Descend- First Steps

by David Burke

  It was over so fast. The dagger encased in shadowy energy ripped the neck wide open and its bloody gore gushed out all over the ground. Through the spear, Jay felt the beast’s muscles convulse and then go slack. He held for a second more before pulling the spear free.

  Grinning, Amelia said, “See I told you we would make a good team.”

  A rush of emotion ran through Jay. He thought that she was either going to be the death of him or end up being his greatest vice, but all he said was, “And you were right.”

  “I like the sound of that. Practice that. It will probably make things go smoother.”

  “Dream on. Now do you know where the second cat went to?”

  Amelia simply shrugged while they were both looking around. Behind him he heard Jasmine's voice, “It is chasing a couple people who ran up towards the ziggurat.” Jay suddenly felt conspicuous as Jasmine obviously put two and two together taking in his and Amelia’s appearance.

  “Do we go after them to try and help or stay and deal with the owlbear?”

  “Owlbear?”

  “It’s a bear with feathers,” Jay replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

  “As good a name as any. Liam is helping with that one, can you please go and try to save those others?” Jasmine asked but it sounded more like an order.

  Jay nodded and gripped his spear headed after the others when Jasmine started to direct Amelia, who cut her off and simply said, “I’m with him.” before disappearing into the shadows.

  Two minutes later, they came across the body of one of the runners; her hands were grasping at her own intestines trying to keep them inside. The smell was as gruesome as her cries of help punctuated by agony. Even worse was the way she looked at him expecting Jay to somehow save her. He had no idea if the healers would be able to save her but he sure knew he couldn’t do anything for her. “I have to try to save the others,” Jay said, trying to be sympathetic but honest.

  When her pleading didn’t move him, she said in a broken voice, “End it…. Please.”

  From the shadows he heard Amelia say, “If you can’t do it, I will.”

  Something in Jay rebelled at the idea of letting Amelia do this gruesome task. Maybe it was how quickly she was willing to do it or maybe it was simply that he didn’t want a girl to have to do that. Either way he decided to do it himself. He immediately thrust the spear into her throat and with stamina pumped into his enhanced strength the sharp metal tip went through her like she was butter and severed her spine, instantly ending her suffering. The body disappeared. There was no flash of light or blue sparkles. Simply her body had been there one second and the next second it was like it fell through the ground and was gone. All that remained was a water canteen, not even a pile of credits.

  The world trembled around Jay. He felt dizzy for a brief second and a star flashed in his eye before he shook his head. He felt Amelia’s hand on his arm. “I’m sorry but you spared her.”

  Shaking his head to clear the fogginess Jay pulled away from her touch. “It’s not alright but I can’t stop to think about this now.” Then he started to run faster following the sounds of crying up ahead of him.

  When he found them, there were two of them huddled up in the corner of the ziggurat between the stairs on two of the sides. One had a flame literally burning in the palm of her hand and the other lay at her feet moaning and crying. As Jay ran up he raised up his empty hand to try to show he was there to help while lowering his spear.

  “Don’t shoot or throw that fire thing at me. Or whatever it is you do. Jasmine sent me to help.”

  The girl with the burning hand just nodded but didn’t say anything, so Jay asked, “Do you know where the cat thing is?”

  He got a closer look at the standing girl. She was clearly of Asian descent. If he was guessing, Japanese. In daylight and not when fighting for their lives she probably would have been another striking beauty with her delicate doll-like features. “I don’t know. I was so desperate after Salma and Jessie got hurt that I somehow made this fire.” She was speaking rapidly and was hard to follow. “It doesn’t burn me. Don’t know how but it doesn’t burn me.”

  “It’s okay…” Jay began before Amelia materialized, startling the girl and said, “You really are helpless at this.”

  Then looking at the girl she said, “I’m Amelia and this bonehead with the spear is Jay. We are here to kill the monster. What’s your name?”

  “Meikiyo.”

  “Good, glad to meet you, Meikiyo. Now do you know which way the big cat went?”

  “No, it saw my fire and ran.”

  As the two girls spoke, Jay had that same tingly feeling starting to build again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out another of the rocks. The feeling wouldn’t fade, but he couldn’t see the cat anywhere. Jay fought the feeling but then decided it wasn’t worth it. Every time this feeling had been right. So without any more delay he reared back and threw the rock as fast and hard as he could aiming for an area just a bit above Meikiyo’s head.

  The rock flew true for the spot he aimed without really knowing why and he pushed all the PSI into it he could, forcing it to accelerate three times. An instant later, Meikiyo shrieked in terror and flung the glob of fire at Jay. First his rock impacted the cat as it was leaping from a hidden perch on one side of the stairs above her. It hit true and smashed the beast’s head into the wall. In almost the same moment, the burst of fire smashed into Jay’s bare chest and knocked him to the ground while searing his flesh with a sickening smell and intense wave of pain that just wouldn’t go away.

  Amelia had the presence of mind to make sure that the cat was dead before coming to check on Jay. He wasn’t sure whether he was upset that she wasn’t more immediately worried about him or happy that she had such combat awareness. He still enjoyed hearing her lecture Meikiyo about trying to kill the person who was saving her life. For his part, the pain of the burn was already starting to die down. He pushed stamina into his regeneration skill and soon it felt like nothing more than a bad sunburn.

