Future Reborn Box Set

by Daniel Pierce

  For the next thirty minutes, we killed until blood filled the air with the stench of copper and pain. We left more than twenty hulking corpses behind us, catching almost all of them sleeping or unaware. Only when we reached the inner ring did the beasts begin to change, and that was when I knew my feelings would have to be put away in favor of cold reason.

  “Got him,” I said, sliding my blade out of a monster, his hands flopping like a huge, furred puppet.

  “Different,” Mira whispered, and she was right.

  Turning the monster’s face up, I had a moment of sickness before I could fight back the wave of emotion. It was a monster, but far more human than anything else we’d seen before. There was precious little fur on him, and unlike any of the others, he wore a primitive pair of pants made from patched cloth, a belt of uncured leather holding them up in a desperate show of modesty.

  “It’s a man,” I said, knowing I was only half right.

  “Look at his hands,” Silk said. She reacted to my tone of alarm, lifting one of the creature’s fingers to reveal a horn-like nail, sticky with blood. “This is no man,” she said.

  Ahead, a thump revealed a man leaping from a tree to land in a crouch, his voice carrying to us with ease. “His name was Okrin, and he was family to me.”

  The snick of guns being aimed at the new threat gave me time to consider my own options. This was the leader, and though his voice had an element of the wild in it, he was no beast. Not entirely, and that meant I had questions.

  “Before I kill you, will you speak?” I asked him.

  His laugh was rich and mellow, like a teacher mocking a student who has just challenged their authority in class. “What would you like to know of me, scavenger? How I built this island of life? Why we find your kind so...satisfying on the plate? Perhaps you would like to know how we became so powerful, though your blades have put most of my people to death tonight. An impressive feat, given their tendency to eat small ones like you.”

  I stepped forward as the first rays of dawn broke free, lighting the garden in the colors of a distant fire. The sun revealed him to be a man, tall and muscled like me but with teeth that were far too big for his mouth. He grinned, and the incisors gleamed in the rising sun. In his hands, he had a pistol and a short sword, both pointed toward me in a steady grip.

  “I have many questions for you, but the first is the most important of all,” I said.

  “I listen,” he replied, his dark eyes flat with interest.

  “Do you want to die here or in the Black Room of your mistress?” I asked. His answer was a muzzle flash as he fired the pistol, diving away with the speed of a jaguar.

  The bullet went high, cutting leaves from a black cherry. “Wrong call,” I said, plunging ahead in hot pursuit. “Get the edge. Kill him if he tries to break from cover,” I told Mira and Silk. They withdrew, guns drawn and scanning, and the small forest flew past me in a smear of green as I ran. There was no need for stealth, and the beast couldn’t be cornered.

  That meant I had to run him down like a wild dog.

  The garden was big but not so large that I couldn’t hear him tearing through the gravel paths in a powerful stride. He was staying outside the central area where the structures would be. That meant he didn’t want to face me in a confined area, and I preferred not chasing him through the trees. We were in a whirlwind stalemate, running in circles until I slowed and did the only thing that could bring our chase to a close.

  I slowed, went silent, and stalked through the central path toward some obscured shapes that turned out to be the partially reconstructed ruins making up the heart of the garden. There were a half dozen buildings—low, concrete structures in various states of repair. The creatures had been busy. Sliding through the forested shadows, I took a position counterclockwise, listening with my whole body as the monster realized I was no longer in pursuit.

  I pulled hard on my ‘bots, willing them to slow my breathing. They obliged, and I chalked their ability up to the growing list of things my new body could do during battle, be it the kind in the field or the bedroom. In stoic silence, I waited, but the beast kept walking, slow but steady, his footsteps louder than gunshots as my senses slipped into overdrive. He was fifty meters away, skulking from tree to tree, his great head turning to sniff the wind with huge, snuffling draughts of air like a coursing hound.

  I knew his own heart would be roaring in his ears after our chase, and his chest heaved up and down as he fought to regain his own wind. Tough break for you, buddy. You should have done more cardio.

