Exordium

by Tyson Jordan

  5

  Finding a Friend

  The next day was not so monotonous as those that came before. As Ferric had mentioned earlier, we would be visiting the Malinvictus Specimen Facility, and as such would be given the chance to see a living, breathing monster, captured from some unknown battlefield. The thought of seeing it left me uneasy.

  Before Erasure, the Guild was not only infamous amongst the known worlds for being a bastion of order, but was also respected by all as a place of great scientific research. Terminal illnesses were once beaten back by new, almost miraculous, treatments and the inquisitive nature of scholars was put to its most effective and unromantic use in this militaristic hall.

  Since Erasure, times had changed, and drastically so. Resources that were once plentiful were now scarce at the best of times, and what few remained were dedicated almost exclusively to the War effort. The campaigns of Rck’ Hara were unending, and the demands suddenly placed on Grand Ocean were too much to bear. Even the Guild itself was beginning to show its age; halls that were once sterile and white were gradually falling into disrepair, only to be hastily addressed by overworked technicians.

  Set physically far beyond any of the space station’s crucial organs, however, was the Malinvictus Specimen Facility, which had a purpose that was self-explanatory. There were dozens of them there, locked away behind reinforced, transparent shielding where new methods of killing them were being devised through trial and error. Chemical and biological warfare had been given more attention and funding in the past ten years, with the hope of rendering traditional combat obsolete. Naturally, several veterans shunned the use of these methods, finding the mere mention of them offensive, and they instead relied on their fists and hard steel to do their work for them. I had a great deal of respect for them, and I understood that they were the ones to reap the Favour. My father was one of those men.

  Late again … Somehow I felt that Ferric, demanding as he was, would nevertheless wait for everyone to arrive before departing for the facility. I hurried, compelled to see and fearful of seeing what had haunted my dreams for so long. I passed more of Argenta Behemot’s adoring fans in the corridors and ignored their excited and exaggerated babbling.

  “Fortuna, I do hope that you’ll make a more earnest attempt to arrive promptly in the future.” I was clearly wrong about Ferric waiting for his students in this case. He caught me in the wide, sterile corridor as I rushed to join the other initiates, already on their way to the laboratory. I gave his leathery, powerful face a nod of affirmation and fell into rank at the back of the line, hurriedly stepping past the many lecture halls. To my surprise, I saw Nacia exiting her lecture hall as well with her students in tow, and the streams of bodies merged together into a single flow.

  There were hundreds of us there, moving in unison like a great tide of dark grey uniforms with pitch black belts and undershirts and sleeves that stretched down to our elbows. I found that I was one of the blessed few whose mind was not completely fixated on Argenta Behemot. Her name was mentioned repeatedly, maddeningly, by girls with wide eyes and blonde hair or by envious males. I was unaware of the authentically derisive look on my face until a hand fell lightly on my shoulder.

  The conditioning forced my eyes to the floor, my posture slumped, and I didn’t respond. It was always Bir’ Nak or Jaf’ Rah who touched my shoulder, but this hand was lighter, smaller, and four-fingered. I glanced over to see the crimson-haired Ocean Dweller I had encountered earlier, and I resumed my usual gait.

  “You don’t seem terribly enthralled with Argenta, Zircon.” The raspy voice was familiar and, as before, incorrigibly and inevitably sarcastic. I looked at his face, at the translucent scales that covered his entire body, reflecting the intense white light from high above. His narrow crimson eyes shimmered on either side of the slight nose, and his lips were thin. His hair was interesting, something that would not occur naturally for a Erdechild but was typical for people of his species; many long fingers burst forth from his head, fiery and shaggy, hanging down to his slim shoulders.

  I was unsure whether he wanted a response or not, so I chose the latter. He turned his head towards me ever so slightly, undoubtedly wondering if I was rude or socially inept. Finally, the silence was prolonged to a point where even I found it awkward, and I replied, “No. No, I’m not.”

