Feral Empires: First Spark

by Stephen L. Hadley

  Gunfire rang out, distant and muffled, but unmistakable. At the sound of it, all the adrenaline that had evaporated in the minutes since their last fight returned.

  If they were still here when the Occs arrived, it would be over. Whether reinforcements from Julie’s village or not, there would still be dozens or hundreds of Occs just waiting to slaughter them. Even if he could survive their bullets, the others could not. He would be captured. He would lose everything.

  Run.

  But, others. There were others. Just like him. Suffering, just as he had. If he left them, their fate was sealed.

  More memories returned to him, not of the Institute. Memories from outside these walls. He remembered charging headlong toward a burning village, downing an Occ officer with his bow, despite knowing it would accomplish nothing. Remembered that overwhelming helplessness.

  He would never have a better chance.

  “Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s go get them.”

  It proved easier said than done. No sooner had they breached the hallway to the next block than an alarm sounded. The siren was piercing. Liam clapped his hands over his ears and backpedaled, certain they’d sprung a trap of some kind.

  He realized his error a moment later, in a flash of insight. He’d heard the sound before, albeit much quieter through the door to his cell. And then, as if to confirm his suspicions, he heard an eruption of distant gunfire.

  “Come on,” he shouted, hands still pressed to his ears. The others followed him, showing similar signs of discomfort at the continuous wail.

  Unfortunately, the siren was not the worst obstacle. That honor fell to the doors on the far end of the hallway. Where the others had obviously been designed for convenience, those now before them mirrored the door to his cell. Both the frame and the doors themselves were made of steel, and reinforced many times over.

  They were also locked.

  Liam did not even try to break it down. He stood aside, permitting Jenn to test her vines. She tried the locks first but quickly gave up with a shake of her head. Neither did brute force prove successful. The cracks above and below the doors were sealed tight and the metal plates did not even buckle beneath the fiercest blows she could deliver.

  Liam was just about to suggest they find another way in when Nora stepped forward. She stilled the agitated flailing of Jenn’s vines with a hand, then glanced between the two of them, smiling.

  “I can do this,” she said. “My enhancement… well, it does weird things to metal.”

  At Liam’s expression, her smile widened and she gestured back the way they’d come.

  “Head back to that block,” she said. Then she hesitated and pointed at Liam’s pistol. “Can I see that?”

  Confused but curious, he handed the weapon over. It was out of ammo, so he wasn’t sure why he’d continued carrying it, but—

  “Go!” Nora said, waving him away. “Trust me, just do it.”

  Frowning, Liam obeyed. He hurried to join Jenn and Kathryn, both of whom peeked out around the corners like the Occs who’d originally guarded the room. There he waited, squinting to make out the details of Nora’s actions. Seeing, however, proved far different than understanding.

  Nora stood, halfway down the hall. She clutched Liam’s pistol in one hand and, as he watched in utter bewilderment, lifted it and delivered a slow, purposeful lick along the barrel. Then she hurled it at the door, promptly turning and fleeing toward them.

  “Get back!” she shouted.

  The door exploded. Liam yelped and toppled backward in surprise. He scrambled to his feet, rushing after Jenn who had darted into the hallway a split-second before him. There they found Nora, flat on her face with her arms shielding the rear of her head. The back of her clothing was scorched in several places, though, admittedly, it was so filthy to begin with that it made the damage fairly irrelevant.

  As Jenn helped Nora to her feet, Liam darted past with Kathryn on his heels. The doors had been blown open. On one side, the door was simply gone. On the other, the lower half had been warped back by the force of the explosion, hinges torn. He paused a moment to confirm that Jenn and Nora were following, then plunged through the lingering cloud of black smoke and into the block.

  ***

  As before, Liam expected to be shot the moment he emerged on the other side of the acrid cloud. And, in a sense, he was half-right.

  There were Occs and they were armed. But there were only two of them, standing opposite him near the center of the room. They were surrounded on three sides by mountains of machinery and hastily overturned tables, and their guns were trained, not on Liam, but on a dozen or so slouching figures with bound arms and covered faces. At the sight of them, Liam froze, mind racing.

