by Stu Jones
Lightning fast, Kahleit slaps the bowl from my hands and catches the boy attendant as he slumps. Baral’s eyes loll white, blood and foam squeezing from between gnashed teeth.
“Baral, no,” I shout.
The boy convulses uncontrollably.
“Poison,” Kahleit says.
“Poison?”
Baral’s fit is short-lived. A final spasm and he exhales loudly, relaxing into Ilah’s embrace. I slide the young boy’s eyelids closed, leaving my fingers resting on his still warm cheeks.
“He’s dead,” Kahleit confirms. “Those beans were meant for you.”
Before I can reason myself from it, I’m dashing for the kitchen. A man I don’t recognize bursts through the back door. “That man, who was he?” I shout.
The head cook appears stupefied. “He arrived this morning, Sheikh. Said you sent him to work under me.”
I crash my shoulder into the metal door to the street. It swings wide, squealing on old hinges. Down the steps two at a time, I nearly slip on the thick ice but manage to keep straight and head toward the courtyard—the only way he could have gone.
“Stop that man! He is an enemy of the cause!”
By the time I round the corner, my men already have him. Held fast, he’s spitting curses.
Must remain calm. I nonchalantly flick the remnants of poisoned food from my tunic and strut forward. The man continues to struggle and spit in my direction.
“You would make an attempt on my life?” I say, trying to keep composure—though my fists are balled, blood pulsing hot and furious through my veins. “You killed an innocent boy to get to me. Have you no shame?”
“Baqir has become impotent,” the man retorts. “The faithful in Alya will lead the way forward for our people now. You are but a dog who bit his master. You are no prophet.”
“I never said I was anything but a man who wants what is right for his people. You and your fanatical brood are the heathens. You mock our people and our faith.”
“You whine like a woman,” the attacker says then spits at my feet. “That is all you are good for. Words.”
I’m so tired of his kind. The only thing they understand is violence. So be it. “I will stamp you out like an insect,” I say through clenched teeth, my nose almost touching his.
A wicked grin is plastered on the man’s face. “Good luck,” he whispers.
Click.
No.
“Bomb!” I yell and fling myself in the opposite direction. My men swell around me, forcing me back as the device detonates in a concussion that seems to split my skull and tear its way through my eardrums.
Lying on the ground, I cough and blink away the dust. A severed arm, still oozing blood, lies crooked across my ankle. I kick it away, my ears ringing, the screams of the dying muffled and muted beneath a constant whistle. I was so close. I should be dead. How am I not dead?
Hands snake under my arms and pull me to my feet.
“Sheikh, you are alive? Ilah be praised. I must get you to safety.” It’s the muffled voice of Captain Kahleit.
“No.” I wrench from him and stand on shaking legs.
The broken bodies of my men lay strewn about the courtyard like wind-tossed trash. So much senseless death and carnage. First the boy, now these loyal souls who used their bodies as a buffer between me and the blast. Stepping forward, I kneel to apply pressure to the flayed chest of one of my men, an open wound that will surely be fatal. Blood pumps in gouts through my fingers. The man grasps my sleeve, bubbles of blood and spittle on his lips.
“We believe. Lead us to victory, Prophet,” he says with a final gasp.
What do I do? What would Mila do? “Don’t compare yourself to some Logosian,” I hiss through a clenched jaw.
Some Logosian? How far I have fallen. She cared for me, maybe even loved me.
“Stop it.” I pinch my eyes. “Stop.” Shaking, I cry out, raising a blood-soaked fist into the air. My anger pouring through a voice amplified by the blast, now too loud in my own ears. “Al Jabbar! I’m coming for you!”
Chapter Twenty-eight
DEMITRI
Every inch of my skin burns as though what’s left of this abused corpse is set ablaze. My stomach convulses with waves of nausea and my ghost appendage throbs with phantom pain in time with the beating of my heart. An absolute blackness covers everything, enveloping me in a cold, heavy cloak. Am I finally where I deserve to be, in the bowels of Hell? Is this what damnation feels like? Or perhaps this is the dimension to which Vedmak was cast for his sins.
