Corruption

by Adam Vine

  “I figured as much,” I said.

  “These nightmares you’ve been having – my friend had them, too - they don’t sound like dreams to me at all. They sound more like memories. More specifically, someone else’s memories that have been implanted in your body by the delivery mechanism of a sexually transmitted bacterium or virus.”

  “Memories?” I said. The thought had never occurred to me.

  “You said you’ve never heard of genetic memory?” Ink said.

  I shook my head. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Genetic memory is the theory that, over the eons, traces of our memories become imbued in our DNA so that future generations of our species can benefit from our experiences. These aren’t normal memories that can be recalled consciously. They’re extremely long-term, and only available to the subconscious mind, but they guide our instincts, and sometimes, they can resurface in dreams.”

  “That all sounds like some serious science fiction,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Ink said. “But what if it’s not? What if it is real? What if that’s exactly what this is, this mystery disease that’s infected you and which killed my friend, what’s giving you these recurring dreams?”

  “Memories from another world, huh. Could be,” I said, feeling my heart plummet into my guts.

  This guy’s not interested in helping me. He just wanted an ear to listen to another one of his conspiracy theories. Whatever Kashka gave me is going to kill me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I should leave.

  Ink belabored the point, seemingly unaware of my discomfort. “What if your dreams are simply the resurfacing of genetic memories hidden inside some sexually transmitted infection you were unfortunate enough to catch? What if what you and I know as the Blot was actually engineered by someone who didn’t want those memories to be forgotten?”

  “I dunno, man. Listen, I should get going. I came here because I thought you could help me. Not to listen to some tinfoil conspiracy theory that sounds like it came from a comic book.”

  I got up, shrugging into my jacket. As I turned to head for the door, Ink said, “Stop. I am helping you, Boy Scout. Sit down.”

  I did.

  Any trace of friendliness had vanished from Ink’s voice. “You caught a disease no doctor on Earth can identify, let alone cure. Over the next several months, your mind will rot until you become a sleepless, dreamless zombie, a walking shell that can’t do anything but shit, and piss, and masturbate. Then it will be too late. You’ll fade until one day, you’re just gone. As sure as you were born, this will happen.”

  “I know,” I said, hanging my head.

  “That all sounds pretty bleak to me. But what if it’s not just any old illness, and there’s a reason for it? If someone gave you these memories intentionally, that gives you a purpose. That means you have a goal, a reason to go on fighting.”

  “What goal? What the hell are you talking about?” I said.

  “You have to give it to someone else. That’s the only way to buy yourself more time. You must pass it on.”

  “And how do you know this?” I said.

  “Because it happened to my friend. When he was sexually active he led a relatively normal life. Slept at night, minimal marks on his body. Those little black spirals you mentioned came and went, but they’d start to grow when he didn’t have sex for a while, only vanishing once he got laid again.

  “It wasn’t until my friend realized that he was giving the Blot to each new girl he slept with that he stopped. He gave up the game, and that was when the symptoms really got bad. He had nightmares every time he slept, until one day, he stopped sleeping altogether. Those black spots on his genitals spiraled outward until he was covered with them, a single, giant, walking Blotling. He lost his mind. At the end, the last time I saw him, he couldn’t even put two words together. Two days later, he was dead.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  Ink slouched, combed his hair with his fingers, and sat up straight again. “Now here I am, talking to you instead of him. It’s sad, really. The guy’s game was phenomenal. He was my mentor. Taught me everything he knew. You, on the other hand, have got a long way to go to even have a chance at surviving this thing, Boy Scout. And you’re running out of time. You don’t want to end up like all those other trillions of dead branches on the tree of evolution, do you? No, I don’t think you do,” Ink said.

  “So what should I do?” I said.

  Ink drummed his fingers on the table. “You either need to learn to fuck a lot of different women, or you’d better write a nice, heartfelt message to your mom and dad letting them know you’re not coming home.”

  “Would you?” I said.

  Ink studied me a long time before responding. “If it was them or me, of course I would. You need to take another look around, Boy Scout. This great moral dilemma you’re in isn’t one. If you don’t learn to play this game, the game is going to kill you. But knowing that won’t condemn you. It will liberate you. And in time, you might come to enjoy it, maybe even master it. After all, there is nothing in the universe better than getting what you want.”

  Goddamn this asshole. Goddamn this piece of shit. I’m not going to subject anyone else to this. I’m not going to hurt people I don’t even know. But I have to, or I’m going to die. I can feel it every morning when I wake up exhausted, every night when I lie awake because I don’t want to sleep. Ink is right. I don’t have a choice. Goddamn him. Ink is right.

  And kneeling before that dark altar, I said, “Will you teach me?”

  Ink leaned back in his chair, and for the briefest instant as the lamplight fell unevenly on his face, dividing it half into light and half into shadow, I saw the flicker of a golden spiral dancing in his eye.

  “Yes. I’ll teach you,” Ink said.

