Reapers

by Ain Soph

  I stay in my cramped hiding spot until the shouts stop and through the trees I faintly make out the Artifs starting to wander toward their homes. I finally release a deep breath and let the tension leave my muscles as much as it can while they’re as tightly bound as they are. I need to stay here until I’m completely certain they’re done searching, but exhaustion is quickly overtaking me and thought I try to stay awake, each blink becomes longer and longer until I drift to sleep, trapped in a tree trunk and defeated by the day’s events.

  ###

  I open my eyes the next morning to the blinding sun filtering through the forest. Dew glistens on the ground in front of and I jump forward, ignoring the ache in my muscles, to greedily suck the water out of the leaves closest to me. My throat is still dry but they helped enough for me to at least not be thinking about water constantly. Brushing off the dirt and bugs that made a home on me while I slept, I find myself briefly thinking of what the aristocrats would think if they saw me. They always freak out whenever a bug is in their presence, as if it should apologize for daring to linger in their path. I’ve never had the luxury to care about such things. That’s not the life of a mercenary or the impoverished.

  I cautiously exit the forest and slowly make my way to the top of the hill where I can look down on the houses below. The rainfall from the night before soaks through my shirt as I lie on my stomach. I strain my ears for any sounds of activity, but they’re only met with ominous silence- same as yesterday. I know the likelihood is that Isoline’s dead but I need to at least try, for the sanctity of my mind, to find out what happened to her. Perhaps the Artifs wanted to question her more about the person she was with (me, unfortunately) since I escaped. There’s a chance, even if it’s small, that they would just do that instead of killing Isoline. There is a chance that they wanted to gauge if I was a threat, and if that was the case, she could still be alive.

  I hesitantly make my way down the hill toward the gap and back to the manor Isoline and I went into yesterday, still keeping an ear out for any sound of Artif activity. Yesterday, I didn’t hear any until we went into the house, but regardless, I thought there would be bustle today because of Isoline’s capture. I grab the jacket I forgot at the back window the day before and twist the doorknob on the back door, expecting it to still be locked. To my surprise, the knob turns easily. I take a deep breath and gently push open the door, expecting the worst. Instead, I’m faced with nothing. No Isoline, no Artifs, only silence and emptiness. I purposefully knock over and empty frame on the end table beside the door to see if I’d draw in any lingering Artifs, but the house stays silent.

  With my heart pounding out of my chest, I sprint to the house beside the manor and try the back door. This door’s unlocked just like the one before it, and the house is, again, empty with no traces that Artifs had ever been there. It’s like the entire camp quietly crept into the night while I slept, but why? Where would they go? They risked their lives to attack a human camp, just so they could call this place home. And where is Isoline? I walk around the house and sit on the front steps, steadying my panicked breathing and looking out at the other houses along the street. Their windows are completely black, insides dark even with the sun shining. The feeling of being completely and utterly alone overtakes me, and I clench my teeth to keep the emotion trapped under my skin. When I embarked on this mission with Isoline, I had, for however temporarily, a partner. I was going to hopefully get some answers that would lead me closer to my family. I even had a new location of an Artif camp to add to the map back at the Remnants, so that other mercenaries would know to be wary of this place. Life was finally looking up, and things seemed to be, for the most part, going my way. Now, I have nothing. Isoline is gone along with the other Artifs and whatever information she had on the shadow government.

  I close my eyes and lean back against the front door, trying to think of what to do next. I could always just return to the Remnants, but I’d be going back empty handed with no new leads on my family. I’d be returning a failure, with an unsuccessful mission under my belt and nothing to show for it but guilt from another death that’s my fault. Still though, if it isn’t back to the Remnants, where will I go? Before meeting Isoline, I had exhausted my resources trying to find as much information as I could, and it got me nowhere.

  I bolt upright as I feel the pockets on my pants, remembering that I still have Isoline’s locket. I yank it out and fumble with the complicated clasping mechanism until it finally clicks into place and opens, revealing a picture of her brother, Dryden. They look similar enough- both have chestnut hair, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. Where Isoline’s mane is pin straight, Dryden’s is a wild mess of tangled curls hanging down to his chin. They both have golden eyes, but Isoline’s is more honey colored. Dryden’s is a deeper, darker shade. Dryden looks older though. Isoline seemed just a couple years younger, but Dryden looks as if he could be my age or even older. He’s more serious, more haunted, with long lashes hanging over tired eyes and dark bags beneath. I don’t know Dryden’s story but he looks like he’s been through hell in his life. I wonder, just for a brief moment, if that’s what my eyes look like to others- dark, haunted, like a part of my soul had given up. Nevertheless, Dryden is my best lead toward whatever information Isoline knew. There’s a chance I’ll find him and he’ll have absolutely nothing new for me that I don’t already know, but if there is even a small percentage of hope that he can provide me with, then I have to try.