  Once he was close enough and before he found me, I took the initiative and lunged at him with lightning speed. My knife took him in the leg, a glancing blow but enough to spin him outward, arms rising in defense as he shot again, the round going low and sending a spray of grit up in the growing light. I rushed in, my feet a blur, hand reaching out to snap down on his meaty wrist, twisting, crushing, pulling—all until he dropped the gun with a howl of rage. His short sword whistled through my hair, passing in a flash of dangerous silver as I raised my left hand and punched him in the elbow with a sickening crack.

  His arm hung limp as he continued the spin, eyes wide with shock, not pain. This was a beast who was used to winning, but he’d never met me before.

  “You cannot—” he said, but I cut his bullshit off with a short blow to the chest, then followed with a kick to the knee and a crushing right hand that fractured his collarbone. I wanted the bastard alive and tame. If it took fifty punches, I had time enough and energy for everyone.

  In his black eyes, I saw something he had probably not felt for a long time. Fear.

  “One piece at a time,” I told him, dropping under his clumsy swing to unleash a flurry of blows that hammered his ribs. He folded forward, then back again as an uppercut sent two fangs flying in a spray of snot and blood. His roar was an inhuman thing, free of words or meaning except the note of defeat. He was going to die, and he knew it.

  I hit him again with the flat of my hand, stunning him as he slumped to the ground, his huge frame going limp. Unlike the other beasts he called family, there was no stench of death on him. This was the closest they had come to success with the nanobots, and I felt a flash of sympathy until I thought of the Harlings and the skulls we’d seen on our way into the garden center. There could be no mercy for cannibals, not in this world and not in what I hoped to build, but information was key.

  I crouched before the creature as Mira and Silk approached, eyes scanning the moving trees for any sign of stragglers.

  “It’s a man, or at least he was, once. Now he’s in a twilight place between beast and human, and he’s going to die in the next few minutes. Does that bother you?” I asked Mira and Silk.

  “No,” Mira said, aiming a kick at the creature’s ribs. Silk looked like she wanted to spit but satisfied herself with a disdainful sneer as she stared down at the creature.

  His eyes fluttered, and he coughed blood over his teeth in a spray. “Finish it,” he croaked.

  “Not yet, friend. We have questions,” I told him, then leaned in close, my gun under his chin. “I have questions. Whether you remain in pain is entirely up to you. Unlike the Harlings and all the other people you’ve killed, I’m giving you a choice. It’s more than you deserve, but I need to understand what happened here, and if it’s happening anywhere else.”

  He said nothing, letting his eyes close. There was a fine down of fur on his skin, just visible in the morning light. “Doesn’t matter. She’ll find you.”

  “You talking about Senet? I’m counting on it. Can’t wait to meet her brother too, but I have to say I don’t really think they’re related. I think they’re like your little family. Kin by a needle, if you will, people who found a stash of ancient tech, fucked around, and got stranded somewhere between man and beast. Senet just covers up her hunger by pretending to be some kind of priestess, but she’s just another animal. The only difference is she has a wagon,” I said.

  “Wagon?�
� The creature laughed, and fresh blood spilled down his chin. His lungs were filling with fluid from the beating, not that I cared, but it meant I had to hurry. He wouldn’t last long. “What you call a wagon is her own personal butcher’s stall. She’ll carve you apart in it and then rape your corpse, you fool.”

  My hand flashed out to crack against his cheek, but not hard enough to knock him out. “Mind your tongue. What was your name? Let’s start there. Can’t be any harm in being civilized, can there?”

  He looked like he was going to balk, then answered in a wheeze. “Velarus.”

  “A fine name. The name of a dead man, but still, just fine. So, Velarus, I won’t spend our last minutes together asking you about your mom, or your childhood, or any of that bullshit because it clearly doesn’t matter. What does matter to me is where you found the nanobots, and how long you’ve been here,” I said.

