Covenants: Elegy (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 8)

by Terra Whiteman

  A real shame.

  I spent the rest of the night and early morning fighting sleep, throwing hazy glimpses at the elite helmet that, for some reason, kept drawing my attention. And, each time we locked eyes, I caught the faintest sound of cosmic white noise.

  ***

  Underneath the Twin Gods tree I sat, babbling happily as Akani paid her weekly respects at the shrine. I watched myself play with the wooden dongva like an observer, well aware that I’d been far too young at the time to remember this moment. But, here I was.

  The faint rustling of the trees in the warm, Svissan wind and the sound of trickling water at the dangu fountain made my heart ache, though it was simply a feeling as the current me wasn’t solid. I was just a thought, or a spirit. But all the sounds and smells felt so real; it was all too perfect. This was a memory, not a dream.

  As our Housekeeper knelt to set the incense afloat a miniature raft made of hollowed wood, my tiny ears pricked to the sound of whispers. Friendly whispers—giggles—that left my belly warm and my skin alit with tingles. I babbled in response, but Akani paid me no mind. She hadn’t heard anything.

  I abandoned my dongva toy and scooted across the underbrush. I made it all the way across the shrine, my bottom dirty and riddled with leaves, before Akani realized I’d moved. She called to me right as I placed my hands on a whitish-bark tree, hoisting myself to my inexperienced feet. Akani paused with a gasp; it must have been my first time standing.

  I bounced with joy, babbling again, gripping the ivory bark for balance. Beneath my chubby, clumsy fingers, vibrations thrummed, tickling my skin like feathers. I laughed, and Akani scooped me up, giving me a giant kiss on my forehead. I’d never remembered her being so warm.

  “Your father will be so proud of you, child!” she cooed, hugging me tight. “Blessings to Kenlila, you’re a season early—”

  My tiny self couldn’t notice the happiness drain from Akani’s face then, as her gaze settled on the tree behind me. There, against the bark, were my tiny handprints singed into the white trunk. Akani was quiet for a while as I pulled on her thick curls and babbled into her neck. The warmth of her embrace suddenly switched to weightlessness, and then I hit the ground on my face. The pain came second to shock, and I began to cry.

  Akani had dropped me.

  *

  Something jerked me hard enough that my teeth gnashed together. I snapped awake with the environment phasing into view, still drunk with slumber.

  “Laith, we have to move!” Zira was shouting, throwing everything around us into the satchel and cache. He kicked the smoldering campfire. “Get up!”

  Only then did the screeching noise become apparent. A carrion bird circled above our tree, making that horrific sound. But something was wrong—its black feathers had a synthetic sheen in the moonlight, and its eyes shone red like the traffic lights at the Jabron port. It was a machine in disguise of a bird. Another robot?

  “Are you deaf?” screamed Zira, yanking me to a stand. I yelped in shock, recoiling from his grasp. “Let’s go!”

  “Why are you—?”

  The rumble of motors broke the sky, audible even over the awful mechanical bird. And then it was the sound of our feet pounding against rocky ground, the screeching and motors fading in the distance.

  I ran as quickly as I could in fear Zira would deem me unworthy of using my own two legs, opting to carry me at bone-crushing speed instead. With each step my stomach flipped and an intense stabbing sensation assaulted my temples. Fear kept me moving, but for how long was anyone’s guess.

  After a while my legs began to wobble. I staggered, and then slowed. I saw nothing but the night in front of us, and heard nothing but the wind.

  Zira stopped and turned back toward the direction we’d run, visor swirling as he surveilled the night. I fell to my knees, spitting and retching, trying to catch my breath. “What happened? What were those sounds?”

  Before he could respond, the thunder of motors were felt beneath our feet once more. Lights pierced the shadowed landscape, getting closer by the second. There were dozens of them.

  Zira hung his head and closed his eyes, as if he were about to confess a shameful act. Instead he knelt, now eye-level with me, and cupped my face in his hands.

  “Whatever you see, don’t be afraid. Promise me.”

