At that moment, she vowed to destroy the ginn. She would bring it to the ground. How could she let this continue? Returning to Earth seemed so trivial at that moment, despite how she longed to return. Sonia had spent hours since regaining her freedom trying to imagine what her return would be like. Seeing her family again. She would certainly never look at the sky from Earth in the same way again after knowing the horrors that lay beyond it. The blue sky of the day and the wonder of the starlit night…was all a mirage. A canvas to cover the dark truth. The worlds beyond were filled with horrors.
The vision faded and all that remained was the bloody bedding. She looked around after snapping out of the trance that held her at the foot of the bed then continued toward the sounds of the woman begging for help. She stepped into the hallway and estimated that before her was a hundred stalls, fifty on each side. The rancid smell hit her and she was suddenly glad for the rotten fish odor of the cloak. It smelled of death and waste. Sonia began to walk between the cells looking back and forth. She was mortified when cell after cell was filled with either impregnated or recovering women locked in cages as if they were animals. Some moaned and moved, while the condition of others was difficult to discern as they appeared to be deceased.
The sounds of distress continued to lure her. Sonia proceeded cautiously without failing to look at each of the victims. It was tough dueling with her emotions as sympathy for the victims fought to derail the primary reason for being there. She considered options on how to get each one out of the ginn and onto the craft. This would be dependent upon getting the metal doors open, then helping each one across the open area and to the craft. This was simply not reasonable without getting caught. The uncertainty that there would be time enough to remedy that situation loomed heavily on her heart. It would be difficult to leave with the boy and not take or do something for the poor women, but at what price? What good would it do anyone if she was captured and ended up back in one of the cells? Sonia made a promise, even if she was the only one to hear it, to return and free all the women.
The screams grew louder as she approached the cell of the distressed woman. When she looked closely through the dim lighting in the hallway, she could see that the door had been left slightly open. Sonia realized that regardless of what she told herself, there was no way to prepare for what she might see when making it past the last partition. Sensing the alarm clock in her mind going off, time was short. It was time to make haste and get out of the hell hole. There was no time for the woman, the boy was the reason she had come.
She stepped past the wall and froze in horror. Crouching over the woman was one of the gardu that oversaw the ginn. It was doing something unnatural to the young woman that she found disgusting. The woman looked young, possibly in her later teens to early twenties, with black hair and tan skin. Sonia realized that she couldn’t have been in the ginn for long. The two eyes in the back of its head locked in on Sonia. It stood, closed its garment and turned to face her. The woman stopped screaming and rolled up in a ball crying uncontrollably. Hate and rage consumed Sonia and it was impossible to shrug off the desire to kill the gardu.
The metal door creaked as it swung open. The gardu was tall, even for a Tisht. It towered over her as it stepped into the hallway and approached. Sonia remained motionless, uncertain of where to go and what to do. The time for running had passed and now she needed to find a way to face the monstrous tower of a creature before it could alert others to her presence. It pulled one of its three-fingered hands out of a pocket. In it was a syringe. It was obviously intended for the Earth woman the creature had been assaulting when she walked up. The gardu must have taken pleasure in her struggle and had opted not to use it to control her. As it drew back to thrust the needle into whatever part of Sonia it could reach, the creature suddenly became frozen and immobile. Its black eyes were all that moved as it looked at her, then to the right and left. The dark green bulbous head seemed unable to follow.
“You weren’t really going to leave me…were you?” Joseph asked.
“Joseph?” she asked wondering if she had been thinking aloud. How did he know that? “If it means saving this one or any of the other women…yes,” Sonia replied in a whisper not knowing where Joseph was. Sonia looked back at the sobbing woman and took out the piece of telenium. “Why is it just standing there?”
“I am controlling it,” Joseph said.
She fought back her intrigue and would leave questions for the long ride back to Econ, or Earth if they were to make it out alive. “Then I guess we should kill it!” she replied.