  When he hesitated, I leaned a knee against his shattered ribs, feeling them grind together like broken glass. He stifled a scream, spat bloody saliva to the side, and resumed his hateful glare.

  “The blood tech is here, you idiot. It’s always been here; we just found it and started—we tried drinking it, but it killed everyone who did, so we used the needles. The first ones seemed healthy, even better, then they began to change. I’d already tried the tech, but I went last,” Velarus said through gritted teeth.

  “A regular fucking hero,” Mira growled.

  Velarus laughed at us, his teeth a red smear. “Call me whatever you want. I was the only one who could read the map, and the only one smart enough to know what we were looking at. We found a seed bank, letters, weapons, and a place to live. We found hidden springs, lying in wait down below and protected from the sand. I built this place on will alone. I convinced the drooling idiots you killed to dig trenches like on the wall—”

  “On the wall?” I asked.

  He nodded, tiring but still defiant. “Down under. In the hallways, there are inscriptions of how to make the garden with the seeds and the springs. First came the ditches, then the seedlings. We used shades for the first two years until they could survive, and then the trees began to grow on their own. Soon, animals came, and we didn’t have to hunt,” Velarus said, finishing with a racking cough.

  “Wait, two years? How big were the trees after two years?” I asked.

  “Bigger around than your leg and tall. They grow fast,” Velarus replied.

  “Genetically altered seeds, I bet. Way too fast for a regular live oak to grow. How long have you been here?” I asked.

  “Six years, almost seven. With another two or three years, I would have built a wall and had my city, but the—the others descended too far. They even ate each other, now and again. Not from hunger. Just from being beasts.” Velarus’ voice began to soften. He was dying.

  “Is this the only place where there were nanobots? Tell me and I’ll ease your pain,” I said.

  Velarus closed his eyes as the darkness came for him. I leaned close to his mouth as he began to slacken, his body shivering in a death rattle of monstrous proportions. “Six in all, but Taksa will never let you leave, and Senet?” He laughed, his lungs a wet bellow. “She will finish what I could not. You’re dead, human. You just don’t know it yet. Just like her slaves, you’ll be in chains.”

  “Slaves?” I asked.

  Velarus’ eyes widened at my question. “You think her people stay willingly?” He coughed again, the sound closer to his death rattle. “Taksa has a few guards, and Senet has more, but the column that carries them across the sands does so because of fear. You’ll wear the collar too, boy, and you’ll know the taste of her whip. It’s her special—” His voice faded away, eyes glazing over, shifting to look at something beyond my world.

  I raised my gun, but he was gone, his body going still under the cool canopy of his former empire. “We’ll bury him later. For now, we have to get ready for our guests.”

  “How long do we have?” Silk asked.

  “Could be a minute, could be three days. Depends on how far Taksa was when Berec left to sell us out,” I said, my mouth twisting in disgust at the little spy.

  “Do we go into the buildings?” Mira asked, looking ahead at the low shapes. There were several structures throughout the heart of the garden, but only one stood out to my eyes.

  “We start there,” I said, pointing to a low concrete housing over an open doorway, the steps descending into blackness.

  “What’s our plan?” Silk asked.

  “We’re going to have a siege but with evil bastards who think their wagon is the church of pain. We’ll go under, look over our supplies, and start prepping our greeting. I intend to give them the very same thing they want for us. Pain, and a lot of it,” I said as we moved toward the entrance building. Overhead, birds were calling, and a lizard darted across the path but not before giving me a parting glance of disgust at having to leave his sunbath.

  “Guns? Swords? What?” Mira asked with her lips curled in a feral snarl. She liked the idea of revenge, and I liked having her on my side.

  I had an evil grin of my own when I answered. “Eventually. But first, let me introduce you to the idea of booby traps.”

  30

  Mira stood watch as I descended into the darkened stairwell with Silk at my side, weapons drawn. The concrete was stained and chipped, but in decent condition, given the age. I suspected that sand wasn’t just destructive; if something was hidden under the dunes, it would be protected for a long time.