  I hesitated, stricken by his shift in demeanor.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he repeated, nodding toward a cluster of skeletal trees. “Go, hide there. Take the bags.”

  I suddenly realized what he intended to do. “W-What about you?”

  “Don’t worry about me, and don’t come out. Not for anything. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t want to leave him. “But—”

  “Laith, now,” he hissed, and all I could do was oblige. I grabbed the bags and scampered to the trees, crouching behind them. The lights were now bright enough that they cut a pathway across the black terrain, falling onto Zira and staying there.

  He stared into the blinding lights unflinchingly, inexpressive. I couldn’t believe how unafraid he seemed. I could feel my pulse in my ears as thoughts raced through the scenario that something should happen to him. At that moment I thought I was as good as dead and battled warm tears brimming my eyes. I didn’t want to see anymore—I wanted to shut my eyes and cover my ears, ride this out in ignorance. But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the unfolding scene.

  Five massive rovers parked in a line in front of Zira, who now had his hands raised. I’d seen OSC military rovers before but these were different, decorated in animal skulls seated atop deep-grooved wheels the width of my forearm. They weren’t sleek and well-maintained like the military issued kinds, instead seeming to have been put together by scrap metal of different shades and varying degrees of rust. The pungent smell of motor oil polluted the air, and I held my breath.

  They kept the lights on Zira, making it difficult to see the rovers’ occupants in detail. Over a dozen silhouettes left the vehicles and surrounded him, weapons raised. They shouted in a language I didn’t know. Zira didn’t move, didn’t even flinch when one of the shadowy men poked the large gun into his back. He kept his head forward, hands raised.

  After a moment they withdrew their aggression. By the tone of their voices, several seemed to attempt a dialog. Zira responded in turn, fluent in their tongue. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said he knew every language. I only wished I knew what they were saying.

  All of them were hulking men, towering over Zira like obscured giants. They were dressed in varying degrees of makeshift armor, as I caught glints of it here and there.

  The conversation was short-lived; I had no idea what Zira was saying, but he kept repeating the same words, same inflections. One of the men grew impatient and started shouting again, raising his weapon to the back of Zira’s head.

  And then Zira vanished.

  The man holding the gun to his head screamed not a second later, stumbling backward. Blood sprayed from his arm as it flopped against the ground, the gun with it.

  Zira reappeared where the man had once stood, knelt, holding a strange, black-arcing blade in his hand. His head was still bowed; his stance reminded me of a seasoned warrior never needing to see his opponents to know where they were. Blademaster Issu had been one of those warriors.

  But as Zira rose, I realized he wasn’t holding a blade in his hand. The blade was his hand.

  I covered my mouth to stifle a scream as gunfire erupted and everything happened too quickly to see.

  Some of the men ran back behind the floodlights, toward their vehicles. Others scattered in an attempt to flee, only to be chopped to pieces by Zira as he blinked in and out of view. At one second he was somewhere, then somewhere else. What I’d thought was bone-crushing speed had only been a tiny portion of what my warden was really capable of.

  The gunfire relented, as there was no one left standing to shoot. Zira paused amid a heap of separated body parts, their blood pooling at his feet, forming a sm
all stream down an incline behind him. He, like the ground, was painted red, but his face remained the same. Cool, inexpressive. Zira had done this before. He had done this many times before.

  Whatever you see, don’t be afraid.

  He hadn’t been referring to the armed men.

  A sudden flock of mechanical birds lifted from one of the rovers, screeching overhead. Zira looked up, watching as they circled. Something clapped the air, a thunderous boom that left my ears ringing—;

  In the brief time that I’d flinched, reflexively closing my eyes to the scenery, I returned to see a huge metal spike lodged through Zira’s middle. It was connected to a rope, trailing beyond the floodlights. He hadn’t moved, but now his eyes were wide. After a few moments where everyone seemed frozen in time, Zira’s shoulders slackened and he fell on his knees.

  My heart skipped a beat.

  No.

  Zira’s mouth opened slightly; blood trickled down his chin. Somewhere beyond the lights the men cheered victoriously. All I could do was watch on, sobbing in silence.

