Dissident

by Lisa Beeson

  “We will not hide in the shadows in shame and obscurity any longer. We are meant to achieve more. We are meant to be more. We are meant to be gods amongst men…” Blake’s voice intoned.

  The words imprinted on her brain, searing into the tissue like a firebrand.

  I am meant to be more…

  “Only the Cause can give you purpose and direction. Serving the Cause will help you live up to your full potential.”

  I must live up to my full potential…

  Memories from her childhood flashed by, each drained of all emotional ties, and she was glad to see them go. It felt nice not too feel so deeply.

  Then memories of Ari and Diana started flashing by, and that inner spark that had kept her from being possessed by the demons flickered to life inside her. NO!

  She needed those memories. She needed their love. She needed their pain. She needed every emotion associated with them. They were important.

  The defiant spark gained strength with the fierceness of her determination. And she realized that she needed all the emotions associated with her memories. However damaged and sharp her edges, they made her who she was. Her fortress had fallen, and all her scars were exposed. Yes, she was damaged, but she was also bold and brave and beautiful.

  The effort to siphon her emotions increased its intensity, scraping away and hollowing out the ego and emotions that made her Val, but once her spark ignited, there was no extinguishing it. She had fought too hard her entire life, fought for everything she had. Henry was a monster, but he had given her that. She was not only resilient she was strong. She would fight to protect Skylar and Soren. She would fight for Ari and everything she was. She would fight and keep on fighting until this place was ground into dust and she avenged her precious champion, Diana, and everyone who had ever suffered because of Them.

  Every time they tried to tamp it, the spark flared and pushed back, growing stronger and stronger until it was brilliant and blinding. She felt her power build with its light, and though the volts of searing electricity coursed through her nerves, the pain was no match for her and all that she possessed. The power and its frequency consumed her body and soul, until that was all there was. There was no shame, no apologies. It was. She was.

  When her strength had reached its apex, she was above everything but a single, deep, melodic voice that managed to break its way through. That’s enough, cher. It’s done now…

  She let go, and as the power receded, she felt herself falling.

  Strong arms caught her and she felt small and fragile again. But it was all right, because she was secure. She was safe.

  She opened her eyes as the rubber guard was pried out of her mouth. Though the room was crumbling around them with sparks of electricity bursting from broken fixtures and exposed wires, bodies lying strewn over the floor, all she saw was the kind face smiling down at her. Pride and love for her shimmered around him like a luminescent aura. His eyes were silver now, and he had strange glowing tattoos, but she would have recognized him anywhere.

  My giant... You’re really here… You came back to me.

  His smile grew as a delightful chuckle rumbled in his great chest. “I did. And now it’s time to go home.”

  …Home. The word was like an elusive feather in the wind, wafting close then floating just out of reach.

  He pressed something like a small square marshmallow close to her mouth and told her to eat it. The white spongy cube smelled like a mixture of honeysuckle, vanilla and some kind of sweet citrus. Under the giant’s kind and expectant stare, she opened her mouth. The cube melted on her tongue and filled her up with an effervescent ecstasy. Almost immediately, all the strength that had been drained from her was replenished, her numb nerves revived, and she felt physically whole. Satisfied, a bright light engulfed them and the giant walked onto a green field full of pungent earthy odors. The air was heavy with humidity and the sound of droning insects.

  She heard gasps and shrieks of joy as her giant gently placed her on the ground. As soon as she stepped away, two women practically tackled him, crying, laughing, and squeezing him tight.

  What the hell just happened? How did we get here? Where the hell are we? She had a sense that it was some kind of farm, but before Val could properly take in her surroundings, she was encased in a rib-cracking hug. Val stiffened in the embrace, ready to fight off her attacker.

  “Oh Val, I was so scared when I saw…,” Alvaro said thickly, the rest of his words lost as his tears fell onto her scalp.

  Alvaro?

  “But it’s okay now…you’re safe,” he murmured. “You did it. You made it home.”

