“You’d be surprised the lengths we’ll go to in order to keep ourselves alive,” Wallah muttered, crossing his arms in protest. He loved and respected the Elder too much to go against him, but he could no longer keep his thoughts and frustrations to himself.
“We could never be as evil and as destructive as Ta’Zan. We would prove him right,” Rakkhan grumbled. “We could’ve done it, even as the plague developed and started killing us off. We saw it as a sign from the universe that we’d done something too bad—unforgivable, even—when we created him. What happened was our own doing, and I am not going to put these young souls through the same process all over again. I cannot.”
“You’re being unreasonable,” Lumi said. “I could make you do what we want.”
Draven discreetly moved by her side, then gave her a soft nudge. “How about not yet?” he asked, then whispered something in her ear. Luckily for me, I was close enough to overhear it. “I’m almost through to the kids, to Wallah. If I get him to rise against Rakkhan, the old Draenir won’t have a choice.”
Heron nodded, as he, too, heard the whisper. “They all look up to Wallah. I can tell.”
Lumi sighed, then stepped back, pursing her lips. She wasn’t happy with the decision, but she did acknowledge Draven’s leadership position in our group. She respected his choice and was most likely going to continue plotting her plan B. Knowing Lumi, she already had a clue as to how she was going to bypass Rakkhan’s authority.
“Fine, Rakkhan,” Draven then said. “You stay here and hide in the bushes, if that’s what you’re good at. The rest of us will find another way to take the fight to Ta’Zan before it’s too late.”
“You do as you wish. I will keep my tribe safe for as long as I can,” Rakkhan mumbled, though I could tell from his aura that he was no longer positive about his choice. I made a mental note to tell Draven about it.
“If it’s all right with you, we’d like to get ready to leave toward midnight,” I said. “It’s safer for us in the darkness.”
“Yeah, once we get the tracking spell going, we’ll have a lot of miles to cover rather swiftly,” Lumi replied.
Rakkhan nodded. “That’s acceptable. But you must all be gone by midnight. The longer you’re here, the bigger the strain on our tribe.”
Draven ignored him and came closer to me. I inhaled deeply, feeling his musky scent invade my nostrils. Feet shuffled on the ground as the guards dispersed and widened their watch radius. Wallah reluctantly followed Rakkhan back to his cabin. Their postures were strained. They still had a lot to talk about, and most of it wasn’t going to be pleasant.
“I’m not giving up,” Draven whispered.
“Good. We have till midnight to get Wallah and his youths to maybe challenge Rakkhan’s authority. We don’t just need their weapons and supplies; we need eyes and boots on the ground, too,” I replied. “We need fighters, and these guys can help.”
In addition, they could point us to areas from which we could draw more ingredients for their weapons. We could shift the balance in this entire hot mess if we had the right firepower and people on our side. But first, we had to convince these isolated creatures to help us.
Therein lay our biggest challenge, as what we wanted them to do went against their very nature.
Elonora
A few hours later, we were approximately fifty miles away, teleported to a distant island by Kailani. Raphael guided us through the deep woods and took us to what looked like an underground stronghold.
We slipped through a crack in a giant boulder, neatly concealed by climbing greenery. Despite the absolute darkness, I could see the chamber at the bottom, as well as the carved steps we used to descend.
“What is this place? It looks man-made,” Rose said, while Raphael led the way down.
“I think it belonged to the Draenir,” he said. “I found it by accident. We couldn’t detect it with any of our devices; otherwise, I would’ve remembered it from the new maps.”
Once we reached the chamber, he touched the wall, looking for something. We all heard the click, then the hum of overhead lights as they bathed the entire place in a pale white glimmer. Some of the neon tubes were defective, blinking as they struggled to stay on.
We were all in shock, as we discovered an underground cluster of chambers, all highly technological, clean, and untouched by time. There were all kinds of screens and control panels, built-in shelves with equipment, and unknown paraphernalia, but what really drew my attention was the weapons room. I could see no other use for objects so close in design to military-grade weapons of Earth. Sure, they seemed to have different mechanisms and engineering, but they all had the parts of a killing machine, with glowing blue lights on the side.
