Scavenger of Souls

by Joshua David Bellin

  Still, if it had been Mercy leaving by herself, she probably could have managed it without much fuss. Udain tolerated her random comings and goings, her moods, her need for space. In fact, the way she told it, he’d been more than willing to let her expand her self-directed patrols of the impact zone. Geller would give her a hard time just to tick her off, but even he wouldn’t bat an eye if she decided to take a midnight stroll into the stone desert. By the time Udain realized her tracker had gone AWOL, she’d be past the point of no return.

  With me, though, our chances of escape dropped to near zero. I wasn’t tagged—Mercy checked to make sure Doctor Siva hadn’t performed the surgery after my adventure with the caged Skaldi—but I was still a marked man. When I was alone, all the guards watched me. When I was with Mercy, all the guards pretended not to watch me—which meant they were watching me even closer. Whatever Udain wanted with me, and Mercy swore she didn’t know what it was, there was no way they’d let me out of camp, no matter what whopper she came up with. Short of taking on the twenty or so guards with her single weapon—the same weapon they were armed with—I couldn’t figure out how we were going to break through the compound’s defenses.

  “What about the car?” I asked, nodding at the strange vehicle parked by her grandpa’s headquarters.

  “The moon buggy?” she snorted. “It goes about two miles an hour. I heard we used to have a hot-rod version, but someone took it for a joy ride out into the desert. But never fear”—and she smiled wickedly—“I have a plan.”

  We waited until Udain retired for the night, then marched to the power station. With the spotlights that came on at dusk and the constant glow of the beam, the compound seemed even brighter than during the day. Stealth wasn’t a concern, though. The generator, Mercy explained, doubled as a charging station for their weapons, walkie-talkies, and anything else that ran off the beam, which meant pretty much everything. The guards were accustomed to people stopping by throughout the day and night, so our presence wouldn’t attract a crowd. And what she had in mind would take no longer than a routine recharging, so we’d be well clear of the station before anyone realized what she’d done.

  At the moment, anyway, we had the run of the place. The guards, as she’d anticipated, gave her no more than a bored nod as we came within sight. They did their usual bad job of pretending to ignore me, but I figured I was safe so long as I acted like I was just along for the ride. Now that I’d gotten used to the hum of the beam, the place felt almost eerily quiet. More to break the silence than to hear the answer, I whispered the first question that came to mind.

  “What is the power source?”

  “Something Athan synthesized,” she answered, not whispering. Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness of the night. “It’s one of the things Grandpa’s really closemouthed about. Like he’s got this idea of patenting it,” she cackled.

  “Patenting?”

  “Never mind.”

  The power of the generator vibrated through the heavy soles of my boots. My whole body quivered to its pulse. The thought that something similar might be lurking inside me—in my blood, my bones, my brain—gave me a sick, clammy feeling. Whatever Athan’s energy source was, unleashing it had destroyed the land in a twenty-mile radius from the point of impact. If that same power lay inside me, did it make me what Mercy said I was—a mutant killing machine?

  “You sure this will work?” I asked, unable to keep myself from whispering.

  “Udain taught me the codes,” she replied. “In case anything happens to him.”

  “He trusts you?”

  “Trust has nothing to do with it,” she said. “You saw the tracker in my arm. But the man’s pushing ninety.”

  She sidled up to the power station, where one of the ever-present keypads rested in the wall. The guards eyed her lazily before turning away. This keypad was far more complex than the others: it bristled with unnumbered buttons, as if whoever had designed it—Athan—wanted the codes to be not only unbreakable but unreadable. A single green light flashed in the center, a sign I took to mean either “safe” or “ready.” But as I watched Mercy’s finger fly over the keypad, I couldn’t help thinking of that light as a blinking eye, couldn’t help wondering if Udain was sitting in front of the protograph screen in his headquarters, monitoring his granddaughter as she sabotaged his compound’s power source.

  If he was, the first thing he heard was her swearing. “What the—?”

  She punched the code again, stabbing the buttons swiftly but firmly. The green light continued to blink. The guards turned their attention back to her. Mercy regarded them for a second before spinning and striding away from the generator.

  “I should have known,” she said. “Goddamn it, the old man never misses a trick.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Grandpa switched the codes,” she said. “If I enter one more error in the front gate’s shut-down sequence, the system’s wired to sound an alarm.” She was already halfway to the gate.

  “How often does he switch the codes?” I said, catching up to her.

  “All the damn time,” she said. “But never without telling me.”

  She kept up her march, her strides rapid and jittery. No alarm sounded, no guards appeared. But I had the feeling that dozens of protograph lenses had been planted everywhere around the compound, in the corners of buildings, on the fence posts, on top of the observation tower, all of them targeted at us. I also had the feeling that Mercy had come too far to let this hitch in the plan slow her down.

  I was right. “Get ready to run,” she muttered as the gate rose into view. Her rifle remained strapped to her back, but she’d removed a pistol from its holster and started punching the miniature keys on its handle as she walked.

  “Is this a good idea?” I tried.

  “You got a better one?”

