Nascent Decay (The Goddess of Decay Book 1) (23 page)

Eat, drink, and be merry
, she thought,
for tomorrow we die
. She was pretty sure she had heard that in some history class. She felt a pang of nostalgia for a moment, a sorrowful longing to be the naive girl with a sheltered life again. It felt like a lifetime had passed, instead of almost two years. Rhylie stood up, and with a leap she cleared the rim of the crater.

She took off in a sprint across the surface of the moon, kicking up a trail of dust and debris. She leaped over craters, gliding across the lunar surface like a wild rabbit running freely for the very first time. Ahead she could see something that appeared to be a small mountain range. Feeling adventurous, she continued to sprint across the ground, faster and faster.

As she made her way up the face of the small mountain, she looked behind herself. Her trail of dust and debris stretched off to the horizon, the fringes of it drifting off into space. It would remain like that for awhile she guessed. She couldn’t see her supposed guards anywhere. As she topped the ridge, it gave way to sheer sides that dropped nearly two miles into an enormous bowl. She could barely make out the far side.

Spreading her arms wide, she leaped over the side of the crater, slowly drifting to the bottom. When she finally climbed back out, several hours had passed. She met her guards coming back down the other side of the slope. They made the long, silent walk back to the base together.

It was time to face the music.

*

Once they had made it back to the base, Adanna and Lamara were waiting for her with Marcus. She was given a visor to wear and told to change her body into a military uniform.

“No one must know you are here,” Adanna said. “We should have left for Earth hours ago.”

“We have time left,” said Rhylie. “I want to spend it alone, with my parents.” Adanna frowned.

“Your life is not the only one at stake here,” she said coldly. Marcus put a hand on Adanna’s shoulder.

“We owe her this much, Adanna,” he said. “A little more time won’t hurt. The ceremony isn’t for another twelve hours.” Adanna cut him a sidelong glance.

“From what Rhylie has told us, Vorcia is not to be taken lightly,” she said. Rhylie snorted.

“She’s a liar,” Rhylie said. “Cold, emotionless, calculating.” She frowned darkly. “She can’t be trusted. She’s up to something, I know it.”

“We have no choice, Rhylie,” Adanna said. “We have reason to believe the Siirocians have been eavesdropping on our communications. We believe they have reverse-engineered your tech specs and utility device to hack into all our communication channels and databases. We fear every layer of our security may have been compromised.” She said in a hushed voice. “No one but us can know you are here. If word got out on one of the broadcast channels…who knows how she would respond.”

“You always have a choice, Adanna,” Rhylie managed to respond. “Some are just easier than others.”

“When your decisions affect over a trillion lives, there is no room for ambiguous morality,” said Marcus sternly. He was not a man that was accustomed to being rebuked, it seemed. “None of us like having to do this. Ivan is terrified of her. Even Connor sends you his regrets. I doubt he’ll ever forget meeting you.”
I doubt he will either
, she thought.

“I just don’t want to be remembered as a monster,” Rhyle responded sadly. She remembered the fear her little brother had shown of her, the look of terror on his face. It reminded her of Bart’s expression as he was torn apart by Siirocian munitions.

“We will have you declared a hero,” Marcus said, too quickly. “Your sacrifice will be shared and known by all humanity.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said.
I suppose that’s the best I
can hope for anymore
, she thought bitterly.
Some lip service at a ceremony
.

“We’ll establish a monument to you, dear,” Adanna added, cooing.
Have they been practicing this?
she wondered. “A statue and reflecting pool. Your sacrifice will never be forgotten.”

“Thank you,” Rhylie managed to say. The reality of it all was finally sinking in. “If I could just have a couple more hours with my parents, that would be nice.”

“I suppose a couple more won’t hurt,” said Marcus with a sigh.
As if it were really his decision,
she thought smugly.

“Thank you,” she said instead. There was no reason to cause waves now, with the end so near. They were escorted to a private quarters nearby, and guards were stationed outside of her door to keep anyone from entering. She began fidgeting once they were alone.

“Please tell Ben I’m not a monster, okay?” she asked nervously. “When he’s old enough to understand.” Her parents exchanged meaningful looks with each other before looking at her with mournful eyes and nodding their heads. Her mother stepped over to hug her.

