Voices of the Lost

by C. S. Harte

  Samara bounced once as she fell to the ground and rolled to a stop. She lifted her hand for a moment before lying still.

  Dren ran the quarter-kilometer distance to the draining towers while plucking more needles out of his arms and legs. He continued throwing them at the monster, ensuring he kept its attention. “C’mon… There’s a lot more where that came from…”

  As the wasp neared the towers, it slowed its fluttering and had trouble maintaining its flight.

  Dren was constant in his barrage of needles as the draining towers were indiscriminate. He felt light-headed himself and looked down to see a pool of crimson at his feet; his own blood.

  The wings of the wasp stopped flapping altogether. It dropped from the sky and crash landed on the sky bridge, barricading Dren from his friends on the Anchor platform.

  In order for Dren to make it back, he had to climb over the creature’s back.

  Great… He cautiously approached the remains.

  Its antennae still wriggled, but the wasp appeared too weak to move.

  Dren kicked its mandible with all his remaining strength, breaking the left side in half. “You better be dead…”

  The wasp didn’t stir.

  Using needles stuck in the monster’s head for balance, Dren climbed onto the creature’s back. There was a coating of spores around the thorax which made traversing it slippery. He glanced over to his side and dropped to all fours. The sky bridge was not visible from his vantage point. Every movement was slow and deliberate as Dren fought against the trembling in his knees which grew progressively stronger as he continued. “Almost there…”

  Suddenly, the once dead creature came to life. Its wings flapped once as if forcing itself to roll over.

  Dren quickly pulled two needles out of his arms and stuck them into the monster’s back for balance.

  For a moment the wasp teetered on the edge of the sky bridge with Dren leaning into the abyss.

  His feet roamed, looking for a foothold, any foothold to regain his balance.

  The monster flapped its wings once more, seemingly willing itself over the edge, taking Dren with it.

  Dren climbed to the top of the creature’s back, and with all his remaining strength, leaped for the edge of the sky bridge. Even with his fingers outstretched, he wasn’t going to make it.

  At the last moment, a purple hand appeared over the edge of the sky bridge.

  Dren caught the hand as much as it caught him.

  “You were taking too long,” Anjali said. “I thought I would assist you since I finished opening the portal.”

  “Anjali,” Dren collapsed into his friend’s arms. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “You lost much of your bodily fluids. I am surprised you are alive…”

  “Can we leave now?” Dren draped one arm over Anjali’s shoulder.

  “Yes, we can.” He beamed a smile. “We can leave now…”

  “Are you sure this portal is going to the right destination this time?”

  “I hope so…” Anjali chuckled. “I hope so, Dren Arvol…”

  33

  Raven lay awake in bed with his fingers intertwined behind his head; his body was tired, his mind bloated with concerns. His tawny-brown eyes wouldn’t close, tracing the lines of the classic art deco ceiling of his Destiny’s Edge apartment. After giving up on sleep, he slid the covers off his legs, careful to not wake Hela, the love of his life. Not an easy task — Hela was an active agent in Fleet’s Whisper Unit. Once clear of the bed, he glanced back to ensure she was still asleep. He headed to the floor-to-ceiling window, pushed aside the blackout curtains, and gazed outside.

  The Circle, the high-speed, magnetic railway system encircling the Martian city of Olympus, caught his attention first. Its ring of white light stretched high above the capital and was so bright it was observable from space. He stood in the dark with his hands on his hips, watching the hover trains zip by, creating a pulse of illumination with every pass. The regular intervals of the light had a way of calming his nerves.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” Hela snuck up on him. He didn’t flinch. She layered herself onto his back, pressing her cheek against his shoulder blade. Her fiery red hair glistened as it caught the light of the trains.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you, go back to bed,” Raven said. He kissed then squeezed her hand. “I’ll join you shortly.”