  But then she stopped. We’d drawn level with the cage, the black scorch mark standing out in the brightness like a pool of dried blood. Mercy shook her pistol, furiously punched the buttons again, then drew her arm back as if to throw her weapon at the bars. “Goddamn it!” she shouted. She spun to take in the compound, her eyes snapping from building to building. Maybe she’d felt the same presence of silent, spying eyes that I had.

  “What now?”

  “He jammed my gun,” she fumed. “He actually jammed my gun. I didn’t even know he could do that.”

  She shoved the pistol into its holster, ripped the rifle from her back, tried to bring it to life. When it failed to respond, she gripped it by the barrel and flung it far into the air, where it flashed in the compound’s blinding strobes before falling with a clatter out of sight.

  “Goddamn it!” she screamed.

  “The code . . . ?”

  “Doesn’t bloody work. Everything’s out. The protograph!” she said, realization dawning. “He must have spied on us through it.”

  Hearing my suspicions confirmed didn’t help the knot in my gut. “What do we do now?”

  “We bust out of this insane asylum!” she said, looking around frantically. “We blow the goddamn gate to hell and leave him to pick up the pieces!”

  “But your grandfather—”

  “Locked me in a goddamn cage!” she said. “All my life. For my own protection. To keep me safe.” From her mouth, the words sounded worse than curses. “Ever since I was a little girl, staring at that screen he installed in my room, going out on his pointless patrols only to have him reel me back in. You don’t think he’ll do the same to you? You don’t think he already has? He’s using you, Querry, now that he knows what you can do. Using you, like he used me, and my father, and my—oh, God!” Her words ended in a cry, and she aimed her useless pistol into the night, as if she could blast a hole in the darkness to free herself from the glowing cage.

  “Maybe we can convince him,” I said softly. I reached for her arm, but she jerked away. “If he already knows about me, maybe he’ll come with us. He wants to stop Asunder as much as
you do.”

  “Does he?” Her voice rose, and for a second I thought I saw her father’s madness in her gold-lit eyes. “Without Asunder, how could he keep us in his prison? You don’t know what it’s like here, Querry. You don’t know what it’s like to have to live his life every single moment instead of mine.”

  By his, I didn’t know if she meant her father’s or her grandfather’s. Maybe both. But I tried to reason with her.

  “Let me talk to Udain,” I said. “It’s our only chance. We’re obviously not getting out of here without his permission.”

  Her face froze as if I’d slapped her. Then she laughed, the high-pitched laugh I’d heard earlier in the day. She pointed the dead gun at her head and pulled the trigger, made the sound of the explosion.

  “Better talk fast,” she laughed.

  I lifted my eyes from hers, and saw the guards approaching.

  All six of them from the power station, plus Geller from the front gate, with Udain at their head. As always, the commander dwarfed those around him. In the compound’s harsh light his white hair bled a bright energy painful to my eyes. For the first time, I felt I was seeing him as his older son had seen him all those years ago. And I realized why the commander of Survival Colony 9 had deserted his base and his family, why he’d never returned, why he’d never brought his new colony close to the compound in all their years of wandering. Not only because he was angry that his younger brother had found favor in his father’s eyes. Not only because he doubted the technology his brother had created.

  But also because he was afraid.

  “Mercy,” Udain said, drawing up in front of us, his guards silently forming a circle to block all chance of escape. “I am sorry this was necessary.”

  She said nothing, only slumped before him, her breathing heavy and her eyes dull. Udain reached for her gun, and she handed it to him obediently.

  “Your friend is too dangerous to let slip away,” he said, sliding Mercy’s pistol into his belt. “I’m thankful to you for bringing him here. And thankful to Geller for keeping tabs on him this past day.”

  Mercy didn’t even look up as Geller’s pimpled face smiled in victory.

  “You merely suspect what this boy is,” Udain continued, laying a huge hand on my shoulder. “But I know. He is the final piece of the puzzle, the answer we’ve sought all these years.”

  “Laman said the same thing,” I muttered.

  Udain shook his head, and despite his imposing frame and calm mien, I was sure I saw fresh pain in his eyes. “Laman never understood,” he said. “The risks we took, the losses we suffered. The sacrifices we made. To him, you would have been nothing but a mystery, a freakish chance.”

  “He treated me like a son,” I said.

  “He had no right!” Udain roared, and I flinched from the fury in his face. For the second time in as many days, I was afraid this Goliath was about to strike me down. But then his voice returned to its usual level, a rumble like a shaking beneath the ground’s crust.

  “Laman failed in his vigilance,” he said. “He had you in his keeping, but he didn’t know what he had. It falls to me to atone for his errors. And his brother’s.”

  With that, he gestured to his guards, and two of them detached themselves from the circle to approach me. Their rifles prodded me in the back as their leader grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the power station. No gentleness this time: he dragged me with all the strength in his giant frame. I looked over my shoulder once, saw Mercy surrounded by the remaining guards. Geller’s face beamed with malicious glee, while hers appeared drained and lifeless in the compound’s remorseless light. In that glimpse, I could imagine what she’d witnessed so many years ago at the foot of the impact zone.