  He asked the two women if they could make it back to camp with them but they both seemed paralyzed by fear and so Jay said, “I’m sorry to leave you but there was still another monster back in the village and I need to go make sure they killed it.”

  Jay looked at Amelia who spoke before he even said anything, “Don’t even think about it. I stay with you. If they don’t want to come that is on them. You can’t save the unwilling.”

  With that Jay was running back to what passed for their little village. When he arrived it was worse than he thought. There were dead all over and wounded who had been mostly dragged to the side, but in the middle of the ring of bungalows the owlbear was still raging. A couple of the girls seemed to have some limited bit of control of their skills and were trying to keep it in place. Kenzie was shooting small slivers of what could have been ice at the creature but didn’t seem to be causing any serious harm other than infuriating the creature. Mia was waving her hands and flashing some light-type thing which seemed to be disorienting the beast and vines were wrapped around its feet which were keeping it from freely moving. It wasn’t clear how long the creature would be snared though as he could see Huong, presumably the source of the vines, straining and already down on one knee.

  In front of the beast and barely moving was Liam lying on the ground. A quick glance showed that he had suffered a tremendous wound to his left shoulder for that arm was practically hanging off. Jay didn’t wait to be told what to do but pulled his final rock out of his pocket. He threw it empowered with all of the strength he had and then managed to accelerate it again. The stone slapped into the bear’s chest rather than its head but there was still the clear sound of bones cracking and the creature was knocked prone even as the force of its fall ripped the snaring vines the rest of the way out of the ground.

  Jay rushed forward but stopped short as this beast was still very much thrashing about with four-inch-long razor-sharp claws attached to massive paw
s. He wanted to pick up more rocks but was worried that by the time he found a suitable one that the bear would be up and rampaging.

  It was odd. That moment of hesitation. Before he hadn’t been shy about attacking. He could see the opening; sense the right place to strike. It was that same sort of premonition. Yet now he didn’t want to die, he felt torn. “Stay back, Amelia, only attack if you get a safe opening.”

  Jay heard a snort from her but couldn’t give any more thought to what she was doing. He just had to hope that she would listen to him. In his need to win while staying safe he pushed himself to try something new. He poured Stamina into his Hardened Body and Enhanced Strength skills at the same time. He felt the drain immediately. It was much greater than when pushing into only one skill. Still he tried harder and pushed it into Enhanced Speed as well. The pain in his chest was intense as he felt himself being emptied of energy and warmth, yet it was undeniable. As he moved to thrust his spear into the creature’s exposed throat he was moving faster and he felt like a truck.

  Even then Jay wanted to try one more thing. He pushed Psi into Accelerate skill and tried to guide the force down his spear even while he was thrusting. The pain blossomed in his head and he felt dizzy but he was already committed to the thrust. He felt both like he was being torn apart and like an unstoppable engine of destruction at the same time. The spear tip tore open the bear’s throat; not just piercing it but literally striking with so much speed and force that it was ruptured wide open.

  The gore that sprayed forth in copious amounts was the last thing that Jay saw before his body went numb and the pain in his head exploded into stars followed by darkness.

  Interlude 1 - Politics in Science

  The control console was sterile. Everything in this place was sterile. D’varn Nitor stared at the readings. This was unexpected. Again. They wouldn’t be pleased. It wasn’t as though the entire project rested upon him, but he had been one of the ones who spoke up most in favor of it. And why not? Decades of research showed the potential. He just needed to find the right circumstances to develop that potential.

  D’varn’s proximity sensor located in the implant that all of his race were equipped with notified him that another had entered the room. It even told him which other by reading the signal put off by the other’s implant. Not that he needed the notification. Another error signal had gone off, and he always came running when those went off. Well, running was a throwback expression. None of the A’snkarnt had run or even walked anywhere for centuries.

  Mentally ordering his hoverpod to turn towards the newcomer, D’varn said, “Greetings S’vanth.”

  “Which of your pets have gone astray this time?” came back the flat response. Emotion had supposedly been bred out of their race millennia ago but D’varn knew that wasn’t actually the case. His kin might be rather flat in their affect with expressionless faces, but he knew that petty emotion still boiled within their minds. He knew it for he felt it himself.

  Still there was no point in arguing so he simply said, “The warning came from Cluster 512.”

  If it were possible, D’varn would have called the expression upon S’vanth’s face a sneer but there wasn’t really enough facial tissue for such a description. “Isn’t that the same one that had the loading error and had a potential warning earlier today. Now a full-fledged warning less than a tenth of a cycle later.”

  “Yes, and what of it. It is also one that has several subjects that are showing early signs even during the 2nd cycle.”

  “Then why so many warnings?”

  “Core-frame has not been able to identify the basis of the loading error which occurred during the forced awakening. It has only been classified as a temporal anomaly,” D’varn answered.

