“They all have the same sickness?” Ivy asked.
“Yes.” Gihn watched for a moment, his lips in a hard line. When he continued he spoke to Ivy only through his thoughts, keeping their conversation private. “We call it the Swift Death. The sickness attacks only our hunters, the strongest and healthiest of our family. Truen here,” Gihn gestured to what looked like the most hopeless case, a man whose shallow, rattled breaths seemed to be the only indication that was alive at all, “was young and fast. Our best with arrows.” The man's ribs brutally corrugated his skin and his limbs hung from an unnaturally bulbous belly. There were blood stains around his thighs and his joints were severely swollen.
Ivy was horrified. “How long can he live like this?”
Gihn’s eyes glistened with tears. He suddenly looked even more sad and punished by life than he had before. “I am surprised he is still alive now. Each day, his mate Juna holds him and he responds just a little to her. They were so happy. I think he only lives now because she pleads him to stay. It has been just over half a moon since he fell ill, the others have lived barely past a quarter moon.”
Dead within a week.
“Not one has recovered?”
Gihn’s head shook grimly. “When Truen began the sickness I knew it was time to call for you. I had to see if the Life Stone would bring you the way our ancestors believed. We tried many times and I’d almost given up hope. But then you came.” Gihn dropped his hand from the amulet. He knelt down and pressed his hand to Truen's forehead. He whispered in the dying man’s ear and then crouched for a moment with his forehead pressed gently against that of the other man. Once again, Ivy felt like an intruder to the intimacy around her. When Gihn stepped back to Ivy, there were tears in his eyes. “Truen is not just our best with arrows, Hiranah. He is the the youngest son of my mate. She died too, four summers past.”
Suddenly, Truen’s back stiffened and arched. He cried out and the back of his head hit the sleeping mat hard. A woman, presumably Truen’s mate, Juna, came rushing over as the convulsion stuttered to an end. Truen’s eyes had rolled back in his head and he was gasping for breath with a wet crackling sound. As Juna lifted Truen's head and gently placed it on her lap, he lapsed back into unconsciousness. The woman began stroking his hair, curling forward to hush him. Judging by the passivity of those around, it was clearly not the first time it had happened.
Panic rose in Ivy's throat. She grabbed Gihn’s arm. “I can't do this Gihn. I know you want me to save your son, but I just don't know how.”
Gihn didn’t look at her. “You cannot save him, Hiranah. It’s too late, I know that. But there are others. We have lost nearly half of our hunters in four moons and Lahstri cannot find any medicine to help. Without our hunters, none of us will survive.” Gihn arrested Ivy’s eyes with his own. “There is more, Hiranah,” he said. “The Swift Death is just the beginning.”
“More?” Ivy whispered, horrified.
“Our family is dying, Hiranah.” Gihn said quietly. “There are less of us each summer than the one before. Women are not bearing children as often as they used to. Babies are born sick or die before their time to arrive. We call it the Slow Death. If you don’t help us fight it, then soon we will be nothing but dust and bones.”
Ivy’s stomach turned at the graphic premonition of his words. They were meant to be dust and bones. These hobbits were real, organic, breathing emanations of the past. Fossils refleshed. Ivy looked down at Juna consoling her dying mate and tried to stifle her rising panic. More grief. I’ve done this before. I can’t do it again.
“I know nothing about healing, Gihn,” Ivy said desperately. “You called the wrong person. I can’t save you, I couldn’t before, I just - I won’t do that again. I can’t!”
“Then save us from becoming sick! Stop the Slow Death from stealing our children and this Swift Death slaying our hunters. Save our family Hiranah, I beg you!”
Ivy shuddered with emotion, finally giving in to the overwhelming anger that gripped her.
“You ask me to exist, only as a means to instrument your own survival, Gihn,” Ivy said coldly. “You have taken my life away from me, as surely as Truen is losing his. You don't think that’s unfair?”
“We called for help and you chose to come!” Gihn growled. “You were always meant to help us survive.”