Dmitri had been carrying a temporarily headless Douma on his shoulder, the upper part of her body wrapped up in a piece of cloth as she regenerated. He put her down and stretched his arms out for a second as he took all of this in.
“These are powered with serium,” Dmitri concluded. “Just like the cave pods.”
Raphael chuckled. “Ah, so you’re the tech guy, the bright one,” he replied.
“What the hell is this place? Do you know what any of this does?” I asked, virtually in awe of everything I was seeing.
Raphael shrugged. “The Draenir had their weapons and gadgets stored. I imagine most didn’t make it down here during the plague, or we would’ve been shaking hands with them right about now. They died out and left all this behind.”
“Unbelievable.” Ben gasped as he lifted one of the weapons, which was mounted on the wall. He took his time to study its design and buttons, to figure it out. “These are high-powered,” he added. “The one thing we know for a fact is that serium stores a ton of energy in its relatively small mineral bodies. If my assertion is correct, this weapon here could do some serious damage.”
“I think that’s the ammunition chamber,” Hunter suggested, pointing at a side section.
“I don’t know how to take it apart,” Ben replied, shaking his head in disappointment. “I’ll need some time with this thing to understand what makes it tick.”
“I wonder what’s in these vials and glasses,” Vesta said, pointing at another shelf.
Kailani went into another room. Her voice echoed softly into ours. “I think this is the control room or something. Screens and computers and whatnot.”
“Utterly useless, in my opinion,” Raphael replied. “Whatever the Draenir had here is dead and gone, outdated and outsmarted. Ta’Zan would’ve learned from them, then made everything better. I think it was an ego thing.”
We spent some time checking out every nook and cranny of this place, wondering when it had been built, and what must’ve happened to the people who were supposed to get here—to safety.
“It’s a shame they never made it,” Nevis said quietly, staying close by my side during our inspection. Eerily enough, Raphael was never far away, either. I could almost feel him breathing down my neck, his eyes constantly fixed on me.
“I don’t know. I have zero attachment to them,” Raphael muttered.
“I wasn’t talking to you. I doubt you’re designed to even care,” Nevis said.
“You’d be surprised.” Raphael sighed. “The first thing I was taught, upon emerging from the womb, was to love my brothers and sisters more than anything. To protect and nurture them, like they did me. To avenge any wrongdoing against them. To destroy anyone who tried to hurt them.”
“And how’d that work out for you?” Rose asked, leaning against the doorway.
Raphael smirked. “It was fine at first. But I was wired differently than most of my siblings. I just couldn’t agree with the whole world domination part. They were all perfectly okay with killing innocents in the name of Perfect supremacy, but I thought there had to be other ways. Shortly thereafter, we began to bicker. Araquiel and I, for example, along with Douma and a few others, were part of the first batch. The miracles, Ta’Zan used to call us. He loved us dearly,
in his twisted way. But Araquiel was too busy kissing his ass instead of pointing out his errors. I did the exact opposite, and that caused some friction with Araquiel.”
“So, what we witnessed today was what, exactly? Brotherly wrath?” Zeriel replied from the next room.
“Is that the guy with the fish tail?” Raphael asked me, lowering his voice. I’d spent most of the journey to this island telling him about us—who I was, who and what each of our team members were. Of course, for safety’s sake, I made sure not to mention any particular weaknesses. We did not yet have Raphael’s commitment to our cause. He’d only just saved our bacon.
I nodded once. “A Tritone. He’s a Tritone,” I whispered.
He was still wrapping his head around the diversity of our species. Granted, he was genuinely fascinated, but the terminology tended to fly over his head. Part of me suspected that he was just pretending, holding on to his aloofness in order to make himself less threatening to our group. After all, he was a superior predator.