  He was too far away. If he charged, the Occs could kill every one of their hostages twice over before he reached them. Kathryn could have made it, but it wouldn’t be clean. They were simply too far. Their best would be to provoke the Occs somehow. If they fired at Liam, he could endure their gunfire long enough for Kathryn to do the rest.

  If only he still had his pistol.

  The wail of the siren ended suddenly, more conspicuous in its absence than it had been in life. Past the ringing in his ears, Liam heard footsteps and turned slightly to spy Jenn and Nora approach. Both froze as he had, once they spotted the Occs and their hostages.

  No one moved.

  “You’re late, Fuyuan,” called a gravelly voice.

  With exaggerated slowness, Wuyong rose from behind a table. It took several seconds for Liam’s brain to recognize the Hunter. If it hadn’t been for his wide, too-malicious smile, he might not have. He looked to Jenn and found her expression of shock mirrored his own.

  Beside him, Kathryn merely growled.

  “You look surprised to see me,” the Hunter said, strolling closer. He appeared to have stopped his transformation mid-way. While his fingers had shifted to their clawed form, his jaw and ears remained mostly human. “Want me to explain? I can, you know. I’m just here to stall for time.”

  “Damn it, Wuyong!” snapped a new voice. The speaker emerged from cover, opposite the Hunter.

  The woman looked to be several years older than Julie, although it was difficult to be sure with her face red and her features contorted into a furious scowl. Her fists hung at her sides, but she seemed to want to raise them. They shook slightly, barely visible within the sleeves of a too-large lab coat.

  “I ordered you to stall them, not tell them you were stalling!” she growled.

  Liam’s heart raced as he studied the woman. There was something horrifyingly familiar about her, particularly the tone of voice she used. It was cold and virtually emotionless. Just like her eyes.

  Turning his head as subtly as he could, Liam spied Jenn from the corner of his eye. He twitched a finger, beckoning her closer. The instant she stepped toward him, however, one of the armed Occs spoke up. He couldn’t hear the words, but whatever was said interrupted the glaring hostility between Wuyong and the woman scolding him. Both looked over at once.

  “Not another step,” the woman snapped.

  Though her words were aimed at Jenn, her eyes stared at Liam with such loathing he felt his throat tighten. It took several strained breaths before he recovered enough to speak.

  “Wuyong,” Liam said. “Explain.”

  The Hunter appeared surprised, as if he had not expected to be taken up on his offer. Then he grinned, stepping closer.

  “This is Zhao,” he said, jerking his head in the woman’s direction. “She runs the place.”

  Oh. That explained it then. Liam had never known the names of those who’d worked on them. In fact, he’d barely known their faces, thanks to the ever-present surgical masks they wore. But he’d noted their mannerisms, observing the quiet deference they offered a handful of observers who looked on as he screamed.

  The woman. Zhao. He remembered her. He had a face and name to attach to his fear, now. And his ha
tred.

  Again, it took him a few moments to respond.

  “Not doing a very good job of it,” he spat, then forced a laugh as he glanced around. Returning his gaze to Wuyong, he adopted a more neutral expression. “I thought you said the Institute was too strong to fight. You said that was why you couldn’t help us.”

  For just a heartbeat, fear flashed across the Hunter’s face. He started to look in Zhao’s direction, like a child whose wrongdoing had been discovered, then caught himself. His eyes narrowed.

  “They are,” he growled. “You can’t even imagine how strong they are.”

  “The only strong one is you,” Liam said. Though he had no idea where he was going with this line of reasoning, the words seemed to come naturally. He smiled, despite the panicked racing of his heart. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Not quite,” Wuyong said. Again, his eyes flickered in Zhao’s direction. “I told you how your escape ruined things. Zhao had already made your Hunter serum. I guess it was easier to give me your enhancement than it was to alter the serum. ”

  “You… you can heal?”

  “That’s right. I could have stood up by the time you lot moved on. You should have shot me again to be sure.”

