by Stu Jones
“Yep.”
“And Creed soldiers,” she says, shaking her head in disbelief. “Tell me we’re not going down there, Mila. I don’t want anything to do with them.”
I say nothing and analyze the small group. The tall woman with the proud face and sweeping garments is the leader. But who is she? Nothing makes any sense since the lillipads came down. It used to be for better or worse everyone knew their place and what they could expect from certain factions. The falling of New Etyom and my meeting Demitri changed all that. Now I don’t know what to expect from anyone, much less a Gracile.
When was the last time anyone even saw a Gracile—or Creed for that matter?
The messenger boy rounds the edge of the wall. The Creed’s plasma rifles rise from under their cloaks. The boy slows, his eyes wide with fear. The woman raises a hand and the sentries lower their weapons. She motions the boy closer. He comes to a stop, looking like a baby’s doll compared with the massive soldiers around him. The woman bends and they exchange words, the boy shaking his head as he tells her I’m not coming. She takes it in, saying nothing, then stands. Her shoulders slumped, she motions for the boy to leave. Needing no further inspiration, the little lad spins and flees in the opposite direction, back to the relative safety of the enclave.
That wasn’t annoyance. She was disappointed. But why?
“Husniya, do you have any rifle rounds left?”
“Just one,” she grabs a fistful of my jacket sleeve.
“What?”
There’s fear in the girl’s face. “Mila, I don’t want to kill anyone else. Please.”
I meet her tearful gaze and give her a pat on the back. “If everything goes right, you won’t have to. Just let them see you up here when I point.”
“They could kill you,” she says as I pull a Makarov pistol from my sling bag and shove it in my waistband.
I turn from the window with a shrug. “Yeah, they could.”
***
My hands are in the air as I round the enclave wall. The Creed notice me first, their bulbous metallic plasma rifles leveling in my direction. In sync, their hollow robotic voices call out.
“Identify Robust—Mila Solokoff, resistance leader, dissident. Female is armed with a semi-automatic small caliber pistol and may have hostile intentions. Standing by for orders to initiate deconstruction.”
Deconstruction. Hearing the word spoken by a Creed this many years later still gives me the creeps.
“Not at this time. Thank you,” the tall Gracile woman says.
The Creed drop their rifles to a low ready, but I’m no fool. They’re still locked on me. Any sudden moves and poof, I’m pixie dust.
“Not at this time? When then? In thirty seconds when I don’t like what you have to say?” I lower my hands slowly.
“That depends on how you choose to behave,” the woman says.
“One might say that lane goes both directions,” I reply, motioning to the open window. The woman shifts to see Husniya two stories up, supporting a long-bolt action rifle. Half of the Creed contingent raise their rifles toward Husniya.
“Identify Robust—Unknown Musul female, possible resistance member, armed with a—”
“Yes, I can see her. Standby,” the Gracile female says, irritated.
The Creed soldiers stand fast.
“Deconstruct me if you wish. But you’re the one who called me out. You’ll never learn what you needed to know, and your Creed won’t be able to stop my sniper before she blasts the contents of your skull into the snow.”
A moment passes. The Gracile woman gives a wave of her hand, and the Creed lower their rifles.
“How poetic. Spoken like a true survivor,” she says.
The Gracile puts one hand on her hip, shifting her weight to one foot. Just beneath the hood of her heavy cloak, picturesque chocolate-colored ringlets of hair encapsulate the perfect features of her face. The overly long legs, the flawless feminine features. Did I always hate Gracile women this much?
Get on with it, Mila. “What do you want? I’m a busy person.”
“I need to speak with you. I need to know something.” Her face is cold and calculating, but her voice seems earnest.
“Let me stop you right there.” I raise a gloved hand. Graciles are all the same. Always speaking in florid riddles. “Whatever you’ve got to say, say it. Stop wasting my time and get to the point.”
The wind picks up, whipping dusty waves of snow across the Vapid.
“My name is Oksana. I need to find my mate’s neo-brother, Demitri. I understand you knew him before the fall.”