  Her reflexive instinct was to push him away, say something mean, and close herself off.

  Accept the love freely given…, her giant’s voice said in her mind. You are worth loving…

  Val had vowed to start living in the light, and she knew that trusting the goodness in others was the first step. To others it might only be a tiny step, but to Val it felt more like a giant leap.

  Fighting back her fear, she forced her muscles to relax as she melted into Alvaro’s embrace. Her heart and soul were exposed – raw, bruised, and vulnerable. Instinctually, she wanted to build her fortress back up again and stay hidden behind its walls. If no one could see her, no one could reject her. But she forced herself to stay open and receptive. Her arms wrapped around Alvaro, holding on and trusting – accepting his love and concern. His steadfast strength suffused into her open heart. Safe in his embrace, her sobs shook her body as she cried ugly tears of joy, remorse, and release.

  One by one, more people joined in the hug, wrapping around her in the protective shell she needed. All glad she was safe. All glad that she was there. They loved her. They cared.

  …I’m home.

  Chapter 17

  “That was good, Cam, very professional,” Paloma’s voice said into his ear. Even over the comm he had no trouble hearing the sarcasm in her voice. “But I guess you got the message across.”

  “I don’t know,” Cam said, while turning off the camera and collapsing the tripod. “I thought my word choice lent it a bit of gravitas. Letting them know we mean business.”

  “If you say so,” she said.

  “Now get your butt back up here,” Myles’s voice chimed in. “Things are about to get nuts in the next…fifty-eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds.”

  “Copy that.”

  Cam stood up and was about to leave, when Randall aimed a glare and a muffled yell at him. Looking back, he saw Randall using his head to motion to his duct tape restraints.

  “What’s that?” Cam asked as he came back over, getting close as if he was hard of hearing. “Can’t understand you with your mouth taped up like that.” He ripped the strip away with a savage yank.

  Randall wailed in pain before letting out a drawn out curse. With that out of his system, he eyed Cam with a stare that was equal parts annoyance and loathing. “I was reminding you to take off these restraints before you left.”

  “Oh right, of course,” Cam said with mock concern. “Here, lemme get that for you.” He grabbed the edge of the tape on Randall’s wrist and dramatically yanked, taking a swatch of arm hair along with it.

  Randall hissed in pain and cursed again.

  “Hey, I think I found a cheap alternative to chest waxing. What do ya say to a bit of manscaping, Randy?” He held up the strip of hairy tape enticingly. “I hear the ladies love it.”

  “What is wrong with you?” Randall asked through gritted teeth.

  Cam grinned and shook his head. “So many things.”

  “Cam,” Myles voice said over the comm. “Get up here now. Something bad is going down in conference room 3.”

  That’s where Val is.

  Without another word, Cam bolted out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He was not sure if it had locked, but he was too preoccupied with worry to dwell on it.

  He made his way up to the chart room in record time. Bursting in, he noticed that
Myles had taken back the second best chair in his absence. Cam let out a sound of protest. He had stolen that chair fair and square the last time Myles had gone to the bathroom. “Hey,” he started, but Paloma shushed him.

  “…get out of there Epsilon. Whoever set the fire must still be close by. See if you can cut them off,” she said into her comm.

  “Grids 4, 6, and 7 are down. Go ahead Beta and Alpha squads,” Myles said into the mic on his headset. “I’m trying,” he answered someone. “Olympus tower is on its own closed system with firewalls on top of firewalls. I haven’t found a way in yet.”

  As Cam reluctantly slumped down in the short, non-ergonomic chair, Myles snapped and pointed to a corner of one of the monitors. “They’re doing something to Val.”

  “What the…” They had Val strapped in to some kind of torture chair, and Blake and some freaky old lady were doing something to her. He could see that she was fighting it though, and he felt a swell of pride for her. …you got this, girl.

