Authors: Griffin Hayes
“We need to go to White Rock,” Dhal says and pauses, as though any of us have a clue what he’s talking about.
Ret’s still nodding, waiting for the rest to sp
ill out, when Oleg pipes up. “The testing ground, you've been there?”
“
Of course,” Dhal replies.
Now I'm really starting to get pissed.
“You wanna fill the rest of us in on this private conversation you two are having?”
Oleg clears his throat.
“Any new tech recovered by the Prospectors is first sent to White Rock for secret testing and implementation.”
“
Goliath,” Ret blurts out as the pieces of the puzzle begin fitting together.
“
But I destroyed that worthless hunk of metal,” Bron offers proudly.
Ret tsks.
“You
hurt
Goliath. Technically, it was Azina who killed it by shoving Dhal’s hat down its exhaust pipe.”
Almost on cue,
Dhal’s hand pats the top of his head. “I miss that hat.”
“
It's still there, if you want it,” Bron offers, a mouthful of rotting teeth winking back at the boy. “Might be a touch dirty, but anything is better than looking at that mop you call hair.”
I cut through the chatter and address Dhal directly. “What’s at White Rock?”
“The Titans,” Dhal says. “Goliath’s prototypes.” And that’s when it begins to make sense. Even a genius like Master Lund didn’t get it right the first time.
Ret doesn’t seem convinced. “So
we’re gonna risk our lives over two heaps of scrap metal?”
Dhal shakes
impatiently. “Goliath’s predecessors aren’t scrap. With each generation we made improvements, until we arrived at exactly what Skuld was after: The ultimate killing machine.”
Sneak starts signing and she raises a good point.
I translate for the others. “But can you get the Titans working?”
“
Probably, but that isn’t our biggest problem,” Dhal says, wiping a smear of grease from his hand. “White Rock is heavily defended.”
Oleg
straightens his robes. “One thing you must remember, White Rock is the storehouse for the very technology Skuld has sought to keep from the general population. You won’t find Wardens there. The men who guard White Rock aren’t conscripted, they’re born in White Rock and that’s where they die.”
“An elite force
, cut off from the outside world, that shoots first and doesn’t bother asking any questions,” I say. “This keeps getting better by the second.” And even as the words come rolling off my tongue, I feel that strange sensation wash over me again. A tingling that courses through my body. I glance down and see those sharpened hairs on my arms standing on end, as though an electric current is running through every fiber of my being. That’s when the deep timbre of a man’s voice calls out to me. It’s Skuld, I’m sure of it and he’s trying to get inside my head and make me do things. From a great distance, I hear Oleg say, “cut off and likely unaware the Zees are about to destroy what’s left of the human race.”
Then Ret
speaks and it sounds like he’s talking through an old tin can: “All the more reason we’ll need to convince them.”
Oleg’s about to say something else
, when that pulse firing through my body becomes too strong to resist. Sneak is the first to realize there’s a problem, followed by Ret; but, by then, it’s already too late.
It doesn’t matter that my hands are clasped together as tightly as I can squeeze them. My right whips out and hits Oleg square on the chest, knocking him across the room like a child’s doll. My own strength
, after the transformation, is unbelievable and I’m doing everything I can to regain control, but already I know deep down it isn’t going to be enough. The tingling is surging even stronger and there isn’t any doubt: unless I can stop it, whatever’s inside me doing this is about to kill everyone around me.
Ret doesn’t get a single step closer before I snatch him by his ammo vest, raise him two feet off the g
round, his legs kicking wildly in mid-air, and fling him over the workshop repair table. The sound of clanking tools fills the room as he rolls over bits of pipe and copper shavings before hitting the ground. Dhal might be next, but the kid’s already gone, probably learned his lesson after I tried to crush his throat.
To my left,
Bron raises one of his arms, intent on frying me to a crisp, when Sneak snap-kicks his wrist. An orange gout of flame spews from the nozzle and douses the workshop ceiling. Sneak only meant to stop him from killing me but, with no way to tell him that, it’s clear Bron thinks Sneak and I are the enemy. The big guy’s about a second away from opening up with both his 20mm guns and tearing this place and everyone in it to shreds. Already I can feel Skuld’s grip weakening, but the damage is done. My choices are clear and each one is worse than the last. Either plead with Bron and risk being blasted into mush, or stand and fight. I’ve never been one to beg and, with that, I lunge across the room, reaching him in a single powerful leap, grabbing hold of his thick metal wrists as he opens fire. My hands vibrate wildly as shells tear past my head. He’s so incredibly strong I won’t be able to hold him for long. Both blades eject from his palms and now I know I’m in trouble. Sneak’s trying to get between us, desperate to stop this before one of us is hurt or killed, and her concern might just have something to do with the fact that the roof’s on fire. Before Sneak can do much, Bron sends the heel of his boot into my stomach, knocking me backward. I reach for my Katana, just as I spot one of his blades slicing toward my head. The Katana gets there just in time and the force of it nearly knocks the sword from my hand. I realize then that I’ll never have enough time to recover before the next strike and, as I see it coming, all I can do is hope the end is quick.
