I crouched before the creature as Mira and Silk approached, eyes scanning the moving trees for any sign of stragglers.
“It’s a man, or at least he was, once. Now, he’s in a twilight place between beast and human, and he’s going to die in the next few minutes. Does that bother you?” I asked Mira and Silk.
“No,” Mira said, aiming a kick at the creature’s ribs. Silk looked like she wanted to spit but satisfied herself with a disdainful sneer as she stared down at the creature.
His eyes fluttered, and he coughed blood over his teeth in a spray. “Finish it,” he croaked.
“Not yet, friend. We have questions,” I told him, then leaned in close, my gun under his chin. “I have questions. Whether you remain in pain is entirely up to you. Unlike the Harlings and all the other people you’ve killed, I’m giving you a choice. It’s more than you deserve, but I need to understand what happened here, and if it’s happening anywhere else.”
He said nothing, letting his eyes close. There was a fine down of fur on his skin, just visible in the morning light. “Doesn’t matter. She’ll find you.”
“Senet? I’m counting on it. Can’t wait to meet her brother, too, but I have to say I don’t really think they’re related. I think they’re like your little family. Kin by a needle, if you will, people who found a stash of ancient tech, fucked around and got stranded somewhere between man and beast. Senet just covers up her hunger by pretending to be some kind of priestess, but she’s just another animal. The only difference is she has a wagon,” I said.
“Wagon?” The creature laughed, and fresh blood spilled down his chin. His lungs were filling with fluid from the beating, not that I cared, but it meant I had to hurry. He wouldn’t last long. “What you call a wagon is her own personal butcher’s stall. She’ll carve you apart in it and then rape your corpse, you fool.”
My hand flashed out to crack against his cheek, but not hard enough to knock him out. “Mind your tongue. What was your name? Let’s start there. Can’t be any harm in being civilized, can there?”
He looked like he was going to balk, then answered in a wheeze. “Velarus.”
“A fine name. The name of a dead man, but still, just fine. So, Velarus, I won’t spend our last minutes together asking you about your mom, or your childhood, or any of that bullshit because it clearly doesn’t matter. What does matter to me is where you found the nanobots, and how long you’ve been here,” I said.
When he hesitated, I leaned a knee against his shattered ribs, feeling them grind together like broken glass. He stifled a scream, spat bloody saliva to the side, and resumed his hateful glare.
“They blood tech is here, you idiot. It’s always been here, we just found it and started—we tried drinking it, but it killed everyone who did, so we used the needles. The first ones seemed healthy, even better, then they began to change. I’d already tried the tech, but I went last,” Velarus said through gritted teeth.
“A regular fucking hero,” Mira growled.
Velarus laughed at us, his teeth a red smear. “Call me whatever you want. I was the only one who could read the map, and the only one smart enough to know what we were looking at. We found a seed bank, letters, weapons, and a place to live. We found hidden springs, boxed in down below and protected from the sand. I built this place on will alone. I convinced the drooling idiots you killed to dig trenches like on the wall—”
“On the wall?” I asked.
He nodded, tiring but still defiant. “Down under. In the hallways, there are inscriptions of how to make the garden with the seeds and the springs. First came the ditches, then the seedlings. We used shades for the first two years until they could survive, and then the trees began to grow on their own. Soon, animals came, and we didn’t have to hunt,” Velarus said, finishing with a wracking cough.
“Wait, two years? How big were the trees after two years?” I asked.
“Bigger around than your leg and tall. They grow fast,” Velarus replied.
“Genetically altered seeds, I bet. Way too fast for a regular live oak to grow. How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Six years, almost seven. With another two or three years, I would have built a wall and had my city, but the—the others descended too far. They even ate each other, now and again. Not from hunger. Just from being beasts.” Velarus’ voice began to soften. He was dying.
“Is this the only place where there were nanobots? Tell me and I’ll ease your pain,” I said.