“The noise will make others come. Do you wish to fight them all?” he asked.
Considering his comment and fighting her fear, Sonia moved closer to the Tisht with the telenium in hand ready to defend herself if it came to it. She remembered what the gardu had done to her. The suffering she had endured. Sonia wanted to kill it, but not at the cost of alarming the others. The room would be overrun in a matter of seconds if they knew she was there. It was a mystery as to why they hadn’t known already. She couldn’t help moving to its right hand despite the fear. If she possessed the means, it would have been better to cut the hand off rather than touch it. The epidermis had the look and texture of snakeskin but was very tacky on the tips of the appendages. Sonia pulled the syringe free from the tight grip of the three fingers and drove it into an area of soft tissue below the arm. She quickly pushed the plunger downward emptying the contents into the body of the horrid creature without knowing if it had entered a vein or would linger in some fatty tissue with no effect. In an act of an intentional desire to maximize pain, the syringe was pushed over onto its side breaking the needle off in the gardu. The large creature remained standing for a second then collapsed to the floor with a thunderous smacking of its head against the hard surface.
“That won’t kill it, but it will be out for a while. I think they like the feel of that stuff, even though it steals their mind for a time,” Joseph said.
Sonia wanted to push the telenium into one of its eyes and watch as it burned from the inside out just as Tilhar had done. A wave of anger coursed through her again. The need to end the life of the monster was fueled by momentary flashes of fantasies that played out in her mind. To see it suffer would be glorious. It was lying there, ready to be dealt the justice the women deserved. An alarm in her mind went off again warning her that she had invested too much time with the horrid creature. Sonia stood and moved back from the gardu and continued down the shadowy hallway contemplating how to kill the sick creature without compromising the mission.
She looked around not sure where he was and reluctantly called out in a whisper, “Where are you? We have to get out of here!”
He began to speak and she followed the voice, “They should have killed me when I was a baby. I looked normal despite the other monsters pulled from the wombs. A healthy, young, boy slave good for the selling. I should have fetched them a good price. As I grew, they could see that I was not like the others. They realized that they had bred, what was to them, a real monster. At first, they wanted to see if they could harness and control me. Use my…abilities to their advantage. I was just a child; I did not understand what they wanted from me. As I grew, I was not willing to serve their purposes. This cell became my home.”
“Who are you?” Sonia nervously asked.
“As I grew desperate to fight back, I began to learn more about what I was capable of and what it was that they feared. I had no idea what I was capable of until then. I started to enter their minds and haunt them and blind the gardu when they tried to hurt me. You should have seen them running around bumping into things. Then, they sent an assassin. I didn’t want to, but I needed to make an example of him. I split its body in two and put it in the sleeping chambers of Tilhar and Ningal. I put it right between them. The powerful and mighty, who had never known fear, became quite afraid of me. They sent Redum soldiers down to my cage to slaughter me…and they all died. They sent some of their elite Simu soldie
rs, they all died. The dead filled the hallways before they stopped. I think this is why Tilhar wanted to keep you by him. Why you became his pet.”
“Why?” Sonia asked looking around.
“If you were close, he would try and use you to control me. It was the only option he had. I could have had him slaughtered any time I wanted. He thought that if I were to come at him, he would be able to use my mother as his shield…a way to protect himself.”
Sonia’s memory of the baby boy being pulled from her womb surfaced. Emotions began to get the better of her, “My son? I remember giving birth. They took him away. I wasn’t even allowed to hold him or care for him. I never saw him again,” she said. She wondered if the boy was toying with her. If so, it was a rather cruel and poorly timed joke? What would make someone tell such a foul lie? How could she know?