In an instant, the entire tone of the meeting shifts. The skin of my neck tingles with a chill. I hold up my fist and from the corner of my eye see Husniya lower her rifle. Casting a glance over each shoulder, I turn back to the Gracile woman.
“Why should I help you find Demitri? For all I know, you want to kill him. Just like every other Gracile did.”
She eyes me, confusion etched into her face. “I need to know what happened. I need to know why Nikolaj died. Demitri can tell me. The word is you were the last person to see him alive before everything fell. In exchange, I have information you might be interested in.”
“What could you know that I would care about?”
“I hear you’re looking for a Musul Robust, a man by the name Faruq?”
The already cold air seems to freeze solid. My breathing stops and my heart falters. Could she know something? Can’t risk losing this lead. “We should discuss this in a more secure location.”
“I agree,” Oksana says with a slight bow.
“I know a place. Follow me and keep out of sight.”
Chapter Fifteen
DEMITRI
Deep, throaty growls fill my ears. What is that? The snow seals my eyelids together and the cold stabs at my face. Is this purgatory? Is this Hell? More growls and aggressive huffs, closer this time. I force my eyes open, but I still can’t see much. My whole body aches and my insides feel as if they are on fire. But unlike when Vedmak’s asleep, this is very present. As if ... Vedmak?
Silence.
Vedmak?
He’s gone. I’m in control again? That last blow to the head must have done something.
The hostile sounds grow louder. They’re like nothing I’ve heard before.
My tired legs manage to push me into an awkward sitting position, but a fresh streak of pain shoots across the base of my skull and my skin burns from more slashes than I can count. Propped against a rock, I survey my immediate surroundings. The battlefield is stained pink with blood, though a fresh layer of snow covers many of the bodies. Why was Vedmak—was I—left alive? Why didn’t the Rippers kill us?
In the dark, a shape lumbers on all fours from one snowdrift to the next, its hoarse huffing becoming louder. The snow puffs up in large billows as it pounds the ground.
What the hell is that?
It rears up onto its hind legs. A break in the cloud cover ahead reveals a large, yellow, full moon, providing a shaft of light that illuminates the creature in the gloom. It stands taller than any Gracile and has shiny black fur, dead eyes, and a gaping mouth baring saliva-covered, fangs. Its club-like hands are adorned with long claws.
Images from my old books rifle through my brain. Can it be? Am I looking at a bear? They were thought all but extinct. Yet here it is. With the walls of Etyom breached, anything could enter. The world outside is not as dead as perhaps we thought.
Is this why the Rippers fled? Is this why I’m still alive? Despite having control of my own body, it fails to move as I want. All I can do is stare, transfixed by this enormous animal. Don’t think it’s seen me. Here, covered in snow, my breathing shallow, I’m just another body. Still, was one bear enough to frighten off all those Rippers? Despite knowing I’d read the books, the information eludes me. Without Vedmak, it’s like half of me is missing. So hard to discern which memories are mine and which are his.
It snaps its attention in my direction. Sard. Did I move?
The beast drops to all fours again and lumbers forward, huffing out its deep voice. What did it see? Was I talking out loud again?
The chink of metal on metal.
I strain to see the source, close behind me. It’s the cart, half-covered in a drift—and chained to it, Anastasia. She yanks on her shackle again in frustration as the bear approaches. Each loud clank only angers the animal.
“Anastasia, stop.” My voice is but a whisper.
She doesn’t hear me.
“Anastasia.”
The bear trudges past, ignoring my broken form, fixated on the panicked Robust woman.
Vedmak’s laser scythe lays a meter away, just out of reach. Move, Demitri, do something. My painful crawl to Anastasia is worthless, the animal already upon her. It rears up again and bellows, spittle raining down on her. She screams and covers her face, awaiting the inevitable.
“Come on.” My fingers curl around the staff, but it’s too late.
The bear cries out in anguish, tumbling into a drift. Blood spurts from its side. A flash like fire streaks across the bear, tearing a chunk of its body away. The black beast howls. Anastasia clings to the hub of the wheel closest to her, too scared to sob, her pants wet with urine.