Velarus closed his eyes as the darkness came for him. I leaned close to his mouth as he began to slacken, his body shivering in a death rattle of monstrous proportions. “Six in all, but Taksa will never let you leave, and Senet?” He laughed, his lungs a wet bellow. “She will finish what I could not. You’re dead, human. You just don’t know it yet. Just like her slaves, you’ll be in chains.”
“Slaves?” I asked.
Velarus’ eyes widened at my question. “You think her people stay willingly?” He coughed again, the sound closer to his death rattle. “Taksa has four guards, and Senet a few more, but the column that carries them across the sands does so because of fear. You’ll wear the collar, too, boy, and you’ll know the taste of her whip. It’s her special—” His voice faded away, eyes glazing over, shifting to look at something beyond my world.
I raised my gun, but he was gone, his body going still under the cool canopy of his former empire. “We’ll bury him later. For now, we have to get ready for our guests.”
“How long do we have?” Silk asked.
“Could be a minute, could be three days. Depends on how far Taksa was when Beric left to sell us out,” I said, my mouth twisting in disgust at the little spy.
“Do we go into the buildings?” Mira asked, looking ahead at the low shapes. There were several structures throughout the heart of the garden, but only one stood out to my eyes.
“We start there,” I said, pointing to a low concrete housing over an open doorway, the steps descending into blackness.
“What’s our plan?” Silk asked.
“We’re going to have a siege but with evil bastards who think their wagon is the church of pain. We’ll go under, look over our supplies and start prepping our greeting. I intend to give them the very same thing they want for us. Pain, and a lot of it,” I said as we moved toward the entrance building. Overhead, birds were calling, and a lizard darted across the path but not before giving me a parting glance of disgust at having to leave his sunbath.
“Guns? Swords? What?” Mira asked with her lips curled in a feral snarl. She liked the idea of revenge, and I liked having her on my side.
I had an evil grin of my own when I answered. “Eventually. But first, let me introduce you to the idea of booby traps.”
30
Mira stood watch as I descended into the darkened stairwell with Silk at my side, weapons drawn. The concrete was stained and chipped, but in decent condition given the age. I suspected that sand wasn’t just destructive; if something was hidden under the dunes, it would be protected for a long time.
We held torches for light, their flames throwing eerie shadows over walls that were plain concrete, broken only by expansion joints and then, after twenty meters, an interior doorway with two more steps leading down.
“This is what we came for,” I said, my words echoing in the empty space. “I don’t expect trouble, but still—be ready.”
“I’m ready,” Silk answered softly. For a former madam, she was proving to be damned good at the rough and tumble life of a soldier.
We stepped into the room, and all was silent. The hallways looked similar to Alatus, if a bit wider, and the doors were larger and clearly marked. “This is good. The signs are preserved. Be easier to see what we’re dealing with,” I said.
“What’s botany?” Silk asked, pointing to a door on the right.
“Plants. Must be part of the seed bank, where the trees come from. I wonder what else is in there?” I opened the door, and the hinges were smooth
and free of grit. “They oiled it.”
We entered, torches high and eyes wide. The far wall was steel, split by a pair of circular vault doors that were both wide open. Inside, I saw rows of small drawers with metallic labels on each.
“I think we found the start of their garden,” Silk said as we looked the selection over.
There were thousands of seeds ranging from row crops, to trees, to flowers, all in orderly rows. “I don’t know if everything down here will grow, but if even a portion of them do, we can feed a lot of people. We can plant forests and gardens. We can bring back the world if we have enough water,” I said, feeling awed at the possibility before us.
“There are springs here, but the Empty isn’t without water. It’s just a matter of finding it when you need it,” she said.
“Does it rain out here? At all?” I asked, looking through a drawer filled with envelopes of corn kernels. There must have been twenty varieties at hand, and more as I opened a second drawer.