  Hela twisted her neck to look back at the alarm clock. “It’s almost oh-six-hundred. Might as well get up.” She nibbled on his ear. “I’ll brew a pot of Korraay caffeine, your favorite.”

  Raven followed her lead into the kitchen and sat at the counter marking the line between the living room and galley. “Have you heard anything from your Whisper Unit about all the missing Fleet Officers?”

  “You’re exaggerating, baby,” she said with a playful smirk. “It’s only a few junior officers and one captain. Nothing out of the ordinary.” She deposited a pungent-smelling cup of a hot, caramel-colored liquid in front of him.

  “Thanks.” He blew on his drink before taking a sip. “I guess I’ve been following this more closely than you.”

  “And? What have you learned?” She folded her eyebrows together.

  “I think there’s a pattern unfolding.” He wrapped his fingers around the cup, the heat felt comforting in his cold hands. “Maybe you shouldn’t go to Ostia Station?”

  Hela chuckled. “Is this what you’re getting at?” She leaned over the counter to kiss him tenderly. “Baby is gonna miss me too much?”

  Raven smiled, caressing her cheek. “You know I’m going to miss you. I’m also worried about that little girl.” He nudged his chin the direction of her stomach.

  “Why? You don’t think Fleet will let us keep the baby?” she asked in a hushed voice while massaging her belly.

  “A child of two clones?” Raven scoffed. “We’re not allowed to procreate, you know that. That baby will be the first ever clone offspring. No,” he rolled his fingers into a fist, “the eggheads at Fleet will never let her outside of a 20 by 20 monitoring unit.”

  She took a liberal swig of her drink and set the cup down on the counter. “I’m guessing you’ve been thinking about a plan then? That’s how your mind works when there’s a problem. You can’t stop thinking about it until it’s fixed.”

  “I have…” he allowed his thoughts to trail.

  “But?”

  “Neither of us wants to quit our service to Fleet. We have a great life. We like what we do.” He spun in his stool to take in the view of his spacious, open-concept apartment.

  “So we don’t have to quit.” Hela dropped her cup into the material recycler. “I can have the baby in secret.”

  Raven shook his head, disagreeing. “Fleet will know. We can’t raise a child without people noticing. You’re a spy, you know this.” He sighed. “There’s another problem.”

  “What?”

  “If my hunch about all the missing Fleet Officers is correct, there might be a silent coup happening. My sources also mentioned missing Parliament members.”

  Hela creased her brow. “Say you are right about everything. What’s your plan to protect our daughter?”

  “It involves deserting Fleet.” He frowned.

  “They will track us down.” She mirrored his frown. “My own Whisper Unit will hunt me.”

  “I know…” He returned the sigh. “We have to go somewhere… Make it difficult for them to find us.”

  “Such as?”

  “Alliance territories.”

  She chewed on her fingernail before answering. “That won’t be good enough. You don’t know my sisters like I do.”

  Raven leaned over the counter and picked up a chef’s knife in his right hand.

  “Um, what are you going to do with that?” Hela pinched her face.

  He used the knife to make an eight-centimeter incision in his left forearm. Small streams of blood sprouted from the cut. He dug into the opening to pull out a rectangular piece of glass with concen
tric circle inscriptions etched on the surface. “This is my Plan Z.”

  “Um,” she bit her lip, “What is that?”

  “Something I found on an abandoned ship.”

  “What’s it do?” She tilted her head.

  “I’m not entirely sure.” He laughed. “But I have someone that owes me a favor in the Fleet Cloning division that should be able to put it to good use.”

  Raven held a gun to the head of the obstetrician in the delivery room on board the Alliance hospital ship, Florence.

  “Deliver my baby girl or more of your staff will die.” He wagged his gun at the two dead nurses piled in the corner.

  Hela killed those nurses. They refused to treat her because she was a clone, an “abomination” according to Alliance beliefs.

  “And if anything happens to my wife…” He ground his teeth into a clenched jaw. “Everyone on board will die.” He leaned into the doctor. “Look me in the eye. I’m serious.”