“Gihn, I can't help you survive!” Ivy turned away incredulous. She could no longer look at the gentle desperation in Juna's eyes, or the veil of grief through which Gihn watched his youngest son. She was furious. Their blind faith in her ability to manipulate the relentless course of natural selection was wrong. Dangerous, even. Ivy ran out of the cave, desperate for the privacy of her own screaming thoughts. How can I explain what you have no hope of understanding?! Even the potential of you understanding what I know would manipulate the course of evolution.
Ivy squeezed her eyes shut, willing her emotions to reconcile. She didn’t blame them for their desperation. Ivy understood grief and loss all too well. First Jasper, that too-vibrant boy that had opened her heart, in all its naive innocence, only to drown her in sorrow with his death. Then she had nursed her mother for a year through the ravages of cancer, watching her broken father retreat into his work, only to inevitably lose them both; one to disease and the other to a new, distant life where his daughter’s face, so devastatingly similar to her mother, couldn’t haunt his days with sadness.
These people - Ivy had no idea how to give them what they asked for. The Swift Death was clearly a virus or disease, quick and fatal. But the Slow Death seemed more sinister and complex. I’ve lost my life, my everything, for no reason at all.
Ivy sat in the filtered light of a copse of sweetly scented rosewood trees. The previous night she had awoken to the keening wails of Juna. Truen had died. Ivy had slipped outside, feeling overwhelmed and suffocated and inexplicably full of guilt.
Above her now, Kyah rummaged through branches scattering leaves and yellow flowers, shadowed, as always, by little Trahg. Ivy couldn’t help but be grateful for their strange connection. There was intelligence within the child that seemed almost transcendental – different to the kind of human she knew, but no less beautiful or complex.
Still, isolation stung at Ivy's heart and pricked her eyes, even surrounded by beauty. Her old life had been torn away. She turned to her battered journal for solace. Ivy's pencil raced across the pages and the word that seemed to fill them most, swollen with tears, was Orrin.
Twenty-eight hours of pure frustration drilled into his temple. Orrin rubbed his eyes beneath his black glasses as he made his way to the biology building. All he wanted was a chance to apologise. Or better yet, to pick up where they'd left off, before this ridiculous situation had come about. Ivy's disappearance haunted him and his gut twisted with frustration and concern for her. Maybe it was just guilt.
Orrin knew he shouldn't care as much as he did. Not knowing why he cared frustrated him almost as much as the fact that he did. Women had come in and out of his life since the divorce. But Ivy… there was something there. Unmistakable physical attraction, sure. But something else. Something that tugged at his subconscious and drew him in. An enigma.
After stopping for directions three times, Orrin finally found himself outside again, in front of a thick steel door. Behavioural Research Laboratory 6. Whatever they keep in here sure as hell isn't getting out.
His knocks received no answer. Orrin tried the handle and was surprised it yielded. So much for security.
“Hello?” The dim room only answered with the scratching and scurrying of mice. Scanning the walls for a light switch proved fruitless, so he pushed the door wide open.
Louder, then. “Hello, anyone here?”
The fading light illuminated a dozen glass cages along the wall. Hundreds of mice scattered at his approach. To his left, rows of tall cabinets stood as sentinels in the dark, an avalanche of paper work and books spilling from the shelves. The corridor ahead stretched into darkness. Tiny particles
of dust hung suspended in the still air. Orrin didn't scare easily, but this place gave him the creeps. She's obviously not here; I'll just leave a note and go. He squinted at the messy desk, searching for a paper and pen in the dim light. A whiteboard was propped against the wall. Even better. Orrin found a felt pen dangling from some string and scribbled a note for Ivy.
He turned to leave. Something on the desk caught his elbow.
“Shite!” Crashing metal on concrete shattered the silence and a bucket load of chopped vegetables escaped into dark places. Groaning, Orrin began to gather them. This day’s gone arseways. Groping in the darkness, the gritty floor yielded more dirt than vegetable so he gave it up as bad joke. She’ll find my note. And probably the mess I left as well, damn it. Orrin made for the door, disappointed again, picking through a minefield of potato. The silence was brutal.