  VI

  ‘Neath all his masks, man is a beast

  There comes a point where he will cease

  And turn into those howling winds

  That drown his demons kept within.

  The battle was short as the first

  The king's men moaned how they were curs'd

  By fallen brothers whose ghosts came

  With red slaughter to wake the day.

  The Good Knight's last kill tried to run

  In distant woods was overcome,

  By water’s edge the boy gave up,

  And got his head crushed with a rock.

  When the Knight glanced up from his rage

  A third was there, upon the lake

  A girl with hair like summer ale

  And eyes smould'ring like dragon scales.

  "Lady Rusalka4, forgive me!

  Your sacred shape, I did not see!"

  Arkadius knelt, begged, and pled.

  She’d seen his gilded soul naked.

  “The child was not quite innocent,"

  The nymph gave her merc’ful judgment.

  "Manhood is brotherhood, did you forget?

  Make haste,

  Correct yourself…

  There is still time yet."

  4A female water spirit known for her vengeance.

  EPILOGUE

  THE UNIVERSE doesn't work in cycles. It works in spirals. What goes around comes around, true; eternal return is also true, that what has come before will come again, and there is nothing new under the sun. But when it comes, it is always a little higher, a little thinner, a little older than before. The rings of the universe are forever moving outward. They never overlap no matter how similar their parallels may seem. We are none of us doomed to go round and round on the same old single, spinning wheel, but challenged to grow outward upon many. Because eternal return isn’t a wheel. It is a spiral.

  The Night Country was a real place, and it wasn’t hard to see why I’d been sent there. Spirals have gravity. You may never be able to find the top of one, but you can always find the bottom.

  I awoke to find the Burrow entombed in a cold, drunken silence. No time at all had passed since I’d left.
I knew that because I was still on my feet. I caught myself mid-step as I began to lose my balance, like waking up from a dream of falling. It was hell to will my body to move. Queen Rat would sleep for one more torch at least before she awoke and discovered the Glass Book was gone. If I was still in the Burrow when that happened, I was a dead man.

  My next stop was Zaea’s cell. There was a guard outside dozing at his watch. His eyelid flickered when he heard me coming, but I blotted into him and bashed his head against the cave wall before he could open it completely. I didn’t kill him, but he’d be out for at least an hour. I locked his body in the cell next to Zaea’s and threw the keys down her privy shaft.

  Zaea was sound asleep, curled up in a ball on the floor of her cell. They hadn’t given her a bed. There was a bandage over the wound on her head stained with red and yellow fluid. The rawness of her betrayal still stung. Seeing her only made it sting worse. But somehow that pain no longer seemed to matter. I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye.

  I crept silently to Zaea’s bedside, knelt, and gently lifted her right eyelid with the tip of my finger. A golden spiral burned within the stillness of her sleeping eye. I let her eyelid fall and kissed her on the forehead.

  “Until next time, Princess. Say a prayer for your father when you wake up. And one for me.”

  Visitors do not stir or mumble in their sleep; even their breaths and heartbeats are difficult to measure, because the intervals are so long, barely enough to keep a loaner body reanimated. But I could have sworn I saw her lip tremble. I waited there as long as I could, then with a final glance, departed back into that gnawing gloom.

  I left Zaea’s cell door open. It was the least I could do after all the times she’d helped me.

  I was careful to stay close to the walls and peek around every corner as I made my way toward the station platform, but I eventually relaxed. There was no one around. When I reached the Salt Chapel and still hadn’t seen a single guard, I knew I was home free.

  If anyone found me and learned what I was carrying, I’d be imprisoned, tried, and executed before breakfast. Yet the possibility of getting caught dwindled with each step I took closer to the subway platform, and the maze of the Undersprawl that lay beyond. The power of my decision, and the thought of the inconceivable power it might bring me, made me feel high.

  I wanted the power to control the Blot, to be able to traverse the Spiral at will, like it was said the Crippled King could. If that meant that I had to kill him, I would. If it meant I had to cast the Vermin aside and become his disciple, then I would do that, too. I didn’t want to betray my friends. Most of all, I didn’t want to do anything that would hurt Zaea. But there was no future for me here in the Burrow, fighting this hopeless fight. I’d have a target painted on my back until the day I died face-down in the snow.

  If I could learn to control the Blot, I could save Zaea. I could save Kashka. I could save myself. Maybe I could even save Carly. Or if not, I would become so powerful it wouldn’t matter.

  Every one of my justifications for betraying them was as empty as the last. The truth was that I was sick of being a failure. The Blot was going to kill me, and I was scared. I was living on borrowed time.

  I paused to look inside the Salt Chapel as I passed by. The door was ajar, and the candles lit. I remembered that Gator’s memorial service was supposed to be held three torches later.

  I opened the door all the way and stepped in. There were two busts of fresh-hewn salt stone standing at the foot of the altar wreathed in piles of white dust and flowers. One of the busts bore Gator’s face. The other was Squirrel’s.