  He continued as if nothing had happened, and shrugged his shoulders. “Tell me about it! Everywhere I go it’s always the same thing. People going on and on in incredibly long and pointless sentences, monotonous and united in their worship. It’s like a damned sermon!” I gave a soft chuckle at that, and he flashed a toothy grin.

  “My name’s Janus Baskervor. You would have known sooner, but you seemed a little irritated with me the last time we met.” I nodded my head sharply, and Janus gave another broad smile, his sharp teeth rivaling the lights in whiteness.

  We pressed on in that droning march from quick shaft to quick shaft, always moving in unison with the excited murmurs of those around us. Agitated by the lack of interesting conversation around me, I turned my head to Janus and asked, “So what class do you have right now, anyway?”

  “Physics 334 with Instructor Nacia,” the mention of her name elicited a groan from me, “and yes, she’s completely wrapped up in her own little world. Still, she’s not hard to look at! Not hard at all!” That same grin peeled across his face, and I could not help but smile. It felt good to laugh for once.

  “And as for you, Zircon?”

  “Extra-planar biology 374 with Ferric.”

  “That sounds like entirely too much fun. Really.” I blinked for a moment and realised after some minor deliberation that he was joking.

  “I also have Demonology 312 and Mathematics 298. Oh, and I also take part in an Artifacts study for extra credit.”

  “Extra credit? Need something to keep your average up?”

  “Ugh, math is just so …” I frowned, trying to find a word to describe it.

  “Repulsive? Pointless? Irrelevant?” Janus chirped with a tone of hilarity in his voice. I smirked at him, realising that I had taken a sudden liking to him, this shaggy Ocean Dweller with burning eyes. It was an exciting and largely unfamiliar sensation. I enjoyed my brief conversations with Ferric, but I had never had anything like this before.

  “Well, I would like it better if Ferric taught it.” Oddly, I had a surprising amount to say. I continued. “At least I respect him, right? But this other guy, Tantalum, he’s just a complete nuisance.”

  “Say no more. I had the guy last semester in Math 327. It’s what you need to take to be a navigator. Anyway, it’s best to just avoid eye contact when you can.”

  “Yeah, you know what I’m saying! The subject matter is bad enough, but I hate that sniveling tone of voice he has. He can take all of his pompousness and shove it right up his—”

  “I’ll stop you there. Math 298 is the requirement to be a pilot. You want to touch the stars, huh?” I nodded and smiled faintly.

  Janus and I continued talking and laughing for quite some time. I was strangely comfortable around him, and I was soon disappointed to see that we had arrived at the Malinvictus Specimen Facility.

  6

  Need and Nightmare

  I looked at Instructor Ferric, who was having no difficulty keeping pace despite his obvious impediment. One of his gnarled hands clutched a light gray walking stick, which moved in rhythm with his feet, making a light thud against the metal floor with every step, drowned out by the chattering amidst and around us.

  “Why is this hallway so big?” one Initiate asked. It was true; the hallway was oddly wide and tall, and the walls were doubly reinforced, with oversized rivets periodically jutting out from them.

  “It’s one of the few means by which we can get the Gammas into the facility. They’re far too big for the standard halls.” Ferric’s gruff voice bore a predictably serious tone as he responded, and he quickly looked forward.

  The gate before us was a massive port
al, constructed of some strange black metal that I had never seen before. The lights were oddly dim in this portion of the Guild, and my eyes were thankful for it. Ferric was almost impossibly agile as he wove his way through the crowd towards an electronic screen near the entrance. He muttered a passcode into the screen, one that was long and composed of nothing more than random numbers and letters. With that, a single green light blinked its way to life in the centre of the display.

  My teacher hunched over even lower than normal and brought his face close to the array. A barely visible beam of yellow light shot out of the panel, methodically moving down his beaten face. A feminine voice, probably that of an Ocean Dweller, bade us to enter. Instead of the silent hiss of hydraulics, there was a trembling in the floor and the harsh sound of grinding gears as the black gate sluggishly cracked open. As we passed by, I noticed that it was thicker than my arm was long.

