by A. L. Knorr
"Goodbye." I turned and walked away.
"Wait! You don't understand!" His voice was a croak behind me.
I was several meters away when there came a sharp and heavy boom which vibrated through the ground. It was too deep a sound to be from a gun. The sound was somehow familiar. My eyes dropped, looking for this new threat. Then I realized why the sound was familiar. It had been the sound of terrain straining under Georjayna's power as she moved earth.
A deep crack had opened in the ground between Devin’s shoes.
Petra
We both staggered back, me with surprise, and Devin screaming out for help.
His already white face turned a shade of dirty gray and his eyes widened and rolled with fear. He looked up at me, his expression a grimace of mortal terror.
"It's too late," he rasped. "It's awake."
He staggered backward as the crack in the earth widened and spread with a sound like a series of breaking bones. He fell and scrambled onto his stomach in a desperate army crawl to get away.
A black tentacle made of smoke whipped out of the crevice in the earth and wrapped itself around his ankle, dragging him clawing and screaming toward the crack.
He disappeared into the earth with no other sound, along with the tentacle. The crack in the earth slammed shut with a thud. A puff of dirt drifted up and a sapling swayed back and forth before deciding to cant heavily toward the sea. Then, all went ghostly quiet.
It was as though Devin had never been there, the tentacle had never been real, and the only evidence that the earth had been disrupted was the crooked young tree.
I stood frozen in soundless shock. I wanted to scream, but my throat felt too tight. Only the sound of my labored breathing and the whisper of the wind in the pines could be heard. Every hair on my body stood at attention and for the first time, the cold hands of terror slipped around my heart.
"What just happened?" I croaked at the woods.
I lost track of time as I stood there trying to process. I had just met 'it,' or part of it. It had also decided that today was Devin’s day to die.
My heart thudded dryly, as though all the blood had gone out of it, while I replayed his awful demise in my head. It might have been fitting, but that didn’t make me feel any better about watching him die. A wave of nausea swept over me and I closed my eyes against it, swallowing hard.
The wind picked up and the sound of a distant siren made me jump. Some alarm finally decided to react to something.
"A little late," I muttered, but the sound opened my eyes and jolted me back into action.
I began to run through the trees in the direction of the front gates of FS11, back to where I had parked my car. I paced myself, but it wasn’t easy. I kept glancing over my shoulder, wondering if that thing might appear again. My heart was galloping, and not just from the exertion. My hands were ice-cold while my face felt flushed with heat.
Skirting the field station buildings, I ran on, looking back every once in a while and watching the earth, half expecting more cracks to open up and a tentacle to come out and grab me. Fear was an exquisite motivator and it spurned me on, even when my breath grew ragged.
What was that thing? What did it belong to? What, exactly, had woken up as a result of the project falling apart? I didn't know the answers to these questions, other than TNC was dealing with a supernatural force that was very unhappy.
I kept my force-field intact and passed by the now useless laboratory where Hiroki had first started testing me.
After nearly twenty minutes of running and no sign of ‘it,’ I slowed enough so my heart could find something of its regular pace. I allowed a small but bitter smile to lift the corners of my lips as I passed the shattered gate and abandoned security booth.
It was over for this field station.
With Jesse's help, I would find the other stations and I'd destroy those, too. I didn't care if it meant I couldn't ever live a normal life again. I wasn't normal, so a normal life was not something I could expect anyway. I had a new purpose now—destroy TNC and any corporations like it. The arrogance, the pure evil of these kinds of conglomerates couldn't be fought by normal civilians. But I was not a normal civilian. I had the power and the kind of defenses necessary.
My thoughts were broken by the sound of a great groan vibrating deep beneath my feet. I froze in a half-crouch, ready to spring or run if a crack broke open.
The groan ceased. I waited, but all remained quiet. I resumed jogging. Whatever owned the tentacle that had pulled Devin into the earth, it had sounded like it had rolled over.
A minute later, the groan was back, louder this time. The earth shook and I felt the shudder go up my legs.
A long rattling hiss followed the groan and the early morning light dimmed. I looked up and watched as part of the sky went from pink to gray. My skin grew cool and my hands and face felt wet. I rubbed my fingers together, looking at them and expecting to see them dripping. But the damp I felt was invisible, and whatever was between my fingers felt more slimy than wet.
"Ugh!" I flicked my fingers, trying to get rid of the feeling. I felt my face, and it too felt coated with slime. I wiped at my skin but the feeling didn't go away. My fingers showed no visible mucous, nothing could be scraped off and examined, yet the feeling remained.
The groan became a growl.
I whirled, raking the trees for whatever made the sound.
The forest had now lost its color, just as part of the sky had. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, thinking something was wrong with my vision. When I opened my eyes again, the view was the same. The forest and sky were shifting from the dim color of early morning to shades of gray. In fact, the edges of everything were blurry, like a heavy fog was gathering between the trees.
The growl came again, from everywhere and nowhere. My heart began to gallop again in my chest.
"Where are you?" I yelled into the trees. "Show yourself!"