She noticed a movement two cells down on the far side of the hallway. A hand waved in front of the illuminated panel, then she heard a click and a cell door swung open. The long-haired boy that had been invading her mind moved out into the hallway. He appeared to be tall for his age, just under five feet. The boy was very thin and would be lucky to weigh fifty pounds. Joseph wore tattered clothes that he seemed to have long since grown out of. The angular direction of the lighting made it difficult for Sonia to clearly see his features, but she did not see herself in him. There was no sense of a connection at all. Believing his story, that she was reunited with her son, would make it all the easier to have faith in the future…a sense of hope. But something inside her stirred thoughts of apprehension that rallied against any such expectation. Life had been a mean and bitter pill that was hard to swallow. Pain, hate, and hardship seemed to await her at every turn. Now she was to believe that somehow this boy with the ability to play mind-games was the son that was lost to her for nearly ten years. The lost child was now standing before her? She couldn’t allow herself to go there. It would be far easier to believe that she had dealt with the pain of the loss years ago, despite knowing this to be untrue. But allowing herself to be deceived by the boy for the sake of getting off Bahari would be foolish.
“Regardless, in the end, it didn’t work. We killed him. We finished Tilhar,” Joseph continued.
“If you are my child and were born here, how do you know about Earth and how do you know how they live?” Sonia asked uncertain of all he was revealing to her.
“When I learned to use my abilities, I searched and found you with the Tilhar. He was playing his little game with you then. I remember your thoughts. You were so afraid to make the choice. You knew what was going to happen. I didn’t know that you were the one then. I could see that they hid memories. I saw them. I was able to see your life as a little girl through your mind. I can see them, the small Earth people you knew. They are grown now, but I look through their eyes. I can read their minds too. I know what they are thinking. I can walk in the shadow world…the tamtu etutu and visit them.”
Sonia had no idea what the ‘tamtu etutu’ he referred to was. She was still uncertain that Joseph was who he claimed to be. There was no way for her to know for certain. That would have to be resolved at another time. She would need to get him and the woman out of the place before it was too late, but after hearing his claims, she couldn’t resist asking, “Why put me at risk and make me come here? Why not just leave if you can ‘walk in shadows’ or whatever? Why not just leave?”
He paused and stared at her in a manner that made him seem more like the ten-year-old boy he was supposed to be. “Reasons for bringing you here…to remind you of what goes on. I wanted you to help others of our kind in need. You were dreaming of Earth. You wanted to go back there.”
“So,” she replied.
He looked around, “We need to help these people.”
“If I had my way, we would all go home together. I would rescue every single person that was ever taken. But that is not possible,” Sonia said a bit irritated by the conversation.
The boy’s eyes grew wide and it seemed that something she could not hear, nor sense had alarmed him. Joseph ran and was on her before she could move out of his way. He wrapped his lanky arms around her limiting the movement of her own arms driving her backward. Sonia was off balance and unable to fight back or push him off. Joseph’s aggressive action startled her and she fought to get free. For a boy so thin and malnourished his grip was hard to break. There was a nearly blinding flash of light and before Sonia could defend herself, she was on her back staring upward. For some unknown reason, the ceiling looked out of focus and unsettled. She rubbed her eyes and tried again to focus wondering if she had suffered a head injury during the fall despite no recollection of hitting her head.
Sonia had no idea what happened or seemed to trigger his charge. As quickly as he tackled her, Joseph had let go and was standing and staring in the opposite direction from where she was lying. Sonia pushed herself up and stared at him queerly. The atmosphere was unquestionably different and it wasn’t just the ceiling that looked odd. While she was able to breathe without a struggle, the pressure made it seem as if she were underwater. The sounds of the moaning women were muffled as pressure pushed at the inner ear.