“Enough. The washouts can kill you and after the hard rains, there are frogs, even fish. The water comes and goes so fast, it’s hard to survive, but if we could control it, life would be easier. You could grow all of these things again,” she said. Turning to me, her expression was one of wonder. “Did all of these things really live when you—I mean, in your time?”
“And more. The world was green, the oceans blue. We fucked things up but not so badly that life wasn’t everywhere,” I said.
“I would like to see a world like that,” Silk said, her voice soft, eyes distant in the flickering torch.
“You will. I’ll make sure of it,” I told her. “Come on. We need some specific things, and seeds aren’t what I want, not at the moment.”
“What are we looking for?” Silk asked. We were opening and closing doors based on the signs, but it wasn’t until we reached a second wing that I knew we had a chance to defend the garden.
“This right here,” I said, pulling open a door with a sign that read Security.
“What do—oh. I see what you mean,” Silk said. Before us was an enormous storeroom, shelves groaning with barbed wire, expandable barricades, and crowd control. “How will you stop your devices from killing the slaves? Aren’t they innocent?”
“They are, and we have one goal. To free them. It’s bad enough that the virus created half-humans who stumble around, but I’ll be damned if I tolerate anyone putting humans in chains. We’re going to rig this place smart and make sure we take out the guards at a distance. They’re coming here for a reason, and even though we’ll give up the element of surprise, we won’t lose every advantage. We have the garden, which gives us good cover. We have a rifle, which gives us range. And, we have something else I haven’t really tried yet, but this is the right time,” I told her as I searched the shelves.
“Which is?” Silk asked me, eyes bright.
“Me,” I said, throwing a coil of wire over my shoulder.
“Jack, you can do many things, but—yourself? You can’t sacrifice yourself for all this. It doesn’t work without you, whatever this plan is that you have for the world. You understand that, right?” she asked me.
I kissed her, then pulled her to me. Roses, I thought. Even now, in the middle of a wasteland, she smelled of roses. There were good things in the world, and I didn’t intend on leaving it for a long time. I smiled when we pulled apart, the torches casting shadows and light over her face. She was stunning. She was a reason for planning well, just like Mira was, and just like freeing the people who dragged a monster’s torture chamber across the shifting sands.
“I am the weapon today. My ‘bots were installed the right way, and I’ve had two thousand years to let them get used to my body. Now, I’m going to push them hard, and see just what they can do in real combat. Help me with that small box, and grab those pliers. I’ve got an idea for a greeting party. We don’t have a lot of time, but I’ve got an idea,” I said.
“Does it involve building a fence?” she asked.
I smiled in the dark as we went back up top. “Not at all. We want our friends to visit the garden. It’s a great place to hang around.”
31
“We used these for game, but never for a person. Your people did this? Killed humans in this way?” Mira asked.
I thought of history, and what humans had been doing to each other since the dawn of time. I nodded, twisting a wire loop with my fingers. We were setting snares that used saplings and limbs on the larger trees, covering each with rocks form the paths. Even to my eye, the snares were almost invisible. To someone—or something charging at us with bad intent—they would be an unpleasant end to their day.
Silk came running up to us, pointing into the distance. “Dust. Not a lot, but too much to be an animal. You see it?”
I did. Narrowing my eyes, I felt them focus like lenses. A new trick, I thought, waiting a second for the image to clear. Three figures were coming toward us, with no gun in sight.
“Three people—one kid and two adults, but one of the adults is—” I started, then blinked repeatedly. “Naked? Or almost naked?”
“Out here? Not a fighter or scavenger, then. We’re not that stupid,” Mira said.
The people sharpened after a moment of travel, and I waved that we should lower our weapons. “It’s Lasser. And Natif,” I said slowly, trying to make sense of the third figure, red with sun and shambling in between them. “Might be an ogre?”
“No fur, but tall enough,” Silk said, hand held up to block the sun.
Just then Lasser waved, and even over the distance between us, I could sense the exhaustion in his gesture. The Empty was hard, and he traveled with a kid and someone who didn’t have enough sense to wear protective clothing.