Now, for mine. I am trapped here too. Vedmak. Vedmak, are you there? Nothing. I’m once again in control. At least for now, but I know all too well he will return. There’s no escaping him.
Slowly, the blackness eases—the weakest of light now detectable. The narrow shaft through which I fell extends above at least twenty meters. The sounds of battle are faint overhead. There’s no way I can go back the way I came. The small cavern has at least a couple of openings that disappear into the dark—tunnels perhaps. A way out? If I even want one, perhaps it’s better to die here. The flesh of my remaining hand is blistered and weeping. My scarred face is wet with fluid from broken skin and blood. Radiation poisoning. My death will be long and painful but fully deserved.
There’s a faint scratching in the gloom.
“Is someone there?” I say, the vibration of my words making my head ache.
Only the scraping click of a rusted wheel gun hammer cocking answers me.
“You know who it is, don’t play games, Vedmak,” a familiar female voice says.
It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, the shadowed outline of her face appearing, centered behind the stovepipe barrel of the hand cannon she has trained on me.
“Mila?” Of course, Mila. She pushed us into the shaft.
“Don’t act like you don’t know,” she rasps.
Gradually, her form becomes clearer. She’s huddled against a rock wall, knees drawn up, clutching her midriff with one arm and holding the gun with her free hand. The hate in her stare cuts to the bone. My once-friend knows all too well what I’ve become.
“Mila, it’s me. It’s Demitri.”
She wipes her free arm across her nose and sniffs. “Why should I believe you?”
Can’t blame her. I wouldn’t believe me either.
“This is all your fault,” Mila says, her voice unusually frail.
My chest cramps.
“Everything. Everything is your fault,” she repeats. “Do you know how many people have died because of you? How many innocents? I know it’s you, or Vedmak, or whoever’s been butchering my people. I saw the weapons your soldiers carry.”
“I ... Mila ... it wasn’t ... Please, it’s me.” I mumble.
“Stop talking.” She jerks the wheel gun at me. “Let’s say it is you, Demitri. Let’s entertain this lie. It doesn’t change anything. Do you know how many men I lost looking for you and Faruq?”
Faruq, yes. He was in the Vapid. “I saw him. Kapka had him.”
“Kapka’s dead,” she replies. There’s no relief in her voice.
“Then you found Faruq?”
She holds my shadowed gaze, pain, abhorrence, and sadness burning in her tear-filled eyes. She wipes her nose again. “Yeah, I found him. And he sent me away. He’d been tortured. He’s not himself anymore. And now he’s is gone. Because of you.”
“Me?”
“If I’d not been trying to stop you, I could have had more time and resources to find him.” She coughs, wincing in pain and grips her ribs again. “All because you can’t control that damn voice in your head. And now, everyone else is going to pay the price of your cowardice.” Loathing pours from her, venom now flowing from her lips like a stream. “I murdered children. Do you know that, Demitri or Vedmak or whoever the hell you are right now? Children are dead because of my orders.” Her voice echoes around the narrow chamber.
“The Rippers.”
“All because I wanted to t
ry and save you. I defied Bilgi and everyone in the resistance by looking for you and Faruq.” Her voice trails off and she stops, swallowing her words before her tears can fall.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Mila spits back, her eyes so welled up a flood may escape them at any moment. She raises the gun and points it at my head. “Everything I’ve done has been wrong. Bilgi, Faruq, Gil.”
From this angle, the muzzle looks like a massive stove pipe. I focus on it—Mila’s face now nothing but a blur in the background. I feel empty. Before the lillipads fell, I’d wanted to live more than anything at any cost. Since Vedmak had taken control, death has more than once seemed preferable. Now, I feel nothing.
“I have to do one thing, the one thing that matters,” Mila says, her wet eyes burning a hateful stare into me.
I don’t have any words.
“Say something, damn you.” She lurches forward and presses the cold metal of the weapon to my forehead.
“There’s nothing left to say, Mila. You should do it.” A tear slips from the corner of my eye.
Mila screams in my face and the gun’s hammer slams down, a brief fireball illuminating the space between us.
A moment passes. I open my eyes and am greeted by the familiar dark of the mine shaft. Mila’s pallid face, close to mine, is etched in panic. Above my head, she has the gun in both hands, pointing it toward the sky. Smoke wafts from the barrel into the dark.