  We held torches for light, their flames throwing eerie shadows over walls that were plain concrete, broken only by expansion joints and then, after twenty meters, an interior doorway with two more steps leading down.

  “This is what we came for,” I said, my words echoing in the empty space. “I don’t expect trouble, but still—be ready.”

  “I’m ready,” Silk answered softly. For a former madam, she was proving to be damned good at the rough and tumble life of a soldier.

  We stepped into the room, and all was silent. The hallways looked similar to Alatus, if a bit wider, and the doors were larger and clearly marked. “This is good. The signs are preserved. Be easier to see what we’re dealing with,” I said.

  “What’s that say?” Silk asked, pointing to a door on the right.

  “Botany; it means the study of plants. Must be part of the seed bank, where the trees come from. I wonder what else is in there?” I opened the door, and the hinges were smooth and free of grit. “They oiled it.”

  We entered, torches high and eyes wide. The far wall was steel, split by a pair of circular vault doors that were both wide open. Inside, I saw rows of small drawers with metallic labels on each.

  “I think we found the start of their garden,” Silk said as we looked the selection over.

  There were thousands of seeds ranging from row crops, to trees, to flowers, all in orderly rows. “I don’t know if everything down here will grow, but if even a portion of them do, we can feed a lot of people. We can plant forests and gardens. We can bring back the world if we have enough water,” I said, feeling awed at the possibility before us.

  “There are springs here, but the Empty isn’t without water. It’s just a matter of finding it when you need it,” she said.

  “Does it rain out here? At all?” I asked, looking through a drawer filled with envelopes of corn kernels. There must have been twenty varieties at hand, and more as I opened a second drawer.

  “Enough. The washouts can kill you, and after the hard rains, there are frogs, even fish. The water comes and goes so fast, it’s hard to survive, but if we could control it, life would be easier. You could grow all of these things again,” she said. Turning to me, her expression was one of wonder. “Did all of these things really live when you—I mean, in your time?”

  “And more. The world was green, the oceans blue. We fucked things up but not so badly that life wasn’t everywhere,” I said.

  “I would like to see a world like that,” Silk said, her
voice soft, eyes distant in the flickering torch.

  “You will. I’ll make sure of it,” I told her. “Come on. We need some specific things, and seeds aren’t what I want, not at the moment.”

  “What are we looking for?” Silk asked. We were opening and closing doors based on the signs, but it wasn’t until we reached a second wing that I knew we had a chance to defend the garden.

  “This right here,” I said, pulling open a door with a sign that read Security.

  “What do—oh. I see what you mean,” Silk said. Before us was an enormous storeroom, shelves groaning with barbed wire, expandable barricades, and crowd control. “How will you stop your devices from killing the slaves? Aren’t they innocent?”

  “They are, and we have one goal. To free them. It’s bad enough that the virus created half-humans who stumble around, but I’ll be damned if I tolerate anyone putting humans in chains. We’re going to rig this place smart and make sure we take out the guards at a distance. They’re coming here for a reason, and even though we’ll give up the element of surprise, we won’t lose every advantage. We have the garden, which gives us good cover. We have a rifle, which gives us range. And, we have something else I haven’t really tried yet, but this is the right time,” I told her as I searched the shelves.

  “Which is?” Silk asked me, eyes bright.

  “Me,” I said, throwing a coil of wire over my shoulder.

  “Jack, you can do many things, but—yourself? You can’t sacrifice yourself for all this. It doesn’t work without you, whatever this plan is that you have for the world. You understand that, right?” she asked me.

  I kissed her, then pulled her to me. Roses, I thought. Even now, in the middle of a wasteland, she smelled of roses. There were good things in the world, and I didn’t intend on leaving it for a long time. I smiled when we pulled apart, the torches casting shadows and light over her face. She was stunning. She was a reason for planning well, just like Mira was, and just like freeing the people who dragged a monster’s torture chamber across the shifting sands.