  He and Val had not gotten along back at Scion’s Keep, but that was only because Claudia had gotten to him first. He’d been blinded to Claudia’s vileness by her evil, sultry, siren-y ways. But Val had been right about Claudia all along, and Cam wanted to make it up to her.

  Putting on his head set and checking the map, he saw that Beta squad was still close by. “Beta leader, head to conference room 3 in the north west sector. An asset is under threat.”

  “Copy that. On our way,” Cohen’s accented voice said over the comm.

  Cohen was ex-IDF, and had taken the time to teach Cam some Krav Maga moves. Cam had the suspicion that it was more of an excuse for Cohen to pummel him than it was to teach him anything, but he was able to pick up a few moves between the repeated trips to the mat.

  Cam’s eyes shifted from Val to the feed of Gordon pacing the hall outside the conference room, screaming into his phone. He turned back towards the camera, and Cam thought he saw his lips form the words “no, not that, please”. Then the camera appeared to shake. Watching Gordon start to lose his balance, Cam realized it wasn’t just the camera, the building was shaking.

  Looking back to the feed of the conference room, Cam realized Val had just bypassed the restrictor implant in her neck and tapped into something incredibly powerful. Everyone in the room was screaming and holding their hands over their ears, which were leaking blood, as the room shook apart around them. The chair under Val broke apart as she stood up, just before the feed cut out. All the feeds from that quadrant had cut out.

  “Holy sh-” Cam began, but was cut off by Paloma cursing repeatedly, while ripping the headset off her head and standing up.

  A jarring alarm started going off on one of the monitors.

  “What,” Cam asked her, starting to panic.

  “A Hellfire missile was just launched from Olympus tower and it’s headed right for us! We have to get the hell off this ship right now!” Paloma shouted over the alarm.

  Myles grabbed onto Cam’s arm and pulled him to his feet.

  “How long do we have?” Cam asked as he scrambled up.

  “About five minutes,” she answered. “If we’re lucky…”

  “Go tell the captain, and get everyone you can off the ship,” Myles shouted to Paloma, who nodded and ran out the door. After shutting down one last power grid for the island, he grabbed Cam’s arm and shouted, “Come on!” before shoving him out of the room.

  Cam stopped short just outside the doorway. “I’ll go get Randall, you go ahead,” he said then took off running in the opposite direction from the deck.

  “There’s no time,” Myles shouted after him.

  “It’s okay, I have an idea! Go!” Cam shouted over his shoulder, as he continued to make his way through the ship.

  Sprinting down stairs and slim corridors, Cam managed to yell, “Vers le haut!” to the French speaking Tahitian crewmen he encountered, while making an exploding missile motion with his hands as he ran by. He hoped they got the message, unable to stop to see if they understood. There was no time.

  The emergency alarms started sounding, accompanied by red flashing lights. Cam breathed a small sigh of relief – the fewer casualties the better.

  He nearly slammed into Randall, who had just come through the un-locked door to his cabin. “What’s going on?” Randall asked, his eyes frantic. He had just finished getting the duct tape off and was rubbing the angry red welts on his wrists.

  “No time. Big bomb coming. Go now or be dead,” Cam said, shoving him in the right direction, before running off. He had to get to their makeshift armory before it was too late. The seconds passed by like a resounding gong in his brain as adrenaline coursed through his system.

  Bursting into the room and switching on the lights, he praised the heavens above that there was an RPG launcher left behind.

  By the time he got back on deck, most of the crew was either already in or getting into the life rafts. Myles saw him and yelled something, but Cam tuned him out. If this was going to work, he had to do it immediately.

  Looking in the direction of the island and scanning the skies, he placed the launcher on his shoulder.

  ...missile part in the front, fluty end in the back, he reminded himself, as he spotted the missile heading swiftly their way.

  Focusing-in his vision and locking on to the target, he mumbled a prayer to anything listening. Holding his breath, he squeezed the trigger. His body jerked from the kickback, as a cloud smoke blinded him.