Wait - not silence. Grunting and shuffling noises filtered to him from beyond the corridor. The chimps, he supposed. He wondered vaguely if Kyah would remember him. He reached the steel door.
Wait - no. That wasn't shuffling… it was - whispering? Orrin strained to hear. There was someone here, two people maybe. Ivy? Liam? Why hadn’t they answered when he called? Was she seriously hiding from him? Maybe they didn't hear me. Curious, he edged down the dark space between cabinets and cages.
Orrin caught his breath as the copper sun hit his eyes. Ahead, the roof had disappeared and wire mesh walls were gated in front of him and towered above. A large canopy covered part of the cage, with giant potted trees and rocks carefully strewn about. He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but the bizarre implantation of this false jungle within university walls seemed comical and ugly. They could do better.
There was no one in this room. And nowhere to hide. Brilliant. I’m away in the head. Hearing things now too.
As he turned to leave, a slight movement caught the corner of Orrin’s eye. He looked closer into the shadows of the cage, expecting to find a chimp shuffling around. He stepped forward, a wary smile on his face.
“Kyah?” he called awkwardly.
His eyes adjusted and he realised something was returning his stare. Orrin’s smile froze, and his heart crashed. This is no chimp. A chill crawled across his skin and he stumbled backwards. He fell, scrambling back up without daring to look away. Every muscle in Orrin’s body arrested at the sight of the creature staring back at him from the shadows.
It stepped forward into the fading light. Upright. Walking. A woman - naked and tiny, with dark skin and matted black hair. Cold sweat ran down the back of Orrin’s neck as he fought with himself not to run. More whispers. There were others, all huddled together in the shadows. What the hell is this?
Suddenly, there wasn’t enough oxygen in the air. Orrin locked eyes with the tiny woman who was frozen in place. He recoiled. She narrowed her eyes accusingly. Defiantly. Her lips rolled back in an ugly grimace.
“Ash-awa negitah,” her voice came at him in a low whisper, suffused with hatred. The cold night air caught in his throat. She was speaking to him; it was speaking to him.
She hissed and looked down, twisting slightly and Orrin realised there was something in her arms. With macabre curiosity, Orrin focussed on the dark space, his blood pounding in his ears.
A pair of eyes stared up at him from her arms. Wide eyes. A baby. Naked, perfect dark lips, olive face. Undeniably more human than animal. But wrong – misshapen, alien. Its little fingers clenched and reached upwards, toward the light. Toward him.
The air left him like a kick in the guts.
Orrin turned, stumbling and falling into the darkness, desperate to slam the steel door between himself and the aberration of reality behind it.
Hidden in thorny bushes on the far side of the river, Neil Crawford spat. The small green berries he chewed were bitter and did nothing to placate his gnawing stomach. He scraped the grit off his tongue grudgingly. He wouldn’t have eaten them at all, if he hadn’t seen her doing it first. I’m surprised she can stomach this crap. Without her entourage of freaks, Neil was sure the redhead would have died already, starved, no doubt. He’d survived on his own, of course.
He’d been watching the woman for days and stuffed himself into the cavity of a decaying tree each night. The hollow trunk was wide and long and had previously been home for a nest of vipers. The slithering golden offspring had broken through their membranous casings only hours before he’d found them, their mother birthing them live and escaping into the dark forest floor. He couldn’t have known that the three dark brown spots ringed in black and white that ran down their body identified them as one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. If he had, Neil wouldn’t have been so quick to claim their home. As it was, he didn’t know, and each of the eleven juveniles remaining in the nest received a swift stab at the base of its neck between the dark patches on each blunt temple. He’d sliced them open to find three of them had already consumed their less aggressive siblings. Each one in turn, was consumed by Neil. The taste was smoky and rubbery, like chicken left out too long. The snakes had placated his hunger for two days, and then his gut had grown sick and twisted in retaliation, tying him in agonising knots. For the past eighteen hours Neil had had nothing but water stolen from the river after dark. This morning he was hungry again.