Staring at me the whole time, she slowly lets go of the gun and it clangs to the rocky floor. Defeated, I slump against a large boulder and cry.
For a long while, neither of us speaks.
“We’ll cure you,” Mila says, finally. Shuffling forward, she places a cold hand on my face.
Her touch sends a fresh wave of guilt through me and more tears fall. “I’m sorry, Mila. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I found you, now.”
“You don’t understand. The things he made me do ...”
Mila takes a deep breath, as if she wants to say one thing, then changes her mind and switches the subject. “We may have a way to rid you of Vedmak. Oksana said she knows how.”
Did she just say Oksana? Vedmak had never found her. She’s still alive, after all this time. I wipe my face. “Oksana is with you?”
“She’s with the resistance,” Mila says, rubbing her ribs again. “Or I should say, she’s agreed to help.”
’Sana is helping Robusts? I can’t believe it. If anyone could help, it would be her. For the first time in years, there’s a glimmer of hope. The pebbles roll and slide beneath me as I shuffle on my butt trying to sit more upright. “You would take me to her? But you need to know, Opor has been compromised. Giahi is working with Vedmak. They have a neural link. Vedmak is using him to overthrow you and Bilgi.”
Mila sighs and stares at me again. “How did I not see it? I should have but I didn’t. So blinded by my own demons. I couldn’t save Bilgi from exile. Or Faruq from Kapka. Or even keep Husniya close, for that matter. She hates me.”
“I’m sorry,” is all I can muster.
Her face hardens. “I can’t fail again. I’ll get you back to Opor and figure out how to deal with Giahi.”
“You’re not a failure. You’re the strongest person I know.”
Mila’s resolve breaks and she hangs her head. “Demitri, it’s been so long. How did this become our lives? The things we’ve done.”
She searches my eyes as if I have the answer. As if somewhere in this Gracile head is the solution. Is her faith so broken she hopes for answers in me now, instead of her Yeos? What am I supposed to say? If Yeos exists, he’d surely smite me before Mila. At least she’d tried. At least what she did, she believed it was for the right reason.
The sound of gunfire and plasma rifles way above us breaks the silence.
“We have to find a way out of here,” she says, her face hardening. “Can you walk?”
“Yes, but, I don’t know how long Vedmak will stay gone,” I say.
With a grunt, I force myself to my feet and offer Mila my hand. She grabs it, and I hoist her up, wincing with a fresh streak of pain that shoots up my arm.
“What’s happened to you?” she asks, studying my blistered skin.
“Radiation poisoning. If we don’t get to Oksana, I’ll die anyway. Just more painfully than by a bullet,” I say.
She squints at me then wraps my severed arm around her neck. “Come on, we better get moving.”
With slow limping movements, we trudge on through the maze of musty earthen underground tunnels, which are lit only by the occasional clanking generator. For a while, we don’t speak, the crunch of pebbles beneath our boots echoing softly in the endless meandering dark.
“Did you hurt yourself when we fell?” I observe her hand clutched against her ribcage.
“Yeah. I don’t think they’re broken. Bruised maybe? It hurts to breathe.” She looks me over, my stump of an arm hanging about her neck like a cannibal’s necklace. “What happened to your hand?”
“I had to cut it off ... to keep him from hurting someone,” I manage.
From under my arm, Mila looks up to meet my gaze. She simply gives my forearm a pat.
My heart aches.
As we continue on, I offer fragments of the last four years. Vedmak, and his army of Graciles who he sends out on raiding parties to kill off Robusts using plasma weapons. Scare-tactics against Opor. His plan to grow more Graciles and link them to souls like his, using the nuclear fuel rods for power. The fact that if he links too many, it’ll generate a VME and kill us all. But eventually, it comes back to the simplest issues. The pain inflicted on those we care for. What I was forced to do to Anastasia. What Vedmak does to anyone who crosses his path. The Gracile children whose growth has been accelerated but their minds underdeveloped, so Vedmak murders them. Mila recounts Faruq’s torture and mental break, Husniya’s worsening condition, and Bilgi’s exile. These are the things that haunt us both and, in the end, what really drives us. Mila seems hellbent on saving me as if it might redeem some horrible misstep. The more we talk, the more I can’t decide if that is a good thing.