  Even more importantly, Dryden deserves to know about Isoline’s fate. Isoline said it had been a year since she’d last seen him, and three years since they’d lived together in this neighborhood. I don’t have a lot to go off of to find him- no wonder Isoline had so much trouble. Fortunately for me though, I have something she didn’t- a network of mercenaries at my disposal that I can use for information on his whereabouts. There’s still a chance he could be kidnapped or dead, and even if he isn’t, finding him could still be a difficult mission. I’ll have to add it to my growing list of personal missions, right beside finding the Crimson Reapers. I’ll just have to see which one I’m able to complete first.

  “There are no accidental meetings between souls.”

  -Sheila Burke

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Humans have the capability to become pathetic creatures, and really, it could happen to anyone. I watch a group of them squat around a meager fire, grunting over a crusty piece of stale bread that’s slowly breaking apart as they yank it back and forth between one another. One of the men who had been previously warming his hands snaps his attention to the crumbs littering the ground in front of him and dives on them, shoving both bread crust and dirt into his greedy mouth as fast as he can. I shift my judging gaze away from the group with more sympathy than disgust. They’re stuck in poverty, sleeping in tents outside the Remnant camp. They’re the impoverished and long ago, my family was a part of them- at least that social class.

  I yawn and stretch my arms above my head, popping the vertebrae in my spine as I do so. The soldier who’s supposed to bring me my orders is taking longer than usual and I have nothing to do but dwell in my exhaustion. Last night had been a late one, and since I’m currently sleeping in my car, I always wake up multiple times throughout the night because of how cramped and uncomfortable it is. I have a home in the mercenary sector of the Remnant militia, but since I like to fill my time between missions with my own work, I usually stay outside of camp.

  So far there hasn’t been much news about Dryden. It looks like I was right about him being hard to find. Right after losing Isoline, I took some time off from doing Remnant missions and went from camp to camp, showing Dryden’s picture. I thought that a mercenary may have possibly come across him on one of their missions, but so far I haven’t had any luck. Eventually, I decided to ease back into missions with the Remnants, taking easier ones that were far below my skill level. I should be taking more difficult missions, but since Isoline’s death, I’ve carried ar
ound a sense of foreboding, as though any decision I make can lead to someone’s death. I can’t take higher level missions where I’d most likely run into Artifs; I’m too nervous and skittish at the thought of even coming across them. I think if I ended up in a position where I’d have to fight an Artif, there’s a good chance I’d just freeze. It’s a mental block that I know I have to work through, but I don’t know how to get past my fears. My confidence is shaken, and I have no idea how to get it back.

  When I started taking on missions again, I thought that perhaps I’d run across Dryden (or at least news of him) while I was traversing the land, but even now, there’s still no sign of him or anyone who matches his description. With the exception of doing easier missions, I feel like for the most part my life has returned to normal. I’m living out of my car, taking missions as they come, and passively looking for clues about the Reapers. I haven’t stopped searching for Dryden, but I’m not getting anywhere and I need to take a mental break from actively searching for him. I already felt like enough of a failure for the trail going cold on the Reapers. Throwing Dryden into the mix just made things harder. I can only take on so much, and my multiple failures are weighing me down little by little. I can still remember a time in my life when I felt like I could soar. Now I’m bound to the very ground I stand on, one step away from falling into quicksand.

  I sigh and tap my foot in impatience. Why is the man taking so long to return? Usually I love being contracted with the Remnants, but they’re not a militia that’s focused on power or efficiency and sometimes it gets frustrating waiting around for them to hand out missions. My first mission with them seemed laughable at the time, but the Remnant’s leader treated it with the utmost importance. I was asked to retrieve the leader’s science books from some random camp he had been staying in. According to him, he was “forced at knife point” to abandon the camp, and in the process lost all of the books he had been working so hard to collect. Hearing his story only further enforced the stereotype that the Remnants are among the weakest of the militias. Later on I heard another version of the story from one of the other mercenaries that said the leader had been attempting to take the books from an Artif camp himself, not wanting to involve anyone else due to the books’ sensitive nature, and while he was trying to steal them, the Artifs returned and he ran. The second story certainly made the leader sound cooler, but in the end he still ran like a coward. A mercenary would never, ever run without completing the mission. Even though Isoline’s mission left me full of regrets, we still completed it. Living the life of a mercenary is without a doubt unbearably difficult at times- most of the time actually, but we’re known as the toughest humans around, the only humans who can go head to head with Artifs and come out victorious. Our lives aren’t as difficult as those of the impoverished, but they’re definitely harder than the lives of the aristocrats- or even the grangers. But mercenaries have bounds of honor in what we do, and when I allow myself a rare moment of vanity, I feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. Some days, those feelings are all that keep me going.