  We entered, stepping out onto a high iron catwalk that clanged loudly with every footstep. Unlike the sterile and blindingly white Psychology Ward, this place was gritty, immense, and eroded. There were only a few green-clad biologists and blue-clad chemists nervously working together, pacing from one cluster of terminals to another. There was an irrefutable despair in how they moved; they moved quickly, but nevertheless despondently. Can they find any answers?

  “So, where are all the monsters, then?” Janus asked, not caring if anyone answered him or not. We were heading towards a second black gateway ahead. The scientists to our left and right paid us little mind as we walked, and there was little else to be seen there.

  Nacia was barely visible at the front of the group, and she said wispily, “This is the Malinvictus Specimen Facility. Data from the lower chambers is collected by machines and then analysed by these scientists.”

  “Why machines? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have people—?”

  One student’s words were cut short by Ferric, who stated, “This place is a risk to us all. We would not send brilliant minds to their end, even if they wanted to experiment on the Malinvicta themselves.”

  “So why are we—?”

  “Know your enemy. You will not be exposed to them. They are kept in chambers with little light and less sustenance. You will see them through a small window. There will be no contact.” It was a rehearsed response for an annually repeated question, although there was deep concern and doubt in his voice. I myself had not seen a living, breathing Malinvictus since Erasure, and the prospect of doing so suddenly chilled me. My earlier apprehension had already given way to fear, which in turn led to shame.

  There were two Guild Sentinels, one standing on either side of the dark doorway, recognisable by the golden Guild Emblem and chains wrapped around their bodies. They were armoured, one in red and the other in blue, and they said nothing. I did not make eye contact with them.

  “Now, in order to take you down, I will require the assistance of Instructor Nacia.” When Ferric spoke her name, she walked to one side of the dark gate to another scanner, identical to the one outside. A few strands of turquoise hair fell into her face as she bent low in front of the device. Ferric stood before his own machine, and the two of them together unlocked the door after a brief scan. The grinding gears screeched, sending sparks flying beneath the perforated floor. I and the rest of the Initiates were uneasy, put on edge by the seemingly excessive security.

  As before, we stepped through the black gate onto a broad, aged platform. The gate closed behind us, and I realised that we were standing on a quick shaft, or at least its technological predecessor. My instructor pulled a lever at the far end, and we began to descend into darkness.

  Our path into the facility was one that thundered and clacked tremendously, and there were no lights. For the same reason as with the scientists, there could be no maintenance crews to replace the lighting in the shaft. My heartbeat quickened. Another horrible screech pierced the air, and the archaic elevator’s brakes served their purpose.

  The wall to my right swung wide open, and my eyes were greeted with a single, eroded hallway. This was no place of high technology and miracle polymers, or working electrical equipment and technicians. There was nothing more than darkness and corrosion. The hallway itself seemed to buckle and twist, as if it had been placed under some great unseen strain for far too long. Heavy copper pipes and poor wiring jutted out of corroded wall panels, and the lights flickered ominously. It’s too dark down here , I thought, and Janus nodded almost imperceptibly.

  The single corridor had several offshoots, each of which was lined with rooms in much the same manner as the quarters for Guild Initiates. This place was having an unknown and wholly terrifying effect on me. I did not fully understand it then, but I was filled with a striking and unbearable need to grab a sword, a gun, anything I could use not to defend myself but to attack. There was a desire in me, a base emotion. It was hatred, something that would drive me through too much of my life.

  Ferric with his walking stick and Nacia with her ceremonial and unused long sword broke us up into groups that walked down the main corridor, then branched off to the sides. Janus and I bade one another a brief farewell as we followed our instructors, tentative and obedient. One armoured Sentinel accompanied each mob, their hands firmly pressed on a gun or blade.

  As the masses made their way down the hall and the lights flickered dangerously, there was a shocked murmur of fear, one that veered close to panic. Ferric gave us a reassuring look, but it was a half-hearted gesture at best.