Another bend, another choice of dreary tunnels. It feels like hours, but I know it hasn’t been. A battle still rages above us, the muffled zip of plasma rifles firing and whump of homemade grenades penetrate the thick rock.
“Sard,” Mila groans. “How do we get out of here?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. We need to find a way up. There must be an exit. A ladder or winch or something.”
Perhaps you should pray to the little suka’s false god.
My arm spasms, jerking to life, seized by some invisible presence. “Oh no.”
“What’s wrong?” Mila searches my face, before answering own her question. “It’s Vedmak, isn’t it?”
I can only nod, swallowing a lump from my throat.
“Fight him Demitri,” she says, her face stern.
“I can’t. He’s too strong.”
“You have to be stronger.” She jabs a finger in my chest, her expectant stare boring holes into me. “Believe you can be.”
I avert my eyes. “I’m sorry, Mila.”
“Damnation, c’mon we have to get you help,” she says yanking me farther down a tunnel.
“Wait,” I say and pull away. My head swarms, goose-bumped flesh tingling hot. “He’s coming back. You have to go. He’ll kill you. Run, Mila. Get as far from me as you can.”
I don’t wait for an answer, and instead shove her to the ground, buying precious seconds. Vedmak’s maniacal laugh swells in my head until I can no longer hear my only friend’s footsteps, or her shouts for me to stop, far behind in the labyrinth of twisting dark.
Chapter Twenty-nine
MILA
“Demitri!” My echoing scream disappears into the depths of the passage ahead. The black rock walls seem to amplify the air of oppression in this place. “Demitri, let me help you,” I shout in frustration, fingernails digging into my
palms as I clench my fists.
He’s gone.
I’ve got to get out of this tomb and warn the others. If Vedmak is taking back over, he’s going to try to get out of Vel again with the nuclear power cells. I wheel around and jog in the opposite direction, a fragment of hope at a possible way out stuck in my mind. I’d passed an alcove while chasing my deranged friend. Can’t say for sure it’s what I think it is, but it bears checking out.
Retracing my steps, I slow my heart rate by controlling my breaths. My thoughts stretch in so many directions I fear my mind might shatter, the pieces of the person I used to be scattered and forgotten. Demitri is going to be the death of us both.
Why can’t he face his demon? Don’t have time for this. Damnation, my ribs ache.
An old wooden platform with a section of rail track leading up into another tunnel at an angle appears from the dark. My legs feel like lead, the muscles full of acid after all the running and jumping, not to mention the fall. My boots clunk up the steps to the short platform. There’s a cable attached to the front of the railcar. Of course. Maybe I can get in and it will winch me to the surface. Only one way to find out.
The rusted generator at the foot of the shaft silently collects dust. In the dim light of the single incandescent bulb hanging above the platform, I unscrew the gas cap and peer inside. Bone dry. Sard. “Great.” I huff, disgusted with my fortune. This generator hasn’t been used in ages. That should have been obvious since there’s no way to refine petrol anymore. Most machines run on electrical turbines or ...
Or, a nuclear power plant. Of course. The power is piped in.
Crouching, I check the console and brush away the thick dust coating. There. From under the box snakes a long hose, the black rubber coating flaking with dry rot. It runs up the wall and is bundled with a host of other cables running the length of the tunnel above my head. I follow the hose. Each winding turn looks the same as the one that came before it, a mind-numbing maze of serpentine rock walls lit only by the occasional hanging bulb.
I stop abruptly, my boots slipping on the gravel beneath their treads. Above, at the junction, there’s a main power cable. At its end are a series of outlets designed for a plug. But, there’s one too few. The end of my cable hangs with no female pairing for its prongs. I grab a wooden crate and drag it over. Stepping up onto the corners, it creaks and wobbles but holds. Straining up, I grab the nearest plugged-in cord and yank it free. The tunnel around me plunges into a darkness. Panic rises in my chest, the anxiety at the thought of being lost down here smothering. I swallow and fumble with the free cords.