  Maybe he died while I was sleeping, or he’s so close the undertaker started working on his headstone, I thought.

  Only the bravest Vermin earned grave markers in the fruit orchards of the Last Station. Their busts would stand beneath the weak, drooping boughs of apple and peach trees above the soil where their bodies had been laid to rest. Now Gator and Squirrel would nourish the Burrow for as long as there were people to nourish.

  I wanted to thank them, but a voice cut through the silence of the chapel like the snap of a blade.

  “Come to ask for forgiveness?” Barn Owl said, stepping out of the shadows behind the door.

  I spun around to see the tall, beak-nosed woman rise from the rearmost pew of the church. My fingers snaked under my furs to clutch the Glass Book, but I knew it was too late to hide its awkward, rectangular bulge. “Just to say goodbye. What about you?” I said.

  Barn Owl placed one hand on her hip and scowled. “I was waiting, Leech.”

  “Waiting for who?” I said.

  “You, asshole. You’re more obvious than a boner in a sweat lodge, y’know that? Did you really think none of us would notice you sneaking off with the queen’s new favorite page-turner? You didn’t even take a last shot of vodka with us. Now that, my young greenboots, is bad form. You’re always supposed to have a last drink with the people who would kill and die for you before you turn tail and run,” Barn Owl said.

  I stood my ground. “If you’re planning on killing me, I promise I’m going to take you with me,” I said.

  Barn Owl relaxed her posture, letting out a chuckle. “Ha! No you ain’t. I didn’t come here to kill you, Leech. Not even to talk you out of what you’re about to do. We all knew you would.”

  She pointed to the altar, where the Wanderer’s floating image swayed in the flickering light of the glowmoss. “You see, unlike some of these other knuckleheads, I actually believe in him. I believe in him so much that I’m willing to let you go, because I know he has a plan. Oh, you’ve heard of it before. I can read your face clearer than that book you’re so indiscreetly hiding beneath your jacket. I know he has a plan for all of us. I think you know it, too. You may have even used to believe it, once. Well, I still believe it. And I know his plan is greater than all of us. Greater than you, greater than me, greater than the Vermin and Queen Rat, even greater than the Crippled King.”

  “Could be,” I said.

  Barn Owl raised her hands to the ceiling. “We are the fire, Leech. You can spread darkness, or you can spread light. The choice is yours. And if this is what you truly believe in your heart is right, then I have no choice but to help you, because I ain’t Him, and I don’t know. I only know what I see, and when I see you, I don’t see an evil man. Just a lost one.”

  She dug deep in her coat pocket and pulled out the magic mirror she used to navigate the tunnels of the Burrow, wincing as her bandaged fingers touched cloth. Placing it in the palm of my hand, she said, “Take this. I pray it helps you find your way home.”

  As Barn Owl brushed past me toward the door, I said, “Why?”

  “You really are dumb as shit, aren’t you?” Barn Owl said. “I just told you why. Maybe not all our problems can be solved by killing each other. Maybe that’s what got us down here in the first place. Sometimes I wonder. What if the Crippled King was just a lost boy like you? What if he wasn’t always the genocidal son of a bitch he is now, and all he needed to stay on the right path was the help of someone who saw the good in him? What if the fact that no one did is what caused him to stray?

  “Think about it, Leech. That’s all I ask of you while you’re bending us low and fucking us over. Just think about it. Oh, and by the way, next time you decide to dust a couple of guards, don’t stuff the bodies in the fuckin’ mop closet. We mop our floors every torch around here.”

  With that, Barn Owl turned and vanished into the shadows.

  I ran.

  I exited the Burrow the same way I’d came in, a stairway hidden on the slope of a great, snow-covered valley. A whirlwind of black-bellied clouds swirled over the ghost-white plane of the Surface. I looked up at the hanging umbilicus of the Echelon. A golden paradise awaited me above that smooth, ebony moon. All I had to do was climb.

  A distant squawk bit into my eardrums as I trudged down the snowy slope. A hawk was wheeling slowly through the battering gusts of wind overhead. It was the
same bird I had seen during the liberation of the prison camp, a snow-white hawk with amber eyes.

  He landed on the roof of a ruined house nearby. We stared at each other for a long while, neither of us moving nor making a sound. In his gaze was an invitation that we both knew I would accept. I can’t say it was right, but it’s what I did.

  Mr. Snow squawked once, twice, three times, then took flight, and I followed him to the Amber City.

  An hour later, long after I’d gone, another shape emerged from the tunnel mouth. It was a girl with short, whiskey-colored hair. Her head was heavily bandaged and she walked with a limp, carefully retracing a trail of footsteps already being reclaimed by the snow.

  End of Book One.

  About the Author

  Adam Vine was born in Northern California. By day, he is a game writer and designer. He has lived in four countries and visited thirty. His short fiction has appeared in various horror, science fiction, and literary fiction magazines and anthologies. When he is not writing, he is traveling, reading something icky, or teaching himself to play his mandolin. He currently resides in Germany.