  Hela screamed as her contractions increased in frequency. She too held a pistol aimed at the doctor; her finger steady on the trigger.

  “Give her something for the pain,” Raven ordered.

  “NO!” Hela pushed the syringe away.

  Gunfire erupted from outside the closed door.

  Raven blasted the control console on the wall, hoping to buy Hela time to deliver the baby. “Honey, I’m going to need you to hurry…”

  “If you ask me to hurry once more…” her voice deepened. “I will shoot you instead!”

  “Take your time then, baby,” Raven feigned a smile.

  “It’s Fleet, isn’t it?” Hela asked between forceful, rapid breaths. “They’re outside, coming to kill us and take my baby…”

  Raven looked into her eyes and bobbed his head. “They won’t make it to you, I promise.”

  The clamor of gunfire and Hela’s screams ignited a rage in Raven. Clones were engineered without reproductive organs and the ability to feel love and empathy. But the replication process was less controlled, allowing numerous opportunities for random mutations to occur. Raven was the only one of the Nemean line born with the reproductive organs needed for procreation. Hela was fortunate in the same way. The odds of two such miracles to happen bordered on the statistically impossible. Which is why Raven believed fate guided them in finding each other and pushed forward their love. By extension, he concluded it was their destiny to produce a child.

  Like any parent, he only wanted his child to be safe and loved. It angered him that two, genetically superior humans were not allowed to have offspring while many “base humans” had no such restrictions. All because some career bureaucrat decided clones should not breed and because a society of people believed clones to be the equivalent of monsters.

  The soldiers outside firing their guns and killing the medical staff were the monsters. They would steal his daughter because she was different.

  Raven kept his focus on the delivery room door, waiting to blow a hole through the head of anyone who dared to enter. The sound of a baby crying released the tension in his body. He spun around to see Hela holding a beautiful, normal-looking, human baby girl against her bosom.

  The doctor, having completed his responsibility, backed away from Hela.

  Armor-piercing projectiles punched through into the delivery room.

  Raven immediately dove to the ground.

  One bullet hit the doctor in the head. His skull exploded twice; once upon impact and another when it slammed against the floor.

  Another round hit Hela in the chest just above the baby, passing through her heart.

  “No…” Raven breathed as he watched blood stream down her arm.

  The baby’s crying became screams as if she was aware of her mother’s death.

  Shades of red covered every surface of the delivery room, matching the vibrancy of Hela’s fiery hair.

  Raven heard weapons reloading behind the door. He jumped up, plucked his daughter from his dead wife’s arms, blasted a hole in the floor using an explosive charge, and jumped down onto the lower deck with his baby cradled in his arms. “Sweet baby, daddy will protect you…” He kissed her forehead. “Always.”

  A squad of six Fleet marines tried to stop him from reaching his shuttle. They all died a quick death as Raven ripped through them with his speed and strength neuromods.

  Raven waited for the shuttle to power up. He wiped away the tears and drool from the baby’s face, then held the baby up in front of him.

  She stopped crying as if she knew she was safe.

  “You’re going to be a special child…” Raven said with tears streaking down his face. “… Alyana. Your mother chose that name for you.”

  Dren gasped as he woke in the middle of the night. “Alyana…” he whispered in a hushed voice. His bed was soaked in his own sweat again. Every night since they’ve made it to Latta Lagi, this same dream replayed. Each time, he would wake in a panic, and it would feel like Alyana had died in his arms all over again. The pain of loss cut just as deeply as the day before.

  He knew it was silly to think of Alyana as someone more than an acquaintance. They shared a few days worth of extraordinary experiences, but she was a complete stranger to him before their escape from Salvation Station. Yet, he could not rid himself of sadness for losing her, anger for not helping her, and guilt for surviving when she didn’t.