“What you witnessed today was me teaching my brother a painful lesson,” Raphael said out loud. “His sneers irritated me enough that I figured I’d just kill him again, as a reminder not to mess with me. I think his time as Ta’Zan’s favorite pet got to his head, and he forgot where he came from. I don’t take kindly to smugness.”
“Will you help us?” Rose asked, cutting to the chase.
“With what, exactly?” Raphael replied, one eyebrow gracefully arched above his green eye.
“We need to get our people back and off the planet. We need to stop Ta’Zan and the Perfects from taking flight and invading the rest of the universe, at any cost,” Ben said.
“You make it sound like a walk on the beach,” Raphael grumbled, then settled next to him, curiously watching as he tried to figure out how to dismantle the weapon he’d placed on the table. “Also, no.”
We all paused in that moment, gawking at him.
“What do you mean by no?” I asked. “Why’d you bring us here, then, if not to help us?”
“Hey, I’m just feeling charitable,” Raphael retorted. “I am in no mood to start a war with my jerk brothers, or Ta’Zan, for that matter.”
“Are you afraid of them? Of your maker?” Ridan asked, while Amane and Kallisto continued to stare at Raphael. They both seemed childishly enamored of him. For good reason, though; the guy was gorgeous by all possible definitions. Ridan didn’t seem to like it, but I figured it had to do with the emotions his aura displayed whenever he looked at Amane. She’d become his soft spot, at some point.
“Not necessarily,” Raphael replied. “It’s just a conflict I don’t want to get into. I lack the affiliations and army to take them to war. Ta’Zan is brilliant where strategy and warfare are concerned, and he’s got Araquiel to help him with that, too. I wouldn’t stand a chance. Plus, Ta’Zan has a knack for keeping aces up his silky sleeves. It ticks me off because I can never predict what they are.”
Nevis sighed. “So, you’re afraid.”
“I’m cautious!” Raphael snapped. “You don’t know them like I do!”
“Yet, you were able to decimate a group in minutes,” I said. “I wonder what more you could accomplish if you had fighters by your side. You could start with us. We have armies waiting for a better way in, already, from all kinds of species—”
“And how did that first attack work out for you, huh?” He cut me off with a smirk.
“I said ‘a better way in’ already,” I muttered. “We didn’t fully understand how many of you there were. We had no idea how Ta’Zan mass-produced you, how many were going to rise up against the fleet. I mean, our people didn’t know. Our message didn’t get to them in time.”
Raphael nodded slowly. “The serium towers blocked your communications.”
A moment passed in utter silence, as I realized what he’d just said.
“The what now?” I croaked, breaking into a cold sweat.
“Slim little things mounted on the planet’s tallest trees,” Raphael explained. “Powered with serium. They cut off all wireless and radio communications, both on and off the planet. There are hundreds of them on Strava. It was one of the first things that Ta’Zan secured when he came out of stasis. The Draenir had them assembled and mounted shortly after the plague broke out. They didn’t want anyone communicating with an infected Strava in any way, fearful that others might come and get sick.”
Nevis and I exchanged stunned glances. “That’s why nothing worked from the very beginning. No Telluris, no Bowie, no cell signal, nothing,” I murmured.
“My maker decided to secure the comms blockers once he woke up. He suspected that we might get the occasional visitor, especially after he took your people prisoners. He thought he’d make it more difficult for other outsiders to leave, so he’d gather new genetic materials for his work. That was always his core objective—engineering the perfect creature. Hence, this,” Raphael replied, pointing thumbs at himself and smiling.
“You can’t possibly let him do what he’s planning, Raphael,” Rose pleaded with him. “It would be genocide and destruction. No culture in its right mind would just bow down before your brothers. No one would go down without a fight. Think of all the innocent lives lost, if he gets off the planet. It’s not right.”