  One of the men—I saw now that he wore a leather mask with crude eyeholes cut into it—stepped into the light, holding a staff the size of his leg. At the end of the staff was a ball covered in spikes. Without pause, he swung the weapon at Zira, cracking him at the side of the head. I saw pieces of his face fly through the air.

  And that was all I could take.

  I bolted from hiding, leaving our bags, and sprinted down the slope away from the scene. Shouts erupted behind me as the savages detected movement. The rover engines ignited, making it impossible to hear anything else.

  Down the hill, a crack of artillery tore through the air. Directly in front of me the hardpan billowed into a tiny plume of red dust. Had I been any quicker…

  I dropped to my knees with my hands raised, trying to control my pounding heart. Fear constricted my chest, making it impossible to breathe. I shut my eyes, expecting a bullet in the back of my head at any second. The spiked metal ball hitting Zira’s face played over and over in my mind.

  But there was nothing but engines, and the cool night wind brushing against my damp skin.

  Then, footsteps. Many.

  Shadows surrounded me, weapons slack at their side. I lowered my head, trembling, as they discussed things quietly with each other.

  One of them reached down and grabbed my chin, forcing me to look up at him. All of them wore leather sacks over their heads, but through the eyeholes, I saw glints of cobalt-silver. They almost glowed.

  His rough, work-hardened thumb ran over the Dezidko tattoo. He looked toward his masked companions and said something, nodding his head.

  “Come with us,” he then said to me, in perfect Evgani.

  His voice was deep and authoritative. That I understood him made my breath catch in my throat. Could it be? Could it—?

  The man ripped off his mask, revealing Svissan-tanned skin, a smooth-shaven, square jaw-line. He looked a lot less frightening now. Younger, too.

  “You’re one of us?” I stammered, the shock and betrayal of this fact transitioning to anger. “You traitor! You—”

  I started to rise and he grabbed my arm at the bicep, squeezing hard enough to send a twinge of pain through my shoulder. “Calm yourself, Dezidko.” Before I could react he pulled me back up the incline, toward the floodlights of the rovers.

  “Who are you?!” I was screaming every step of the way. “Why are you doing this?!”

  I was given no response until they shoved me into one of the idling vehicles, wedged between two armed men in the backseat. Zira still lay on the hardpan, his mutilated body twisted in an impossible position. The rover lights illuminated him, and I winced and turned my head, feeling warm tears trickle down my cheeks. At least his face was hidden. I wouldn’t have been able to handle seeing what they’d done to his face.

  The rover lurched into reverse and the only unmasked man looked over his shoulder, at me. He rode in the front passenger seat. “We are not traitors. We are your family. You’re home now.”

  I stared back at him, confounded.

  “You’re home now,” he said again, looking out into the night. There was a strange sheen to his skin under the flash of moon and headlights, like silver glow worms crawling spirals on his cheeks. “Soon, you will see.”

  XIV

  I’D NEVER BEEN ONE FOR DECEPTION, despite my line of work. But sometimes the only course of action was deceit. And, like I’d said, it was very difficult for things like me to die.

  As the engines and lights rolled away into the nightscape—thankfully not running me over and causing further damage—I lay still and crumpled in a position considered impossible for most anatomically-similar life-forms. For a while I’d blacked out, but enough of my nervous system had regenerated for my sensory-perception to pick up on the last bit; them driving off with Laith in tow.

  That’d been my intention; playing dead was a talent I’d mastered over the years. A last resort, but a skillset pocketed for drastic times.

  Our circumstances turned grim the moment they’d let loose the birds. In that fleeting moment I’d realized that this area was teeming with mechanized flora designed as surveillance systems for… whoever these people were. Had the android at the oasis tipped them off? I wasn’t sure, but in hindsight I should have destroyed it anyway. Those first several nights in the desert where I’d seen the flickering lights hadn’t been a figment of my exhaustion. Shame on me for not having realized we were being hunted all along.