  Ironically, it was that simple mission to recover the science books (even more ironically, I’d probably have a hard time with that type of mission now) that sparked my interest in the Remnants. While most other militias are more interested in looking to the future and advancing their own weaponry and technology to conquer their neighbors, the Remnants prefer to look to the past and study science, history, and philosophy among a platitude of other topics. The science book I had to retrieve detailed the inner workings of the Artifs’ chips, a topic who’s information was hard to come by these days. Perhaps it’s because I live half my stuck trapped in the past, but I enjoyed the Remnants philosophy that humanity must learn from the mistakes its ancestors made, and I was intrigued by their wealth of knowledge and interest in Artifs. Usually after my missions, I flip through the books I’m asked to find, and even if I don’t learn anything from them (science isn’t my strong suit and the engineering in them is hard to follow), I enjoy being one of the privileged few who can read them. In most militias, books are sooner used for kindling than knowledge or entertainment. Unfortunately, it leaves the Remnants a laughing stock, because they don’t focus on weaponry or combat- but I like their aversion to violence. I doubt I’d fare well in a more ruthless militia. My personality isn’t aggressive enough to fit in with them.

  Most of the Remnant mission for me involve the retrieval of non fiction books from different esteemed homes, laboratories, universities, or libraries that have been overrun by Artifs. Most of the information the Remnants are looking for is about Artifs and unfortunately for the mercenaries contracted with the Remnants, most information about Artifs is hidden deep withing the walls of various Artif camps. I’m more than happy to help them though (at least, before Isoline), but only for a price. Even though the Remnants are weak, they’re surprisingly never attacked by either humans or Artifs and rumor has it, they’re under the protection of the Scarlet Reapers. Whether that’s true or not, the Remnants have more information on the Reapers than any other militia around, and I’m willing to do my duty to them as long as they provide me with said information as my payment. Of course, they take their time, never giving me too much information at once- most likely to ensure my continued work for them. But the Remnants are the best chance I have to finding the Reapers, and if the Remnants are able to find information on both Artifs and the Reapers, I’m hoping they’ll be able to help me with finding Dryden. Even though I’ve been easing back into missions, it’s been a while since I last did one for the Remnants, and my stomach is fluttering at the thought of them having any new information I can use. I’m not yet back to my full potential, but I’m ready to stop taking on simple rogue missions. It’s time to get back to work.

  I need to find the Reapers and even more so, I need to get answer- and revenge. The Scarlet Reapers were just a cult that underwent new management before resurfacing, but people see them as a hidden force that presides over the land. It was well known that the Reapers were kidnapping humans off the streets, but no one batted an eyelash. The only humans being kidnapped were rogues and nomads- people that no one cared about because they didn’t belong to a militia. Then, humans started disappearing from the more violent militias, and instead of letting themselves feel concerned, people actually rejoiced, as though the Reapers were saving them all while simultaneously cleaning up the filth off the streets. Violence between the militias lessened due to them worrying about the kidnappings and for a while, people felt safe. But the militias aren’t fighting each other out of anything except fear- fear that they’ll get overrun, fear that there aren’t enough resources to go around, fear for survival- and eventually that fear spread to the Reapers, especially when good people started disappearing. No one was off limits- not aristocrats, not mercenaries, and not my parents or my little sister. Some speculate that the kidnapped are being used in experiments, but no one is sure what kind. After all, it’s just a rumor, and no one wants to dwell on what happens to the kidnapped, not when everyone has a family member that’s disappeared. If that’s truly what the Reapers are doing, then there’s nothing that anyone can do to stop them- they can’t even be found.

  The brutality between humans has diminished with the spread of the Scarlet Reapers, but violent impulses still linger under the surface. Humanity is encompassed by fear, and fear is capable of driving people to insanity. And all of this is because of the Scarlet Reapers pulling strings from behind the scenes, choosing who’s worthy to live and who’s going to be their next victim. I’ll find them, and I’ll get the answers I’ve been desperately searching for- even if I have to retrieve a thousand books, I’ll make the Reapers pay for what they’ve done to this world and my family.

  “Come on!” I pound on the door to the Remnant compound with the side of my tightly closed fist. “I’ve been out here for at least twenty minutes. Let me in, or give me my mission!” I yell through the solid oak door. After pausing for a couple seconds to listen
in on whatever is happening behind the door, I accept that I’ll most likely have to wait longer and sigh, leaning my back against the door and letting my eyes give the compound a once over.