“We’ll never forget you. We’ll never let anyone forget you,” her mother said softly, as she held her close. Rhylie could feel her mother’s tears on her cheek.

“I know you won’t,” she responded. She felt her father’s arms wrap around them both.

“I can’t-” her mother choked out, “I can’t let you go again.” Rhylie squeezed her tighter, being careful not to crush her.

“You have to,” she whispered softly as she struggled to hold her own tears back.

*

As Rhylie made the long walk to the waiting ship with her parents, she kept glancing up at the Earth. Half of it was hidden in shadow. She paused in the airlock to gaze up at it sadly. It was most likely the last time she would ever see it like this. She wanted to be able to fabricate it if she were returned to the Chamber. There were three hours remaining until the ceremony, still plenty of time.

“I understand why you can’t go with me,” she said numbly as she took her eyes away from the Earth. Her mother stepped over to her to take her hand.

“We’ve already left Ben with your Aunt for too long,” she said. “I don’t know…I don’t know if I could bear to watch anyway.” Her mother looked away as fresh tears welled in her eyes.

“I don’t think I want you there, watching,” Rhylie said. She didn’t need to be second guessing her decision at this point. She was still unsure of what Vorcia intended for her.

As she turned to hug her mother and tell her goodbye for the final time, something caught her eye. A streak of light flashed across the sky, headed for the Earth. Behind it lingered a decaying beam of white, like the trails from a jet across the sky. Everyone curiously turned their attention towards it.
Was that a comet?
she asked herself.

“Whatever that was, it was fast-” Marcus began to say when a pinprick of sterile white light began to emanate from the spot where the object had struck. The light began to spread across the surface of the planet, growing in intensity until the Earth was entirely consumed by the bright flash of unadulterated brilliance. Rhylie put up her hand to cover her eyes, but the light continued to escalate, until it bathed the world around her in a blinding, barren glow. She covered her head in her atomorph skin so she could see through the intense light around her. Then she felt the radiant heat wash over her, like molten metal showering her. Around her she could hear screams and wails of inhumane agony.

She turned frantically to find her mother and father covering their faces, the skin on their arms bubbling and erupting before sliding from their arms in shredded rags of flesh. She could see the bones in their forearms crack and splinter before charring beneath the unrelenting waves of intensifying heat.

Her mother’s hair burst into flames as she fell to the floor. She was no longer shrieking in pain. The world around Rhylie was now utterly silent. Her mother’s scalp began peeling back from her head in massive flakes, exposing her skull. Rhylie fell on top of her, in a futile attempt to shield her with her body. The light and heat consumed her more and more by the second, until Rhylie thought her own skin would begin to burn and melt from her body like slag.

Then the shockwave hit. She was slammed through the ground with more force than she could have possibly ever imagined, tumbling uncontrollably through rock and debris as everything around her was completely and totally annihilated. She felt a massive wave of vibration pass through the rocks around her, followed by a deafening crack that left everything deathly silent and in a state of repose.

She began struggling to claw herself from the debris, through dust and rocks and pieces of slagged metal. An hour later she emerged from the massive crater that she had created.

Only a bare ember of the Earth remained, a tiny, glowing fragment of what had once been. It looked like a distant, dull red star fading hopelessly in the black sky.

She crawled from the crater with a massive headache, her vision still blurred. Her atomorph skin was barely responsive, and her cyberbionic skeleton was behaving in a spastic fashion, as though it were broken. She felt no pain other than the blinding pangs that pounded through her skull.

Looking around herself, she could see that the lunar surface had been scrubbed clean, as though freshly swept. Other than her own crater, there wasn’t a single mar on the ground.

Sparkles of light glittered across the landscape, and it took her a moment to realize that they were crystals mixed with shards of glass. She dropped to her knees and rolled back down the rim of the crater. She curled into a fetal position and wondered if anyone would ever find her.

She eventually fell into a fitful, waking sleep that was peppered with half-dreams, where charred skeletons screamed and begged for her help as they crumbled around her, while she could do nothing to save them. When she finally fell into a deeper, dreamless sleep, an alien ship arrived, hovering over her crater.