From within the gloom, two green eyes shine like gemstones. Their owner prowls from the dark, its growl low and purposeful. It’s another fiend. But it’s no bear. Orange and white fur is adorned with splashes of black. It has a large head and a long tail. Each movement is calculated and majestic. Every step carefully placed as it stalks the bear.
“Ussuri! Ussuri!” Anastasia cries.
Without warning, the orange beast launches forward and collides with the bear. The bear swipes and gouges the shoulder of the fire-colored monster. But it’s not slowed. It pulls the bear over and to the ground, then clamps its huge mouth around the bear’s lower back, piercing the flesh with long yellow fangs. A final scream, followed by a nauseating crunch. The bear does not rise again.
Silence falls over the battlefield.
The auburn behemoth drags the bear away, leaving a trough of snow filled with blood in its wake. The gloom closes in around them, and only the dancing snowflakes can be seen in the dim evening light.
Anastasia whimpers the same word, over and over. “Ussuri, Ussuri.”
Is it gone? Should I move?
An eternity passes, only the constant snapping of the wind can be heard.
Can’t stay here. It’s a miracle I haven’t frozen already, let alone Anastasia.
I roll to my side and manage to climb to my feet. Dizziness envelops me and the world spins. It takes a minute to ensure I’ll not fall back into my resting place. Grabbing the scythe to use as a crutch, and reaching out with my other hand as if the air will support me, I stumble forward toward Anastasia.
She screams ferociously, spitting and hissing like a wild animal.
“Anastasia, it’s me, it’s Demitri.” I lay the scythe against the cart, out of her reach as a gesture of peace.
The Robust woman lashes out, her ragged nails catching me across the brow.
“Sard, ah, son of a—” I cry, clasping a hand to the stinging wound, but thankfully, it’s only a scratch.
Anastasia shuffles back and stares up.
Wiping a drop of blood from my face, I drop to my haunches, which sends yet another wave of nausea and pain from the pit of my stomach into my vertebrae. Somehow, I don’t collapse. “It’s okay,” I say. “It’s me.”
Anastasia’s eyes well up. “Demitri?”
“It’s me. I promised you. I promised I’d free you,” I say in the softest voice I can manage. “We don’t have much time. I don’t know when he’ll have control again. Stay still. I need to get this chain off you.”
She searches my eyes for truth in my words.
“You’re a follower of Yeos, right? You need to get back to Logos.
She shakes her head. “I’m not from Logos.”
“You’re not from Logos?”
“My people are wanderers,” she manages, still studying my face. “The Logosians believe Yeos is found only through their ways. But we believe He is everywhere, in everything—”
“In the Vapid? I thought only Rippers lived outside the enclaves?”
She seems irritated by her sermon being truncated. “Inside, outside. It makes no difference. There is only Etyom.”
There’s a painful truth to her words. Now more than ever. With the HAPs fallen and Graciles all but captured, New Etyom is nothing but a memory. Even the enclaves offer little in the way of protection anymore. This place is hell, and we are all in it together.
This isn’t hell, kozel. But I will show you of it.
“Vedmak? Oh no. Not now.”
A fresh wave of fear ripples over Anastasia’s face and she yanks on her chain again in an attempt to break free.
For a superior species, you are not clever, stupid goat. You can never escape me.
A knot forms in my stomach and my limbs begin to tingle. He’s coming back, regaining control. I’m not strong enough. Haven’t been in control long enough. His will is too powerful.
“Anastasia, you have to listen to me. You have to find the resistance. Find Opor. Ask for Mila Solokoff. She’ll be in Logos. Or maybe Fiori, I don’t know for sure. But you have to find her. Tell her ... tell her—” I stammer, searching for the words.
The Robust woman’s face expresses only the primal desire to get as far away as possible.
Yes, puppet what to tell her? What could her simple mind understand about the plans of a god?