  Udain punched the generator’s code into the cuff around his wrist. The front door panel hissed as it swung open, revealing stairs that led down into dimly glowing depths. He entered, ducking beneath the low ceiling, the guards pushing me down the stairs behind him. The body of the camp’s commander filled the stairwell, blocking my view of what lay below.

  At the bottom of the short flight, we entered a cramped room lit by an angry golden glare.

  Cables ran down the concrete walls to a series of metal boxes, each of them roughly the size of a fuel transfer tank. The yellow light came from one of them. Udain stood staring at the boxes, veins of gold lining his face. Then he turned to me.

  “My younger son,” he said, “was a genius. Everything he did, he did for the future of this world. You need to understand that.”

  He tapped a code into the cuff on his wrist, and the front panel of the single glowing box slid open.

  I shielded my eyes from the light. A form resolved itself, a figure that burned with bright golden energy as if its blood and bones were on fire.

  A living figure. A human figure.

  It was no larger than a child.

  I stared, unbelieving. The figure’s eyes stared back. It wasn’t entirely human, its head far too big and its limbs far too scrawny. I would have called it Skaldi if not for the suffering in its puckered face. Its chest heaved convulsively, and I thought I could hear its heart beating, in time with the pulse of its burning blood. Other than that, it stood motionless, locked into its casket with metal bands, cables erupting from its head and shoulders and chest. Udain allowed me one more torturous look before entering another code and sealing the figure in its cell once again.

  My eyes met his. Tears sparkled on his cheeks like jewels, fierce and bright.

  “Biosynthesis,” he said. “On a scale that dwarfs the imagination. Living energy from cell metabolism, generated and stored to operate this compound for a thousand years. My son did this. At my command.”

  “Udain,” I whispered. “How could you?”

  “It was my charge,” he said. “It was what gave rise to the survival colonies. For years after the aliens’ discovery, our government studied the creatures, seeking to tap their abilities. Here was an organism, to all appearances without life, but capable of draining life-energy from others. And yet the alien cells, unable to store the energy they’d stolen, deteriorated rapidly after colonizing another body. What might the potential be if the aliens’ genetic material could be mated to normal cells, healthy cells—human cells?”

  He drew a heavy breath. “It was known as the Kenos Project, from a very ancient word meaning ‘to empty’ or ‘to drain.’ Its full name—the Strategic Kenos Living Defense Initiative—gave birth to the code name SKLDI, from which we were bequeathed the word Skaldi. It sought two objectives: to spawn supersoldiers, and to breed human bombs.” His voice and eyes never wavered, but I thought his eighty-plus years had accumulated on his frame in a single instant. “I was its head in the years immediately preceding the wars of destruction.”

  “The wars,” I said. “Is that what caused them?”

  “The wars were both product and impetus of the Kenos trials,” he answered. “The drones”—and his arm swept the row of sealed boxes—“represented some of our first successes. What we didn’t know was that the energy stored in their bodies, when released with explosive force, would draw the Skaldi in even greater numbers. Drone after drone was detonated in an effort to terminate the threat, but with each new blast, more and more of the creatures poured through the gateway. There are those who believe the Skaldi infiltrated the project in its early stages, forcing us to turn our world’s resources to their ends. Knowing the creatures’ methods, that wouldn’t surprise me. But I’ve witnessed enough destruction among my own kind to think we needed no such prompting from another world.”

  I could see it now, reflected in Udain’s mournful eyes: the Skaldi’s power bred in living hosts, the world bombed and broken, turned to a lifeless desert. “What do you want from me?” I asked.

  “An end,” he said. “An end to all this ruin and waste. I pushed my son to continue the Kenos trials, believing that if we could refine the drones, we could use them to defeat the Skaldi at last. Build a weapon that would dr
ain them of power rather than feeding them more. A weapon that would neutralize them without damage to us.”

  His face flickered in the light of his son’s creation.

  “But I was wrong,” he said. “His weapon failed too, and you’ve seen the result. This final drone is all that remains of his handiwork. For years he’s been seeking to recover it, for purposes I think I can guess. He would destroy everything that remains in the name of his mad theology, and only I stand in his way. That’s why you can never leave this compound. And why my granddaughter’s impetuosity had to be curbed.”

  “You think I’m like that . . . that thing?”

  “I think your own theory of origins is fundamentally sound,” he said. “Through a process I don’t fully grasp, you bear the drone’s power within you. Its power—and its danger. I know you and Mercy intend to confront my son. But you’re dabbling in forces you don’t understand. If that power should again be unleashed . . .” He shook his head. “The consequences are beyond anything you can imagine.”

  “Udain,” I said, as gently as I could. “My friends are out there. Your son has them, and he plans to kill them, or—or worse.”

  “My son’s mind is closed to me,” he said tonelessly. “It’s possible he wishes to provoke a confrontation to further his ends. I regret the loss of your colony, but I can’t risk an attack. Not anymore. All I can do is remain here and protect what he so desperately seeks to possess.”