  A forceful exhale was what passed for a snort amongst his kin, and what he received from S’vanth. “Temporal anomaly? You know that all temporal experimentation was banned by the Supreme Council and how many things in the known universe are there that the core-frame would fail to identify.”

  “Don’t you see, this is what makes these hoomans so interesting. They defy our understanding in many ways.”

  “That is what makes them and even this very experiment a dangerous waste of time,” S’vanth said.

  “Their dangerous and unpredictable nature is what makes them interesting. The war will not be won by conventional means. If it could be, it would have long since been over.”

  “Fine, let’s get this over with. What are the other warnings about?”

  D’varn paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. “The potential warning was about one of the subjects killing another subject and the current alarm was because one of the subjects overloaded by using physical and mental energy at the same time to the point that he nearly popped.” He spoke quickly hoping to cause S’vanth to think he was trying to gloss over one of the two events.

  “Which classification of subject killing which type?” S’vanth’s question came slowly as if he was looking for something that D’varn might be hiding.

  “That is where it gets interesting. It was an M-class subject killing an F-class subject. This is the first time for such an equation. In all previous clusters, even those still functional, there has been M-M, F-F, and even some F-M but never yet have we had a M-F.”

  “So you are excited because one of your subjects somehow snuck homicidal tendencies past the psych evaluators? This is just further proof of the defectiveness of the hoomans. Truly sapient races don’t kill their own species and even in herd animals the males don’t kill breeding-age females. It simply isn’t productive.”

  “But you didn’t ask me why M1789 killed the F class. I reviewed the logs and it was rather informative.”

  S’vanth gave the equivalent of an A'snkarnt eye roll before asking, “Fine, why did your homicidal little test subject kill the other one?”

  D’varn felt some excitement. Differences were what he was looking for. Killing in fights over potential mates or in displays of dominance or even to protect against the unwanted advances of another had all been expected but no A’snkarnt with their incredibly long lives would consider acting in the way that M1789 had. “The F class was terminally wounded and given their currently limited means, irreparable. M1789 simply accelerated the termination. If I were guessing the M class was attempting to end the suffering of the F class.”

  “Odd, and what about the last warning?”

  “One of the M class activated three physical core-based skills at the same time that he activated a mind core skill. He was almost drained completely and unable to bear the strain. If he had not passed out he likely would have imploded.”

  S’vanth moved closer to look at the reading himself but D’varn blocked him. “This is my work station, I report to you as the representative of the sub-committee on oversight but my work is my own.”

  Pulling back just before their pods’ kinetic dampeners engaged, S’vanth said, “Very well, but you will need to monitor this more closely and provide a report in detail to the full committee.” With that the overseer began to float out in his pod until he had almost left the room. “By the way, what was the designation of the M class that almost overloaded?”

  “M1789,” D’varn said simply.

  The two stared at one another briefly. The slight tilt of S’vanth’s head told him that the overseer felt that he had caught the piece of information that he had been hiding. “Well make sure you include a detailed work-up on M1789 then in your report.”

  Once he was alone again, D’varn breathed a sigh of relief. He had been able to contain the most interesting piece of information. Just after M1789 passed out there was another possible temporal anomaly registered by Core-frame. It couldn’t be confirmed but a good scientist didn’t believe in coincidence. D’varn thought to himself that he had a great deal of work to accomplish before his report was due in just over 998 cycles. Perhaps M1789 might be what he was hoping for, but again, good science is not built upon hope.

  C
hapter 19 - Cleaning Up

  Jay found himself floating in a pool of absolutely black water. Not like cold, deep water, kinda black, but more like pure black ink. The water lapped against him and it seemed like he could hear a sound in the background; almost like a wailing. All around him were some of the girls he had been getting to know since finding himself, well wherever it was he had been for the last couple of days. Amelia was there, along with Huong, Kenzie, Mia, and even Jasmine. Each of them topless and displaying beautiful breasts ranging from just more than a mouthful to well, more than a handful.

  Normally, Jay would have been ecstatic to be surrounded by so many topless beauties all running their hands over him. Well, maybe ecstatic and a bit nervous that he was in way over his head, but now all he could feel was a certain low level of fear. Something wasn’t right. He didn’t know where this place was, where he was. None of it made any sense. He tried to piece together the last thing he remembered.

  The bear, that was all he remembered. That and being worried. He had tried to use all his new powers at the same time. It worked, didn’t it? Yes, he clearly remembered seeing the owlbear’s throat ripped wide open. He was going to call it an owlbear at least in his own head. Heck, it was a bear with feathers. Then he remembered getting really cold, like hypothermic cold and having a splitting headache at the same time.

  Poof, here he was. Maybe he had died from the strain or something. Looking around from tantalizing angle to tantalizing angle, Jay figured it could have gone worse.

  Then he once again heard something no guy ever wants to hear when staring at a half-naked beautiful woman or women in this case; a guy’s voice coming out of her mouth. Worse, not just any random guy’s voice, but his own voice. It didn’t matter which one he looked at; the voice hopped from pretty face to pretty face perfectly in sync.

  Stop being distracted. Focus. Take control. Forge a new path. Not all at once. 998 cycles left. Must descend. Grow more.