Following Joseph’s stare, she could see the hallway in front of the cell of the woman the gardu had assaulted. A creature in a green cloak was standing right in front of the boy with its back to them. Joseph simply stood and stared at it. The creature raised its hands up in anticipation of a confrontation. In its right hand was a dagger. The blade appeared to be telenium and the handle was made of bone. It turned in a counterclockwise motion as if sensing, looking for something and irritated by its lack of availability. As it turned to face them, Sonia could sense the evil in its deep-set eyes of glowing bronze that looked right through them as if they were not there. Its face was tattooed with patterns that seemed hieroglyphic by design. The left and right side mirrored each other. Thin black lips were tightly pressed together in a show of frustration. Sonia felt like a ghost watching the living from another realm. It was certain that they were the desired target, but it could not see them despite knowing they were there. The creature sent a chill down her spine sensing the unhinged anger and unbridled evil. She had no idea where it came from, how it was on them so quickly and why it was unable to see them. The creature acted out its frustration as it spun around in search of something it could not see.
“She wants you to die the way the Tilhar did. She sent this Roo’kall after you with a telenium blade,” he said speaking directly into her mind. “Once its back is to us, stab him with your blade.”
“Didn’t you just say not to do that? That it would alert the rest of them that I am here?” she said knowing he could hear her thoughts.
“They know you are here. That is why the Roo’kall has shown up.”
Sonia walked to Joseph’s side. The notion of revealing herself and facing the creature was nearly paralyzing. This being was far more intimidating than the gardu despite being slightly shorter. She could not explain it. The unknown, the uncertainty of what was occurring was unsettling. The desire to run, to flee returned, but she had no idea how to do so while trapped in the strange atmosphere invisible to the world. But the boy seemed calm. Joseph raised his hand and touched the side of her face. By some supernatural means, he seemed to extract the fear, pulling on it as if exorcising an oppressive spirit. Her anxiety settled and she turned to face the assassin.
“Ningal wants you dead. I am not the only one that can walk in the tamtu etutu. She is commanding a Roo’kall to kill you right now in front of me. She didn’t realize that I can sense when the Roo’kall are tracking me. You must kill it now, or it will try to follow us. Hurry before it jumps back into the tamtu etutu,” Joseph pleaded.
Sonia reached out her hand then a second flash of blinding light occurred as she reached through the liquid wall. The flash alerted the Roo’kall and it instinctively turned its head to the left. Before it could spin around to face her, Sonia drove the piece of telenium into the lower back
with enough force to bury half of it in the creature’s innards. The Roo’kall writhed in pain as electricity shot through its body. The assassin gyrated and fell to the ground just as the Tilhar had. She was between dimensions as her arm stuck out of the portal and the rest of her body remained in the tamtu etutu. When the creature fell away it caused her to release the telenium uncertain if she wanted to pull it out until the Roo’kall was dead. As soon as her fingers released the telenium, she panicked at the thought of losing the life-saving metal in the event that another gardu were to come by. She stepped forward and exited the tamtu etutu.
Standing over the Roo’kall, who now seemed to be lifeless, she felt a bit empowered but not yet satisfied. Joseph said that Ningal knew she was in the ginn and unexpectedly there was a desire to confront her. There were no Redum soldiers lining up in the hallway to stop them. The assassin had appeared out of nowhere and may have jumped from another dimension, or as Joseph referred to as the ‘tamtu etutu.’ If this was the case, then others could soon follow, and they may not be afforded enough time to hide or defend themselves. She sensed that their window of opportunity had significantly closed and the most intelligent thing to do was to leave and return better prepared. Each second became of vital importance.
Sonia retrieved the telenium and walked over to the gardu. It was only a matter of time before the shot wore off and it attacked or warned the others. Without hesitation, she drove the blade into one of the eyes on the back of its head just as she had fantasized about doing before Joseph stopped her. The thin membranous hexagon-shaped sections that peppered the skull popped open and spewed out a blue liquid. Sonia couldn’t recall Tilhar reacting the same way. But the stench was the same. She fought back the urge to vomit as the putrid odor filled the air around them and was trapped in the hallway due to a lack of moving air. In a matter of seconds, the gardu was dead, but the combined odor of the two deceased creatures was nearly more than she could bear.
Universal Code Page 29