A bay door opened on the belly of the ship, and a beam of light shot out, striking Rhylie. She began to rise up from the surface of the moon, and was pulled slowly into the ship.

Nova Phoenix

Isaar

Isaar and Drasce lay in bed together, their bodies intertwined underneath the covers. Drasce had his head on Isaar’s chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat. Isaar’s fingers traced paths down the scales covering the top of Drasce’s skull, stroking his head softly.

“I am sorry I dragged you into this,” Isaar said softly. Drasce shrugged his shoulders.

“I’ve never even been to my homeworld,” Drasce said. “The entire galaxy is my home.”

“I do not understand how you can be so flippant about it,” Isaar said sullenly. Everything was falling apart around him and the only thing he had to cling to was Drasce.

“It’s like losing something you never even knew existed, I suppose,” said Drasce, snuggling closer to him. “Besides, my world is right here with you.” Drasce had already given up everything to be with him, in a way. He had been a woman when Isaar had first met him. But Isaar wasn’t attracted to women, and Drasce wouldn’t take no for an answer. The obsession had been cute and harmless until a quick transgender modification procedure had literally changed everything, and now Isaar felt as if he owed Drasce more than just himself.

“Several trillion lives extinguished, and you do not even care,” said Isaar.

“Not as long as I have you,” said Drasce. “Nothing else matters.” Isaar grunted.

“There is more to this than just us,” he said. “Our lives are not the only ones that matter.”

“You’re so manly,” Drasce murmured into Isaar’s chest, changing the subject. His fingers traced the scar left on Isaar’s side. Human medical technology had been crude, but sufficient. It still hurt more often than not, but he would live. “How do you do it?”

“What do you mean?” Isaar asked softly. He did not want to ruin this moment; they were preciously few and far between as it was.

“You…just walked right into the belly of the beast. What if they’d taken you to Earth for the ceremony?” he asked quietly.

“I would not have let it get that far,” Isaar said reassuringly. “I will always come back to you.” Drasce stiffened in his arms.

“You can say that,” Drasce said softly. “But that doesn’t make it true.”

“As long as we believe it is true, then it is true,” said Isaar. “And nothing else matters.” Drasce shrugged his shoulders.

“She is going to be even more dangerous now, you know,” he said as he began tracing circles idly on Isaar’s abdomen with his fingertips.

“She is not dangerous,” Isaar said irritably. He was tired of having this conversation over and over with everyone. “She is just a scared little girl. Like Mersi when we found her.” Drasce snorted.

“A good purchase that one was,” he said dryly. Isaar pulled himself away from Drasce and propped himself up in the bed.

“We could not just leave Mersi there. You know what they were forcing her to do in that brothel,” he said with a hint of anger. Sometimes it seemed like Drasce just enjoyed pushing the wrong buttons, and Isaar was protective of Mersi. She was the closest thing to a little sister he had. Even Noura had never needed him like Mersi did. “I do not know how I would have been able to live with myself if we had left her there.” Drasce sighed with frustration.

“I compliment you on your masculinity, and then you turn around and remind me of how sensitive and kindhearted you are,” he said with a hint of mockery. “One day caring for all these strays will get you killed.” It was Isaar’s turn to shrug his shoulders.

“They are not strays,” he replied. “They are people, just like us.”

“If you say so,” said Drasce with a sassy tone. He was trying to be playful, but it just came across as obnoxious. “What about Rahve? Is he people like us? Sometimes I think you just like having his muscles around.” Isaar stood up and began getting dressed without responding.

“Ohhh, don’t be like that,” Drasce cooed from the bed. “There’s no reason to go and put your clothes back on. I like having Rahve’s muscles around too.” He was easily the snarkiest person Isaar knew. “I was talking about Vorcia anyway. It fits Rhylie too, though.” Isaar froze for a moment. Sometimes he felt like just walking out in the middle of these conversations with Drasce. But then he remembered what Drasce had given up just to be with him. Sometimes he felt chained to him. He surely felt responsible for him. And at the same time, he didn’t know what he would do if anything ever happened to him.