The loud clang beside my
head makes my ears ring. I open my eyes to find that Sneak’s blade deflected Bron’s killing blow. Both of us take a half step back and I know right away she’s in trouble. Bron goes at her, swinging madly, and with unmatched grace she dodges his vicious attacks as he first chops the workbench in half and then cleaves a solid Oak chair in two. Wrenches and screwdrivers scatter. The bloodlust in his eyes tells me he won’t stop till we’re dead. I move behind Bron and swing the tip of my boot up between his legs. My foot connects and almost at once Bron doubles over in pain, moaning. I use the narrow window of time to gather my things and burst out of the front door, running as fast as I can down the street.
Smoke is
billowing out of the workshop’s upper windows, but even as I leave I can see Oleg and Ret getting to their feet. I would sooner let Bron kill me than watch them burn. In a strange way, it is comforting knowing that Sneak will get them to safety. Although I can’t deny the very thought of what has just happened is tearing me apart. How could I have stopped it? The force rumbling within me, right before I lost control, felt about as uncontrollable as an approaching tsunami. Maybe if I’d run away before it seized me completely… But, as the Dusters used to say, ‘hindsight is 20/20,’ although I haven’t a clue what 20/20 means. Just one of the many enigmatic expressions we cling to from a bygone era.
Making my way through the ghostly streets of Sotercity, the residue from Skuld stomping around inside my mind
is still there. A tingling vibration, along the edges of my fingers, and something that feels like his hot, stinky breath warming the back of my neck. And the thought makes me wanna wretch. Not just from the sensation, but from what I almost did. Skuld has tried to destroy us before we could move to stop him and I’m suddenly sure he may have just succeeded.
Skuld’s stink is still all over me when a sound
reaches my ears. Angry voices and they aren’t far off, around the next corner at the end of the street, but the noise is bouncing off the walls, making pinpointing the origin next to impossible. And you don’t need to have studied under the Keepers to know that it’s the same mob that chased us earlier. Now that the real threat has left, they’re anxious to relieve their frustrations on the first intact Zee they can find. Which means they’d love to get their grimy little Grinder hands on me. But I haven’t made it this far by being taken down by a group of people who can’t even spell their own names.
I’m assaulted a moment later by a series of pin pricks. I’ve been feeling them since we made it back to the workshop
; I assumed it had something to do with Skuld’s mind games. Except it’s starting to become clear. Those Zees, crawling through the streets on shattered limbs, are having the life stomped out of them by the mob. It shouldn’t anger me, since I did the same myself and, more importantly, since it’s the only real way to stop the Zees from spreading their chemical mutation, but somehow it does.
I reach the intersection of a major boulevard and
practically bump into a pocket of men and women, stomping a Zee body into mush. One of the bastards spots me, before I can disappear around the corner, and I take off at a run, feeling more and more certain that this is likely how the rest of my life will play out. Chased from one gutter to the next by people more interested in knocking the brain from my skull than listening to my attempts to explain the fact that I’m not a Zee.
As I backtrack, it’s apparent some of them
are moving around to cut me off. A moment later my fears are realized when I see a clump of them tear around a corner, hatred flashing in their sunken eyes. They’re threatening to cut me off and force me into a corner, where I might need to fight back. Many of them will die, but they’ll get me eventually, especially now that Ret, Bron, Sneak and the others aren’t here to back me up.
The breath is
wheezing in and out of me, my heart charging along at a frantic pace. A memory of seeing the Hive leader being torn apart by Zees flashes before my eyes and I vow to not suffer a similar fate.
An alley
looms up ahead and I duck into it, frantically praying to one of Oleg’s imaginary gods that I haven’t been seen. I get no more than a dozen steps before I see I’ve made a terrible mistake.
A Keeper pulls back the bolt on his rifle with a threatening click.
“Don’t move a muscle, bitch, or I’ll spray your brains all over the walls.”
Behind him are three other Keepers. They look like guards, not Wardens, but in tight quarters like these, one hardly needs to be a
marksman to land lead on target.
I
remain still, as instructed, ruminating about how much I hate being called a bitch, when I recognize the guard tucked behind the cocky bastard with the gun. He’s got a broken nose and a trail of blood crusting his upper lip. Dark hair, mid-twenties and now I know where I’ve seen him before. He’s the Keeper from the archive. The one Bron head butted into a groggy sleep.
“She’s some
sort of monster.” the cocky one says, nestling the rifle butt into his shoulder and taking aim.
“How’s your head?” I ask, distinctly aware of the angry crowd drawing ever closer.
One of them, with dark skin, turns to the prick with the rifle in my face. “I thought you said these things didn’t talk?”
“I’m not sure
what she is,” says the fresh faced Keeper with the broken nose. “But she isn’t one of those things, I know that much.”
Those footsteps are getting louder and
the Keepers can hear them too. From a low hanging rooftop I spot a glint of metal and a wisp of movement. A smile grows on my lips and suddenly I don’t feel so alone. But the Keeper guard with the gun is arguing with his friends about what to do with me and the grin on my face isn’t making him happy.
“You find something funny, bitch?” he asks
There’s that word again. “Only that you’re too stupid to realize we might just be on the same side.”