“Let’s take them water,” I said, scooping up our skins and moving away from the garden. The relief on Lasser’s face was a physical thing, and Natif cheered as we made our way to their little caravan of three lonely souls.
I drew up short when the tall man collapsed between Natif and Lasser, going down with a howl of pain and anger. Mira and Silk had their guns drawn, but I could see we wouldn’t need them. The man was dying, and it wasn’t entirely due to the Empty.
“What happened?” I asked, lowering to the sand and tipping the waterskin into the man’s mouth, He was tall, skinny from hunger, and his skin was map of horrible abuse, the whip marks scarring him from end to end. Some were open wounds, the edges angry red, swollen, and radiating a fevered heat that told me he had little time. His eyes were glassy, dark, and his head was shaved to reveal a long skull with vicious marks of torture. “Did you escape the Black Room?” I asked while Lasser and Natif drank gratefully from other skins.
At first, I thought the man would vomit from drinking, but after long swallows, he grew still, opening his eyes wide enough to regard me with open curiosity.
“You are the Traveler,” he croaked.
“I am,” I admitted. There was no harm in telling the truth to this stranger. He was not long for the world, even if I had been a doctor with modern equipment. His body was ravaged by abuse and weather. I was stunned he could speak.
“Where did you find him?” I asked Lasser, who was wiping his lips with gusto. He looked good considering the journey, and Natif seemed none the worse for the wear, being a tough a resourceful little kid.
“He found us just before Alatus. Chased us down, waving his arms and screaming. He was completely sunsick and naked. We put the pants on him, but he tore the legs off struggling and never would put on shoes. He’s been howling about his master ever since. He’s telling the truth, Jack. You’ve got two days until the Black Room and all that comes with it gets here, according to our position. We went as fast as possible form Alataus to here, just to get ahead of them and buy some time,” Lasser said. His long hands shook as he took another drink, but his eyes were clear.
“Taksa and Senet are your—what, exactly?” I asked the man, who I figured to be a slave, although why they sent him out as
a messenger in such appalling shape, I had no idea. The point of a messenger was to deliver a message. This man had been abused to the point of death. That meant Taksa and Senet had poor impulse control and little regard for human life, a combination that meant they could no longer live in my planet.
The man’s face went blank as he began to deliver his message in a flat rush. Even wounded, sunburned and alone, the fear of Taksa was evident on his face.
“My master is coming. He commands you to turn over all of the singing blood to him or face the Black Room. If you do this, he promises you a half-life under the yoke, instead of death at the hands of Lady Senet,” the man said in his rusty deadpan.
“Singing blood?” I asked.
“The cause of life. The power of gods. It is in the holy places, and my masters will have it all, as they are gods themselves. We are tested under them, for they are generous, but we are weak. Some of us die. Some go mad. A few of us survive, but we are imperfect, unlike my masters. They are the sky stuff, made from the light of a power so old none can even dare to know it,” the slave said.
“Well, I know it. It’s not that big a deal, when you—”
“You lie,” the slave growled, his teeth bared in a line of hate.
I put a hand on his forehead, and he flinched as if stung. “I do not, and you know it. Look at my face. Do you see how I speak? What is your name? Does your master give you a name?”
He looked around, seeing no hand raised to him, so he answered. “Carrier,” he said.
“Because you carry messages?” I asked, feeling the rage building inside me. This was a person reduced to the name of a job, and he was dying in front of me. I stowed my anger and tried to put a neutral look on my face to keep him talking, although his eyes were drooping, and he began to shake with chills. The end was close.
“Yes. We all—they take us from the places they find, and then we are broken. Not all of us live,” Carrier said.
“How long did they have you?” I asked him. Mira lifted his head, giving him more water. Lasser, Natif, and Silk stared in horror at his body. It was an abuse of everything it meant to be a human.
Future Reborn Page 19