My answer was a deep roll of thunder…or was it a slow throaty laugh? If I hadn't seen the tentacle for myself, I would have thought this was a storm gathering.
The forest grew dark and the trees faded from view, swallowed up in the unnatural fog. Cold slime felt heavy on my skin and again I tried to remove it, scraping at my cheeks with my fingers. I let out a yell of frustration. How could I fight an enemy I couldn't see?
The fog grew thick and my clothing became heavy with moisture. Looking down at my jeans and Jesse’s jacket revealed nothing unusual—the fabric was not dark, and squeezing it drew no liquid from the fibers. Yet I felt thick with it, sopping.
The thunder-like laugh, or was it laugh-like thunder, dwindled. The fog began to migrate through the trees, drawing toward a central point off to my right. As the fog moved, I felt the moisture crawl across my skin, as though it was being sucked by vacuum toward this same central point. The sensation made shivers of revulsion run up my spine. My hair did not move and yet I felt the wet viscous liquid crawl over my scalp and through my clothing, across the skin of my back. I fought down the urge to retch.
But the ooze was leaving my body, drawing away from me toward the dark mass of murkiness which was coagulating, growing darker and denser by the second.
I let out a relieved breath as the last of the muck left my body, but I watched with dawning horror as the shape of something transparent and massive formed in the clearing. It grew tall, but its shape coalesced only roughly into the shape of some hunched but powerful looking creature. Its edges did not grow sharp but remained fuzzy, as if it wasn't fully materializing.
"Who are you?" I yelled at the shape.
Whatever the thing was, it was surely the thing that pulled Devin into the ground, though I couldn't make out any tentacles. I wouldn't be giving it a chance to do the same to me. At the same time, I hoped it tried something, because the moment it touched me, I would have its signature and I could destroy it.
"Come on," I murmured, taking a few steps closer.
Color returned to the sky and the
forest as the gray drew into the…whatever it was that I faced. The gray palette surrounded and followed it as it moved.
I squinted as it settled roughly into a familiar shape, a creature I had not thought of since I was a child reading about ancient mythology—a minotaur. Long, wicked-looking horns grew from its rounded skull, close together, as though the beast was not facing me but looking off at something to the south. It seemed to lift its head and sniff the wind. The forest was visible through it, laden with fog and lacking color.
The cold feeling washed over me once more as the thing swung its head and the horns squared in my direction.
"What are you?" I took another step toward it.
With a lightning-like strike, a tentacle whipped from its form and struck my shield. Blue waves reverberated and rippled across my force-field. A second strike followed, then a third and a fourth. Blue ripples crisscrossed around me, deflecting the blows.
"Good luck," I snarled at it. My words and tone were bold and confident, but inside, an ice-cold confusion took hold of my mind. This thing had no signature; it was as dead to me as tungsten. And if it was dead to me, how could I destroy it?
The thing responded with that resonant laugh that came from nowhere and everywhere. It filled my ears with thunder and my heart with dread.
Slowly, cautiously—praying that the pain of it wouldn’t knock me flat—I opened the gate between my mind and the mind of the thing.
I gasped at the vast ugliness which opened up before me.
Petra, the thing thought at me. Coming from it, my name sounded like a curse. It knew my name, knew I was probing its consciousness.
I didn't answer, but neither did I close the gate, because here, in its deeply evil consciousness, I would find an answer. I had to.
What are you?
There was a long groaning growl of as I searched.
Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrkoooooooooonnnnnnnnnnn…….
The growl tapered off and the beast threw its horns back and then fell forward on its front arms, or legs, I couldn't tell. It was an effort to intimidate, to shake me off. It didn't work. Moisture crept from my eyes at the effort it took to keep the gate between us open.
Archon.
My skull felt cold and aching and yet I dug. As the beast shook its head, I felt its efforts to expel me. My headache swelled and sharpened. I gasped at the pain, but did not retreat.
A demon of the old world. The last time it had surfaced was seventy-three years ago. It was thousands of years old and it had emerged at points in history that overlapped every war, every genocide, every major act of violence and conflict. As I understood, there were more Archons; this wasn’t the only one. And present during every reign of terror was this demon or something like it.
This thing had been making deals with mankind for centuries, exchanging wealth, power, long life, and other so-called gifts with weak-minded and greedy people. It had the power to manipulate, dole out curses dressed as gifts, and orchestrate events through these people. It could put those it controlled into positions of power where it could then create the outcomes it wanted.
And the outcome it wanted was fear and chaos, misery and death. These things were what it fed on. It grew strong on human tragedy the way a suckling pig grew into a powerful boar.
This Archon in front of me now was the reason TNC's projects resulted in pain and suffering. Devin had bound himself to this Archon and he owed it sustenance. Now it was angry because it had been planning a giant feast involving the domes, and the plan had been thwarted.
By Jesse, and by me.
I had read enough. I slammed the gate down. Tears rolled down my cheeks from the shock of what I had read in its consciousness. I heaved a sob and covered my face with my hands. It was so much worse than anything I could have imagined.
Underneath my horror raged my resolute fury to destroy TNC, and now this Archon.