“
I’m stupid, am I?” His finger squeezes the trigger peppering me with automatic gunfire and I twist out of the way; but no matter how fast I am, I’ll never be able to dodge a bullet. The first shot slices through my wrist and slams into my chest. Another breaks my collarbone and exits the other side. The last two riddle my abdomen and it feels a lot like the time Bron thought it would be funny to sucker punch me in the gut. I fall to the ground, fully aware that I’m dying. That glint from the roof drops down among them and I see Sneak, perhaps for the last time, and the rage on her face is like nothing I’ve seen before. The first one to die is the Keeper who shot me. Sharpened steel plunges through the back of his neck and into his brain, finishing him faster than he deserves. The dark skinned Keeper moves to raise his rifle and in the process accidentally discharges it, shooting the man beside him. A blade to the spine paralyses him and now there’s only the one with the broken nose left. The only one who stood up for me. I try and tell Sneak to stop, that this one should live, but death closes in before I can tell if she heard me.
Prior Skuld
Councillor Plak fumbles
over a mouthful of words like a child caught telling a fib. “I’ve come before you, Prior Skuld, on behalf of the other council members. These creatures…”
“
Make you nervous,” I say, motioning to the senior member of Sotercity’s General Council.
“
Is that what you’re trying to say, Plak? That you don’t feel safe? That you’re having second thoughts?”
Plak swallows hard. “These creatures,” he continues, “
want nothing more than to tear the flesh from our bones…”
I snicker, still surprised
at how deep my voice has become. The two of us are standing in the ruins of a village that just happened to lie between Sotercity and the capital. Smoke rises from the buildings around us, engulfed in flames. And yet the most dazzling sight is the ocean of dark skinned Zees, standing shoulder to shoulder, as far as the eye can see.
“
Let me ask you something. Have any of the council members been harmed by a Zee in any way, shape or form?” The words come out as a question, but it’s clear by the look on Plak’s face, he knows perfectly well I mean it as a statement of fact.
Plak shakes his head, his eyes lowering with what I can only assume is the same spineles
s streak that made him betray his fellow Keepers in the first place.
“
We would march straight on the capital, depose the Patriarch and you would do away with all of these monstrosities at once, that’s what you said, Prior Skuld. All we’re asking is for some assurances that you can…” Ever the politician, Plak pauses, searching for the least offensive words.
“Control
them,” I say, putting him out of his misery. “You want me to guarantee you and your colleagues won’t be eaten by Zees. That’s really what you’re asking, isn’t it? You’ve seen how they watch you and it’s made you nervous. Well, it should. Our fates, I suppose, are tightly bound, Councillor Plak. Because if something unfortunate should happen to me, there won’t be a thing holding those Zees back from devouring you and your fellow councillors. And believe me when I tell you, the Zees are so very hungry.”
The sight of
the blood draining from Plak’s face is absolutely titillating.
I dismiss him and his petty concerns with a wave of my hand. Watching his crimson robe brush the ground as he leaves, I can’t help marvelling at his rather pathetic obsession with mortality. Over the years I learned to tolerate the Council’s incessant whining and petty squabbles
, for one simple reason. I needed their support to maintain my grip on Sotercity. Once the Patriarch is deposed and each of the ten territories falls under my control, I’ll need someone to take care of the day to day affairs. It’s just too bad those small minded Council members could never grasp the bigger picture.
The Zees are the best disciplined army the world has ever known
and, unlike the Council, they will obey my every command without ever asking why. I would never have subjected myself to Master Lund’s horrendous contraption if another option had been available. The transformation into Zeedom was more shockingly painful than even I was prepared for. Every cell in my body was ripped apart and fused back together, into something that’s barely human. Any doubt of that requires only the smallest glimpse in a mirror to be believed. I’m not human anymore but, then again, in many ways, I never was.
In this new and exalted state, with powers beyond my comprehension, the pettiness of men like Plak and the old world
are all far behind me.
Zees don’t cry or conspire when they’r
e passed over for promotion. A nearly imperceptible order no sooner forms in my mind than some measure of it is being eagerly carried out. That’s when Azina comes to mind. For a while, after the transformation, I’d been distinctly aware of her and the unique threat she posed, which was why I’d reached my hand across the gulfs of space, in that special way only Zees can, and plucked at her stings like a master puppeteer. So, when all sense of her suddenly vanished, there could only be a single explanation. She was dead.
Not that the thought bothers me. The key to taking control of the ten territories begins with the Queen
, locked beneath the capital, not with a lowly mercenary.
Krall,
my nearly eight foot tall Zee general, approaches from out of the gloom, lowering himself onto one knee. The truth is, Krall’s little more than a Hive leader, with a particularly strong signal. He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t need to. Speech between Zees isn’t burdened by anything as crass and barbaric as words. At once, bundles of Zee code begin unravelling before my mind’s eye. Krall’s asking about the humans we’re holding and what we’re going to do with them. I know exactly what he’s getting at. He’s talking about the brave men and women who were trying to defend this sorry excuse for a village from the hordes. But there comes a time when an army has grown large enough. “Feed the villagers to the Zees,” I say. “We won’t need them. Not where we’re going.”