His mobile phone had run flat days ago, robbing him of his compass and the only tangible link he had to the real world. I never asked for this shit. He let his resentment grow thick like a shield. Given his time again, Neil wouldn't have gone to the lab at all. But who would have suspected this? Nothing could have prepared him for it. His shoulder still ached, his feet were blistered and swollen with the heat and his ageing body felt punished. The chill night air of the mountains compressed his cigarette-damaged lungs. But he pushed through it, refusing to succumb. The pain made him stronger. They underestimated me. There was pride and victory in that, at least.
When Neil first spied the redhead by the river, putrid and furious as he was, he very nearly broke his cover. After all, she’d left him unconscious with a mangled arm in the forest, for God knows how long. She must have. Anyone with half a brain would have searched the area before taking off into the forest. She must have seen him lying there, exposed to the elements and predators, left to die. Reason fled and he itched to show her that he wasn’t so easily disregarded. That she’d walked away from the wrong man. That he wanted answers from her, regardless of the means he had to use to get them.
While tracking her, Neil's mental interrogation had replayed over and again, growing exponentially fierce.
Who the hell are you? Who did this to me? Terrorists? The University? Some damned private backer pulling strings on the world’s energy supply? Another government department? What was going on in that lab? How did they control the energy field? What were they planning to do with it? Convert it? Redirect it? Who was their target? And most importantly; how the hell am I going to get out of this shit hole?
Neil had finally found her, as he knew he would. He stepped out from the shadows, ready to shout. Within a heart-beat he’d changed his mind. Neil had thrown himself back into the thorny hide-out, his mouth dry and the stinging of torn skin unnoticed. Since that moment, nearly four days ago, only one question became critical; what the hell is really going on?
Bizarre, dwarfed ape-men were constantly by her side, surrounding her, leading her, protecting her. They were freakishly small, half-man half-animal - like something you’d see in a National Geographic magazine. Neil could find no place for them in his expansive knowledge; they looked like an insult to humanity. Whether they were some sort of sick transgenetic experiment or a well-kept evolutionary secret he could only guess.
They carried spears and arrows and even from a distance Neil suspected he didn’t want to be caught on the end of one. The creatures visited the river in small groups, at least seventy so far, although it was hard to tell. They all looked the same, like pot bellied children with abnormally long arms and misshapen heads. They were mostly n
aked too, and even more unappealing for it. In his hiding place, Neil learned to lie still. He gently flexed his limbs one by one as he lay there, discouraging the spasms of contracting muscles. The ape men were vigilant; he had to give them that. He’d been nearly caught twice already. Even the children lifted their eyes to the slightest movement in the trees. Children. He spat again with distaste. Not children. Animals.
So far, there were only three things he was sure of. One, I’m outnumbered. Two, I don't know enough and three, the woman is somehow involved. Neil never acted from a position of disadvantage. Know thy enemy.
So he watched.
And watched.
The redhead showed no aversion to the ape-men, on the contrary, she seemed almost deferential to them. Contrary to his initial belief, Neil now doubted that the woman had known he was even there, lying unconscious merely twenty feet from where she’d been herself. This woman wouldn’t have left an injured, vulnerable man to the elements if she’d known. Any woman who could muster up enough sympathy to treat these beasts as equals was clearly a slave to her own conscience, which would make it that much easier to manipulate her.
The woman’s limp was nearly gone and she was usually barefoot. She was quiet, but not submissively so. It seemed a more calculated quietness, like she was observing the goings on around her with an air of fascination and God forbid, affection. Neil wondered if she even knew why she was there. Maybe not. Regardless, she still knew something. This woman was the only link between the physics laboratory and this death-trap.
For now, her intentions seemed the same as his; watch and learn. The only difference was the object of scrutiny.
She was watching the ape-men; Neil was watching her.
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