Players who had been unfortunate enough to shelter with him were in the same predicament as the Proxez activated the deadly sequences of code in the Bots’ reworked bodies.

  Never had they been awakened before; they merely existed alongside the Players as annoying loyalists, but now, they were truly monsters.

  Their teeth had fallen and revealed whirring meat grinders squealing hungrily inside their gaped mouths, blue electrons and pixels filling their overshadowed, ravenous eyes. The skin on their fingers had peeled back, exposing silver, bone-like screws that drilled madly. Inhuman strength flooded into their withered muscles, drawing energy from nowhere but the Lord’s power that he had finally let loose through his deadly, disguised servants.

  Inside his large coffin, chilling blue hues helped to cover the red blood splattering across the walls. Screams were a part of the air, both in this shelter and beyond, where beautiful azure stars came to light, set on exterminating their rivals.

  The cries of his tethering life were futile, but what else was there to do? They didn’t care about snapping his shoulder blades or reaching into his stomach, coiling his guts around their forearm like a string of lights; they didn’t care about anything because it was biologically impossible—everything human was. They were just machines.

  The Bot upon his back dug their bony knees into the vertebrae of his ne
ck, leaning forward to look the Player in the eye.

  Even in death, he would never forget their shifting, lethal eyes that had the honor of sharing his last gaze—even less the grinding gears in their mouth that came down upon his eyes and proceeded to consume his face.

  ***

  God is called a roaring lion; He is not only loving but fearsome—a god of wrath and power. Gannon was no different; those who shared his vision would be granted paradise, those who listened—but those who battled and spoke of his actions with a silver tongue, they would face the flood, the fire, whatever necessary until all threats were gone and his new race was protected from such evil.

  That was Gannon as he sat within his dark lair, illuminated only by the chaotic screens before him that received the signals of hundreds of thousands of different cameras strung throughout his world. His wiry finger had yet to lift from the tiny white button labeled “BOT” on his extensive control panel; he was too fascinated to even move, able to taste the lovely blood of the last pure humans on his singed tongue.

  Strobe lights veiled in death alit his pale face, perfectly representing the unique mind behind the scarred face. Five years of continuous implementation… And here they were, watching every threat vanish off the fragmented face of the planet.

  Well, almost every threat.

  “Let’s see the Encryption try to get through that,” he mused to himself.

  “You will still have to be on the lookout, sir.”

  Gannon did not look back, entirely at ease as Typo’s pulsing red eyes broke free of the shadows and came to levitate beside him. “Pinion and Seek are still out there… As are Eero and the Receiver. No doubt they are up to something.”