  Dren unfurled his blanket and sat on the edge of his bed. The window called to him, and he acknowledged the request by walking to it. He half-expected to see the same Circle of light outside the window like on Mars. Everything, every detail about this dream seemed so real and vivid; he felt like he lived every moment, including the heartache of losing Hela. Dren gave up on untangling the feelings he had for Alyana from Raven’s fatherly love. He didn’t want to.

  Samara said it would get worse before it got better. Though things were, mostly better since arriving in Latta Lagi. All of Dren’s ghosts disappeared. But there was one he wished could revisit him — the red-headed teenage girl, which he now understood to be a younger version of Alyana. Raven had been keeping track of her since he gave her to the orphan ship. Alyana was the most important thing in Raven’s life, and his love for her leaked into Dren’s subconscious. In some ways, she was the most important person in Dren’s life.

  Alyana taught Dren that his variant line wasn’t lacking empathy or compassion. It was always within him to experience those feelings. He just never had a chance to because he never had a childhood — clones came out of their vats as fully formed adults.

  For his entire life, Dren believed he was a broken, malformed replicant. He wasted most of his days in fear someone would eventually find out about his mental issues and have him expunged. Alyana helped him understand that being broken was not the same as being useless. She told him, “No one goes through life whole; without taking some damage. It doesn’t mean you’re of no value to anyone else.” Alyana was a product of “imperfect” beings according to birthers. But Dren knew she was perfect in her own way.

  After experiencing most of Raven’s memories, Dren realized that madness was a matter of perspective. Many things, great and small can drive a person to it. Things like finding and losing love. Or living under tyranny and oppression. In learning the reasons for his madness, Dren realized he was not so different from Raven. In an insane universe, everyone teeters on the edge of sanity.

  If he lived the life Raven did, Dren was not so sure he would have chosen a different course.

  34

  What is the notion of self? Is the human mind just a collection of memories, thoughts, and instincts? Are we defined by the songs we remember, the words we speak, the voices we hear? Dren reflected on these questions often since making it to Latta Lagi. The other voices of the lost were gone, along with the other ghosts that haunted his waking moments; left behind when they escaped the nightmare universe.

  Dren sat with his feet propped on the second-floor windowsill of his suite with his chair tilted back, and hi
s hands crossed behind his head. He and his Chordan companions made it to Latta Lagi, an outcast colony on the planet Avano in the Chordan universe, home to many exiles and the unwanted, those who did not fit into the Chordan caste system.

  Samara and Anjali were in the rooms next to him. They had been on Avano for the past 60 solar-cycles or roughly 95 Earth days. Anjali was busy noting his adventures and discoveries in the nightmare universe while Samara recuperated. The energy draining towers affected her worse than anyone else. There was a concern on Anjali’s part that she may have suffered a more serious and difficult to diagnose injury due to her telepathy.

  Below hundreds of Chordans bustled around a central marketplace where goods, from food to illicit weapons, were sold. Mixed in with the Chordans were the occasional Voidi and Streydrs. The latter was half the size of the Voidi and always wore muted exo suits that hid their faces. For a city supposedly home to criminals and the unwanted, everyone seemed cordial to each other.

  Dren had never been alive to see humanity at peace, but Latta Lagi was what he imagined an outer human colony would look like. There were sections of the city better off than others with cathedral-like buildings draped with colorful guild banners. The towers of these buildings were capped with rich, silver roofs. On the other side of town, where the proletariat lived, the dwellings appeared to be crew quarters from Fleet passenger ships, compact, and minimal.

  In between her recoveries, Samara helped Dren sift through the different memories floating in his head. Through methods still mysterious to Samara and Anjali, RAI-17 created a neural engram that embedded itself inside Dren’s brain. Like a virus, it reinserted itself whenever Dren was reshelled, essentially re-installing her memories and Lord Raven’s and jumbling all three together in Dren’s head. Samara could not completely remove the engram as promised, but she was able to isolate it and prevent it from leaking into Dren’s consciousness.