  Before the cloud cleared, he heard and felt the satisfying explosion of the RPG hitting its mark in the air safely away from ship.

  Cam pumped his arm in the air in triumph. “Hell yeah!” he shouted. “They’ll have to do better than that!”

  His elation turned to dread when he saw Myles sprinting toward him.

  “A second missile!” Myles shouted right before running head on into Cam, propelling him into the air and sending him cartwheeling over the side of the ship. Falling off kilter in a whirl of chaos, Cam smacked painfully into the water – stunning him with a white burst of agony.

  As the momentary haze of disorientation began to clear, his eyes followed the direction of the bubbles up towards the surface. Looking up through the choppy diffraction of water, the ship combusted in a red ball of fire a second before the force of the concussive blast slammed into him, pushing him along with lethal bits of debris down into the ocean’s dark depths.

  Chapter 18

  ...Sennah held on tightly as her uncle maneuvered through the tight packed crowd of the Malethian marketplace – her heart breaking more and more the further they moved away from the docks.

  Risking a quick glance behind them, she didn’t see the Karno thugs she had expected. It was much worse. They were being pursued by armor-clad Anasaru soldiers.

  And not just any Anasaru soldiers, “It’s the Pheryn Nas, savan,” Sennah whimpered into her uncle’s ear. Her body shook with fear and dread as she watched the eight giant Nahullo soldiers towering over the heads of the crowd; locking onto their retreating forms with the scanners on their insectile helmets. The Nahullo were still a distance off, but they were easily making their way through the mass of beings parting before them out of fear and self-preservation. The unlucky ones were carelessly tossed to the side or crushed under the Nahullo’s heavy boots.

  Something must have gone horribly wrong for Malu, if they sent the most skillfully lethal and savagely brutal beings in their legions after them. Given the epithet ‘the blade of the consulate’, they saved the Pheryn Nas for only the most dangerous enemies to the Anu’Kainat. The Consuls would not dare make such a public display of apprehending them unless the knowledge of her existence was formally exposed to the public. Malu must have lost the case against her. She was deposed.

  They were going to die today.

  “Courage, neh’la ,” Vrahnon grunted, as he ducked into the crowd ahead of a group of tall Taltós tourists, weaving his way through the stores and stalls of the venders, hoping the gi
ants would lose sight of them.

  After a sharp turn, Vrahnon bound down the stone switchback steps to the lower levels. Darius lost his footing midway and fell with a pained yelp as he was dragged down the steps behind them.

  Vrahnon stopped, roughly lifted him by the arm and the three of them ducked into a dark empty alley. Putting Sennah down, he ripped off her cloak and searched for rubbish to stuff it with, making it into a small bundle. Pulling up his sleeve, he deactivated the domen brace’s pull on their torques.

  Kneeling down, Vrahnon’s big hand cupped her face to bring her close, his eyes boring into hers. “Connect our xjaasai so I can show you what you need to know.”

  “What?” The fluttering of her heart and the painful tingling of her scalp were making her mind sluggish. He had told her before not to use her abilities no matter what. She glanced nervously at Darius, who was leaning against the wall, bent over catching his breath and gingerly rubbing his backside.

  “Do it now, child. There’s no time!” Vrahnon growled.

  Sennah put her hands on the sides of his face and rested her forehead against his, connecting their xjaasai and searching his mind for what he wanted to show her. It was the route to the docks overlaid with flashes of landmarks along the way. He showed her how to bypass the dock guards, what the ship should look like, and where it would be kept.

  When he showed her all he needed her to know he pulled away. “You must go now, Sennah. Don’t look back. Get lost in the crowd and head straight for the ship as fast as you can. I’ll lead them in the other direction.”

  Sennah’s breath caught in her chest as his fatalism settled around her. He was leaving her alone. “No, savan. I cannot go without you! I won’t!”

  He grabbed her tiny shoulders and gave her a firm shake. “You must!” he hissed impatiently. “You will get on that ship and you will live. Or all of this will be in vain.”