Looking up at the Archon, I gritted my teeth and sent a wave of energy at it. I changed my frequency and sent another, and another, and another. They emitted from my body like ripples. For all my deadly powers, the ripples passed through the Archon harmlessly.
It was futile. The Archon was not fully in this world. I could not touch it.
The thunder-laugh came again, but this time it changed pitch as the dark shape turned and began to walk away from me.
Desperately, I sent out more pulses of energy. There was the sound of breaking glass in the distance, but the beast still walked. Losing shape and becoming fog again, it was nothing but an amorphous shadow moving through the trees. It was evil disguised as strange weather.
I opened the mental gate between us again, searching to understand its intent. Its thoughts were not like those of men, or perhaps like only the worst kind of men, the most twisted among us.
The domes had been its idea all along, well-hidden in layers of seemingly good intention. The projects TNC had executed which resulted in disease and death had been orchestrated so this thing could feed.
I searched for how the domes were to be used, but the Archon was dissolving and moving away, its consciousness growing weak. I grappled for what it wanted now.
The Archon was hungry.
It came to my understanding through the driving pain in the back of my skull that the Archon had suffered defeat before, many times. It had won some, it had lost some, but there had always been a consolation prize.
It had been defeated by its opposites: truth, love, courage, self-sacrifice. I understood this as a concept, but it still did not help me understand the method by which this thing could not only be defeated but destroyed, and I would not be happy with less.
In losing cases, there had always been a consolation prize, a meal to tide it over until the next deal could be made. The chaos and fear and death it needed could be found where the population was dense, and the nearest dense population was Saltford.
My hometown was the Archon’s consolation prize.
"Oh, what have I done?" I whispered as I slammed the gates down between us again, feeling filthy, my head pounding. I wanted to take a bath and scrub my skin raw. It made reading Devin seem like a pleasant stroll in the country by comparison.
The dark shape faded as it moved through the trees, heading south.
I bolted in the other direction, making a bee-line for my car. How fast did that thing move? How much time did I have? I raced through the woods, ignoring the branches and leaves as they whipped across my body, tearing at my clothes.
I saw my car through the trees and urged my legs faster. A hundred meters, seventy, fifty… My heart pounded and I sucked in air.
A cracking boom and the sound of twisting metal reached my ears. My car flew into the air.
I skidded to a halt and watched, horrified, as my Toyota was catapulted above the canopy. It rotated slowly through the air in an arc, flipping once, twice, three full rotations before landing upside down on the tops of the pines. There was a terrific crack along with the sound of breaking glass and the scream of metal scraping against wood as the car broke through the branches cradling it and slid nose-first toward the ground.
Bolting into action, I reached out with my mind to catch the car and slow its descent. The car came to a halt, hovering two feet from the ground. I turned the car slowly, righting it and putting its wheels level.
Another hit came from nowhere—this one weaker and seeming almost half-hearted—but enough to send the car sideways into a large tree. It dented the driver's side door and smashed the rest of the glass out.
I let go of the car with a groan and it dropped to the ground with a final sad crunch.
That thing, that horrid ancient evil, was headed for my home-town, and I had just lost my ride.
Saxony
"Tell us again what Petra said," Georjie asked, raking her hair up and tying it into a messy bun on the top of her head.
Students and teachers milled about Saltford High, chatting and laughing, stress-free on the first day of the school year. Georjie, Targa, an
d I were seated on one of the picnic tables in the park beside the school. Crunched up paper bags and food wrappers from our lunch rested in a lump on the table.
"I'm sorry to ask you to repeat yourself but I'm having a hard time making sense of it." Georjie grabbed the garbage, got up, and took the few steps to the nearest trash bin to toss it in. She returned to the table and sat down.
I'd already told them once what Petra had said, and they had both tried calling her with the same result—no answer.
"You're not the only one," Targa muttered. "Although, I have to say, I'm kind of relieved that I don't have to decide between going back to Poland and potentially"—she made air quotes with her fingers—"saving millions. Does that make me a bad person?"
"Terrible." Georjie eyed Targa with a sardonic tilt to her brow. "Very bad. Shame on you for being in love and wanting to be with the guy you're in love with."
Georjie blew a raspberry, and Targa wrinkled her nose at her.
"All joking aside,” Georjie said, “there's no reason you couldn't have had both. Antoni would just have to wait a bit."
They turned their attention back to me.
“So, Saxony?” Targa prompted.
"She just said the whole thing was off," I explained. "She didn't say why, she said we'd be better off going back to our lives and forgetting about everything that happened. She said that TNC wasn't transparent with their intentions and that they'd done bad things."
"I'm dying of curiosity," Targa said. "And I hope Petra is okay. She'll answer her phone one of these days…" She trailed off at the look that passed between Georjie and me. "What, you don't think she will?"
"We don't know her." I shrugged. "Just how upset is she? What had she learned? A girl with powers like that crossed with a vengeful streak isn't someone I'd want to cross. What if she did something crazy?"
"Or stupid," Georjie added.
"Or both," I finished.
The picnic table swayed back and forth. I held the edge tightly with my fists, and the three of us froze in alarm.