Raphael exhaled. “Listen, I brought you all down here as a courtesy. I’ve made my peace, and I’ve parted ways with my people. We leave each other alone, and it works. Granted, there’s some bitterness there, but nothing to make me fear for my life or wellbeing. And I have no intention of breaking that balance. I’m finally enjoying this place. So, again, no. Not interested in helping you. I mean, I am a little intrigued, I’ll admit,” he added, then gave me a flirtatious wink that made my face burn, “but I’m not suicidal. Grab whatever you think will help you on your quest from here, then be on your way. The best I can do is kick my brother’s head a couple more times, because I know you’re bound to cross paths with him and psycho Abaddon again.”
“You’re not suicidal,” I repeated, frowning. “That means Ta’Zan knows how to kill you, right?”
Raphael stared at me for a good minute, before a grin split his face, ear to ear. “Good grief, you’re not just beautiful, you’re also smart as a whip.”
The temperature suddenly dropped, a sign that Nevis really didn’t like the attention I was getting from Raphael. I gave the Dhaxanian prince a quick sideways glance, hoping he’d get my unspoken message. If I could sway Raphael into helping us, and if it took a little bit of flirting to get it done, I was okay with it. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t have done, at that point, to save the universe.
But I also realized there was a slight sort of déjà vu here. Avril had once worked the same strategy, though she’d already fallen for Heron. She’d tried to get on Nevis’s side, back on Neraka, to get him to release her and her crew, and to help them fight Shaytan and the Mara Lords. Ironic, isn’t it?
Nevis was now getting a front row seat to something similar, and I was having a hard time keeping it together—and not bursting into laughter. It had to ring a bell with him. It was definitely written all over his face.
“Think about it, Raphael,” I said softly. “We have a lot to offer. And you stand to win a lot more than the freedom to lounge on a beach here and there, if you work with us.”
Raphael moved away from the table. “Sorry, gorgeous. You guys do your thing here, and I’ll go check the Draenir pantry. There has to be a pantry here,” he breathed, then left the room.
We were all staring at each other, a mixture of frustration and disbelief flaring through us all. How could we get to him? How could we convince Raphael to help us, when he clearly didn’t want to?
My synapses were quick to make a few connections, though, based on the reading I’d done of his aura and on the things he’d said. He’s intrigued. What was he intrigued about? And how much of his carefree and nonchalant demeanor was really his, and not fabricated? I had a feeling that Raphael was holding up a
façade to maybe put us off. To discourage us from seeking his help, even.
But I was not one to be deterred by such behavioral artifices. Not when I had my family, my friends, and my whole world to save.
Dmitri
A couple of hours passed in grim silence as we settled in the underground bunker. The ventilation and air-cooling system was phenomenal, and we got a continuous supply of fresh air through small, round openings in the ceiling.
We settled Douma’s recovering body in one of the medical chambers, complete with a couple of beds for patient care. Amane and Kallisto stayed with me. I was the guard, while Kallisto constantly checked the head growth.
Raphael stood in the doorway, sipping sweet water from a sealed, silvery pouch, one of many stored in cooler boxes in the pantry room.
“I take it you found the pantry,” I said, leaning back in my chair.
My muscles were weak. My joints were stiff. I needed sleep, badly. Elonora and Rose had already put their heads down for a couple of hours. Ben, Kailani, Hunter, and Ridan stayed up, giving Vesta, Zeriel, Leah, and Samael some time to rest, as well. We needed much more than that, but we had to take advantage of Douma’s condition.
We were a couple of hours away from her brain being able to fully develop and connect to the memory chip in her body, during which time surgery had to be performed to remove it. But even with the surgical extraction of that chip, there was still a chance that Ta’Zan’s database would connect to Douma, wirelessly, and send over the last version of stored data directly to her new brain—rendering our efforts useless.
According to Amane, all the Perfect brains were tracked via a central system—it didn’t focus on their position, but rather on their activity. Once Douma was beheaded, her brain signal went dark, and would return back online once it fully regenerated. Depending on her proximity to the central system—specifically the colosseum, a persistent Ta’Zan could reverse-engineer this central system to not only detect, but also transmit information, such as memories, directly into the new brain.
A Shade of Vampire 64: A Camp of Savages Page 14