  Liam laughed before he could help himself. The feeling was so unexpected he had no time to prepare. If Wuyong could heal, he wasn’t alone. There were others. Other enhanced who could understand his pain, his gifts.

  Unfortunately, his laugh could not convey this idea. If anything, it suggested the opposite.

  “Don’t laugh at me!” Wuyong roared. “Don’t you dare!”

  With an audible crack, the Hunter’s jaw distended and his filed teeth gnashed once. He leapt, claws lengthening.

  Liam grunted as Jenn’s vines caught his waist and yanked him forcefully aside. He stumbled, off-balance but upright, and saw the blur that was Kathryn as she moved to intercept the Hunter. They collided in mid-air, then spun away in opposite directions from the force of their impact.

  Wuyong landed first. He hit the ground with a reverberating growl, one claw rising to shield the gash Kathryn had left on the side of his neck. He climbed to his feet slowly, glancing between Liam and the girl as if uncertain who to pursue first.

  Kathryn demonstrated no such hesitation. She landed atop a piece of displaced machinery, crouched catlike on all fours. The midsection of her pink-stained dress had been sliced open and, had it not been for the paleness of her skin beneath, Liam might have missed the wide, bloody lacerations that raked her abdomen. Rather than clutch her wounds or leap toward Wuyong for retaliation, however, she leapt backward, away from him. Away from Liam.

  And toward the hostages.

  Lightning-fast though she was, there was no missing the look of glee on Kathryn’s face as she landed. Her heels struck the first Occ in the shoulders, toppling him. And before his body hit the ground, she’d already torn his throat with her nails and lunged toward his partner. That man had just enough time to raise his gun, but not enough time to fire it before he too fell at the girl’s hand.

  Crying out in rapturous delight, Kathryn pounced on Zhao.

  The woman caught her around the throat.

  Liam was too startled to cry out. And, from the look of astonishment on Kathryn’s face, she was too. Not that she’d have been able to, anyway. Zhao’s fingers tightened and, with the same inhuman swiftness, drew back her other arm. Her hand vanished within the too-long sleeve. When it reemerged, a split-second later, it could not be called a hand at all.

  An enormous spike, white as bone, emerged from her sleeve where her hand had once been. It was easily two feet long and thick as a rifle’s barrel near the base.

  And with practiced efficiency, she skewered Kathryn through the chest.

  Liam felt as though he’d been the one struck. He watched, numbly, as Zhao casually tossed the girl aside. Kathryn landed without a sound, unmoving. Flicking the blood from her weapon, Zhao raised her arm as the spike melted back into her wrist.

  “You see?” Wuyong said. The Hunter stood, hand still pressed to his neck, watching Liam as if gauging his reaction. “They’re too strong. You can’t beat them. Your vampire couldn’t even touch Zhao.”

  Rage, then. Rage and desperation.

  Roaring, Liam charged—not at the Hunter, but at Zhao. He could do it. If he killed her, he could get to Kathryn. In his current state, with his healing so absurdly efficient, he knew he could heal her wounds in the same way that he’d healed Scott’s so many weeks ago.

  Jenn’s vines were still coiled around his waist, but they slipped free without any resistance. Liam didn’t even consider what that meant. All his focus was on Zhao. On how it would feel to wrap his hands around her throat and watch the light drain from her eyes.

  She watched him approach, utterly unconcerned. If anything, she looked curious. Her head was cocked, brow furrowed slightly. That should have been a warning.

  Zhao sidestepped effortlessly, moving with the speed and effortless grace Liam recognized from Kathryn. In the next instant, one of her legs was amid his. Liam tripped, head slamming against the ground. He saw stars and tasted blood, but the first hint of pain he felt came from his back as Zhao’s spike skewered him.

  There was the pain. It was still muted, nowhere near the overwhelming, thought-annihilating wave it should have been. But there was enough of it for Liam to cry out. He thrashed, pain worsening as his efforts tugged Zhao’s weapon through impaled muscles. In the end, his efforts yielded nothing more than a hand on the woman’s ankle.