  The walls and ceiling and floor were all rotted, rusty skeletons of what they had once been. The wires hung down from the ceiling, bleeding sparks in their last throes of electrical life. The lights flickered, starved of electrical sustenance. It was entirely corrupt, an abysmal product of the monsters that were kept barely alive down there. Their very presence rotted the world around them, and it sickened me.

  Our corridor had come to its close, and Ferric pointed to a door on our right with a stern, unmoving expression on his face.

  “We bring you down here to let you see what you will be fighting. Know that there is no shame in leaving this path behind. It is not one I would ever force any of you to walk.”

  Leaving the path of my father, a soldier and a warrior, was not something I could do, or ever think of doing. My fate had been sealed with Erasure.

  I stepped towards a small window, barely wider than my face, and peered inside to see scientific equipment suspended from the ceiling of the cell, a variety of tubes and syringes and cutting instruments, all undoubtedly controlled from the safety of the facility above. Beneath that, I saw the thing that had killed so many on Erde, or at least one of its kind.

  It was an Alpha class sitting inside on all fours, its head tilted dreamily to the left. I made eye contact with it, and it suddenly snapped to life, letting out a barely audible yet nonetheless eerie howl, a cry for blood. It had been starved in this place, its scientific merit lasting only as long as the researchers deemed fit. The drawings and footage, the photographs and analysis, all seemed to pale in comparison to this living, breathing thing. It was a monster of fangs and claws, a canine hunched to the ground but much bigger than its posture would suggest, standing nearly at chest height. Its flesh was a scorched ruin, a pitted layer of coal that wrapped around the entirety of its naked body, contrasting only with two yellow round eyes and too many yellow teeth.

  Its disgusting, malformed smile never wavered as the Alpha stared at me. We know your past … we know who you are … and we are your future. A deep, distorted voice suddenly exploded in my mind, and I began breathing quickly, terrified and repulsed and furious.

  That base emotion, that hatred, filled me again, and I reveled in its simplicity. I wanted Ferric to open the door so that I could beat the skeletal remains of the Malinvictus dog to death with my bare hands. I wanted to see it dead, to see its brackish blood spilling out onto the corrupted, twisted floor. I was unaware of my own clenched fists, and a scarred, ancient hand fell on my shoulder, pull
ing me away from the window. I found it hard to catch my breath. The rest of our group filed to the window, one at a time, and gazed inside briefly before retreating to a fleshy cluster in the corner, disturbed by what they had seen.

  For them, it was different. There were Erdechildren there, to be sure, greatly outnumbered as always by the Ocean Dwellers, but many did not know or understand what I had seen and experienced. The Shining Gates had engulfed our world, but it was more my home than theirs. It was more my pain than theirs. They felt no responsibility for the deaths of their parents. They had not watched their fathers die from across the stars.

  I hated Cobalt. I loved him. He was all I ever had, and even though he did not show it, he must have cared for me too. He sacrificed himself for me. It was not his choice that I would become a Guild Centurion; it was mine. I could have left this place to become an algae farmer or some other insignificant and uninvolved civilian, but I had not. I had stayed in the Guild, an aging wonder of weapons and wires, to follow in his footsteps.

  The anxious shuffling of feet thankfully roused me from my reminiscences, and we began moving back to the Gamma corridor, until the unbearable sound of metal being beaten, twisted, and fractured echoed throughout the facility, shattering the rhythm of our steps.

  Screams began to echo from far ahead, and the lights flickered more, some blinking out of existence. There was a triumphant, monstrous cry ahead, a howl for blood and terror. Two gunshots resounded through the halls, masked by more screaming. There were no more shots after that, but the screams would not stop. The howling did not stop.

  Ferric was quick to act. He paid no mind to the terrified Sentinel at our side and instead turned his attention to us. He stood at one side of the main corridor and pointed back towards the quick shaft, screaming, “Move! Now!” Many Initiates were too frightened to move, pinned to the spot by the dawning realisation that they were being hunted.