Keep it simple, Demitri. “Tell her I’m alive, but trapped. Vedmak is in control. Tell her the Gracile Leader’s plan pales in significance to what Vedmak is doing. He’s making an army of Graciles like me. That’s important, okay. Like me. But it’ll trigger a VME. Tell her to find a scientist. You have to remember VME, that’s also important. Okay? And she has to get to Vel. To the nuclear stockpile—”
Vedmak’s cackle is deafening. Stupid peacock, look at her. Do you think she understood any of that? You know what she remembers, puppet? You. Penetrating her. Punishing her as she sobbed. She doesn’t care for you. She only desire’s release—
“Sard off, Vedmak. It wasn’t me. I never wanted that.”
My muscles tingle hot, limbs coming alive with electricity. It won’t be long. I’m rapping two fingers on my forehead, again.
Anastasia slowly reaches out a hand and touches my face, tracing the burn marks left by the explosion on the space station four years earlier. Her gentle fingers, the feeling of another person’s skin on mine, and her soft eyes searching my innermost being, makes a stone form in my throat and my eyes well.
“I’m so sorry, Anastasia,” I manage, choking back a sob. Tears streak a clean path through the dirt on my cheeks.
“My people have a saying. The snow is an open book, for those who know how to read.”
“I don’t follow,” I say between sniffs.
“Yeos shows us the answers. We have but to open our hearts and learn how to see them. Sometimes they are written in the snow at our feet. Others are within us.”
She sounds so much like Mila. The irony.
She holds up the chain. “Free me, Demitri.”
Enough of this.
My hand shoots out and grabs Anastasia by the throat.
“No, Vedmak.”
Her face turns red as she gasps for air, her eyes bulging. She claws at my hand, but I can’t let go.
“Let her go!” I scream.
This whore should have died long ago. I allowed my own desire for pleasure to keep her alive. Time to remedy that mistake.
“I won’t let you.”
You already did.
Anastasia’s limp, her fragile neck all but crushed in my fist.
My free hand grabs for the laser scythe. It ignites with a shriek and before another thought can enter my head, the burning blade has sliced through the chain and back up through my forearm. For a momen
t, it doesn’t hurt. Anastasia goes tumbling into the snow, my severed hand still clasped around her throat. She chokes back to life and flings the appendage away.
You fool! You would do this to us?
The searing pain stabs and spreads from the already-cauterized stump up my arm and into my spine. It’s too much. I no longer have control of my limbs. Awkwardly, my body jerks and thrashes as Vedmak fights for control. The world spins and darkness claws at my consciousness, sucking my identity back into the void. I crash into the snow, writhing like a wounded serpent.
A growl. Long and loud, it calls out, filling the evening air.
The flame-colored beast glides forward.
Vedmak fights me for control again, screaming in my skull.
A heavy paw presses on my chest as if a lillipad had fallen on me. I sink into the snow. My ribs groan and pop under the pressure. Unable to breathe, I stare up at the drifting flakes that seem to appear from nowhere. The massive head of the fiend enters the frame. It glares at me, its hot breath tainted with the metallic smell of blood.
A damn tiger? Vedmak scoffs, disappointed this is how he is to die.
“A tiger,” I wheeze. “That’s what it is ...”
“Ussuri,” Anastasia says from somewhere nearby.
It’s hard not to laugh. Even in this state, like a child, I’m curious about another animal few have seen. What’s wrong with me? Shouldn’t my life flash before my eyes? I hack up a mouthful of blood, half laughing, half coughing. “I see now. Ussuri is Russian for tiger.”
“No,” Anastasia says stepping into my field of view. She stares down at me, short hair hanging about her face, and slides a hand into the tiger’s mane. “Ussuri is his name.” Tears streak down her cheeks, as she mouths three silent words: I love you. At least that’s what I hope she said. Her lips are obscured by blustering sleet, and I can’t be sure my tortured eyes do not betray me.
Yes, Anastasia, I love you too.
She drops the heel of the scythe into my nose and the world goes dark.
Chapter Sixteen
MILA
With a shove, the ramshackle wooden door groans on ungreased hinges. Dust hangs in the stale cold air, motes drifting across shafts of light emanating from a crack in the wall or a hole in the collapsing roof. Still, this abandoned sloop joint should provide us with the privacy we need.