  She laughed, the sound every bit as grating as a Hunter’s voice, as Liam managed to force her to one knee.

  “Pathetic,” she said. “I expected better, Fuyuan. Perhaps you should have been called Wuyong, instead.”

  Liam’s fingers tightened around Zhao’s ankle. He tried to turn his head to look back, but found he could not. The weakness of his injuries was growing, if not the pain.

  “Jenn!” he called out.

  Again, Zhao laughed. The spike of bone in Liam’s back twisted slightly as she turned to look.

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “Nunongmin is busy. She’s doing rather well, though. I suppose she’s had time to practice. If she knew how to kill healers, I might even worry.”

  Liam forced himself to continue breathing. He could feel his body fighting to heal and the pain was growing worse with each passing second. He’d never tried to stop himself from healing before, but he needed to be in complete control for what was coming.

  “There’s a trick to it, you see,” Zhao continued. Her free hand moved to Liam’s neck and he shuddered as her thumb massaged a spot just above the nape of his neck. She leaned in close, until he could feel the warmth of her breath as she whispered. “Well, two of them, actually.”

  Liam tried to lift himself off the ground. He even managed a couple inches before Zhao bore down with her thumb and drove him back down. He muttered a curse. Was he so weak that even a single finger could manage to restrain him?

  “Normally, you just have to damage the body enough,” Zhao said. “Eventually, even healers run out of macrophages. Or they produce so many that your arteries clog with them. Blood loss or heart attack, one of them gets you in the end.”

  Liam tensed as he felt Zhao’s thumb suddenly grow sharp. The broad pressure of it vanished, replaced with a sharpness that felt terrifyingly similar to a syringe.

  “But your enhancement has matured,” she said. “That’s why you’re not screaming in pain. You heal fast enough it would take a bomb to kill you. Or something equally traumatic. A severe brain injury, for instance.”

  Jenn cried out suddenly, voice full of pain. Liam whirled, or tried to, only have Zhao growl in displeasure and pin him back down with the back of her wrist. A wet, sickening sound filled Liam’s ears and he soon spotted another of Zhao’s spines extending from her wrist into his field of vision.

  And, just beyond it, he saw Kathryn. The gi
rl lay half on her back, half slumped over toward him, surrounded by a pool of blood. Her shoulders still quivered slightly from shallow breaths, but her eyes were unfocused.

  The sight chilled him.

  He was going to die. It was actually going to happen. Liam hadn’t thought his heart capable of pounding any harder than it already was, but it quickly proved him wrong as it strove to pump as much blood throughout his body as it could, before the moment of truth.

  Run.

  Roaring, Liam lifted himself off the ground, once more. And, once more, Zhao’s wrist pressed overwhelmingly against the back of his neck. This time, however, he wasn’t trying to lift his head. Liam hunched his back, forcing himself higher along the spike skewering him. The sudden burst of pain that resulted turned his vision momentarily white, but he didn’t need to see right now. With one hand, he clutched the length of bony shaft that emerged from his stomach. With the other, he dug his fingers into Zhao’s ankle.

  “Nora!” he bellowed.

  Liam had no idea where Nora had found his pistol. He’d looked for it when they entered the block, but the cloud of black smoke had stung his eyes and he’d written it off as destroyed. And, even now, he’d expected something else. But there was no mistaking the scorched and twisted remains of the metal as it bounced and skidded toward him. It came to rest between them, fittingly pinned between Zhao’s foot and his thigh.

  Liam saw Zhao look down, her expression shifting from confusion, to shock, to outright horror. She tried to flee, cursing violently as Liam’s fingers clung to the fabric of her trousers and the blood-slickened end of the spike she’d driven through him. In his weakened state, neither hand had even the faintest chance of keeping her there.

  But, slowing her escape by a half-second? He could manage that.

  Zhao grunted as she twisted away from the warped sidearm, yanking her transfigured arm free of Liam’s back. He tugged hard at her ankle, more surprised than Zhao when he managed to pull her off balance.

  Their eyes met.