  So I made the snap decision of correcting my error. I’d stopped fighting and took a hit.

  My body twitched as I started to regain control of my motor-sensory. With a grunt I ripped the metal spike out of my chest and used it to speed up the regeneration process, absorbing its particles to replace my own. I rolled onto my back, barely enduring the acute tingling sensation in my limbs as the healing process continued. It’d been a while since I was injured so badly. If I’d had more than half a face, it would’ve been twisted in agony.

  —Zira?

  I sat up and looked across the hardpan terrain. The rovers were heavy enough to have left shallow tire-tracks in what loose ground there was.

  —Zira, come in. Are you alright?

  Yes, relatively speaking.

  —Attica alerted us that you’d fallen into stasis again. Were you asleep?

  No. I was ran through with a metal spike and bludgeoned with a mace.

  There was silence for a while. As Pariah processed that, I used the time to get to my feet and make my way toward the boulders and trees where Laith had been hiding. Our bags were still there. And my coat, thank the multiverse.

  —You were attacked? What’s the status of your charge?

  My gaze crept toward the tracks again. Right where I need her. I don’t have time to talk; everything is in order. I’ll update my thread shortly.

  Pariah took the hint and didn’t respond, severing the link. I grabbed both bags as the vision in my right eye returned—blurry, but not for long. I scraped out a hole large enough to bury our supplies beneath one of the boulders, and then returned to the top of the hill.

  The shredded bodies of the men I’d slain lay strewn across the ground. I’d gone into the situation with the idea that they’d been an isolated group. Those birds, though; that had changed everything. Eviscerating them would have brought more. The only proper way to stamp out vermin was to destroy the nest.

  I felt the beginnings of a smile, but quickly squashed the anticipation for more blood when it became laced with the guilt of using Laith as bait. She thought I was dead, and had probably lost all hope by now.

  Empathy was annoying.

  I was not the man she’d thought I was, simple as that.

  Movement at my feet halted my thoughts; my eyes turned downward, at the congealing puddle of blood and viscera I was about to step over. Little flecks of energy danced along outlines of the gore, like microscopic bursts of confetti.

  I knelt, activati
ng my lens to get a proper radiation pattern.

  Nanotechnology.

  I tilted my head, watching the atomic lightshow in awe. Taking a vis-capture to analyze later, as no more time could be spent here, I headed down the slope, following the tracks. They’d gotten a reasonable head start, but not to worry—;

  I would catch up.

  XV

  SOMETHING HAPPENS INSIDE OF YOU WHEN YOU realize that you’re going to die. It happened to me, sitting in the back of the rover with the armed men half-way through the trip. There was a snap in my brain, one that I imagined to be audible, and then a numbness washed over me. I felt nothing, I processed nothing—only sat there staring ahead into the night’s abyss, like my soul had left my body.

  Time blended together, and no one spoke for the rest of the journey. We reached an outpost similar to the one Zira and I had found as the sun rose on the northwestern horizon, soaking the sky in a pink, cloudy haze. This outpost had a sturdier fence, with thick metal planks wrapped in barbed wire. There were mechanized tripods with frightening-looking guns mounted on them, oscillating back and forth, placed on the boundaries outside of the fence. As we drove up to the only gate carved along the perimeter, the closest tripod-gun shifted toward us. Beneath the barrel was a blinking red light; they must have been programmed to recognize their own. Zira’s wisdom was rubbing off on me.

  Zira.

  I bowed my head, basking in the regret of not having chosen to radio for help from the outpost when given the choice. I’d been selfish; I’d wanted to stay with him a bit longer. And now he was dead for it.

  The gate led to another world. Outside of the perimeter fence had been nothing but dead terrain and silence; inside was a teeming town. Soldiers in similar crudely-made armor and terrifying masks stood in groups around the compound. Robotic-looking dogs weaved through them, their red, mechanized eyes scanning the area, sniffing the ground. One yawned, and I saw a mouth full of razorblades. I shuddered instinctively, looking away as the rover parked next to several others within designated red lines on the northern area of the compound.