Rex Rising (Elei's Chronicles)

by Chrystalla Thoma

  “So are the rumors true?” Kalaes’ dark eyes flicked from Maera to Hera.

  Hera hung her head, the faint light from the agaric grove turning her forehead ghostly. “Yes and no. There are objections in the Council. Some have said that our body defenses are falling drastically as a result of the parthenogenesis. Even Regina cannot protect us forever against all the mutations of other parasites, no matter how often Regina also mutates. That we might need… a man’s contribution.” Her cheekbones pinked.

  Kalaes’ low snicker turned into a guffaw. “Really.”

  “Contribution?” Maera sneered. “Whatever…”

  “Regina is always mutating,” Hera said. “There’s the hope that it will recognize the danger of parthenogenesis and reverse the reproduction-related mutations, so that we can reproduce sexually again. Therefore we cannot eliminate males.”

  “Glad to know we’re so important to you.” Kalaes snorted. “So everything depends on Regina.”

  Hera nodded. “The purpose of the cure was to somehow keep Regina in check, control it. There are fears among us that the parthenogenesis has gone on for so long now that more and more cases of mental illnesses occur. On the surface of our bodies everything looks all right, but below the skin, something is wrong. In our heads something is foul. And yet, we cannot rid ourselves of Regina, even less so we of the Echo royal line. We are Regina.”

  “You’re a member of the Elite?” Elei just couldn’t believe it. He pressed his hands on the nepheline seat, his fingers digging into the material.

  A childish voice from a dream buzzed in his head. ‘Echoes wander there and one has found you.’ Hera. An Echo. More things clicked into place — the black marks on her finger bones, the brand of the Regina parasite, and her strange accent. Pelia had told him about Echoes. They grew up inside the sacred citadel, speaking the language of their ancestors, learning the old songs and rituals, guardians of their race.

  “How do you think I had access to all their codes and information?” Hera scowled. “Yes, I’m hatha, an Echo princess. My being Elite served the resistance well.”

  Elei rubbed his temples. “You’re saying you gave up on the Echo princess lines to become a subject for an untested cure?”

  “Someone had to,” her voice cracked and she lifted her chin, jaw clenching, “and I know of no other Gultur willing to do it.”

  Maera thumped the seat. “Why do you both sound as if you believe all she says? It’s all a scheme to make you trust her.” She opened the door and stormed out of the aircar, descending the ladder quickly.

  “She hates me,” Hera muttered, her tone flat.

  Kalaes gave her a dirty look as he proceeded to follow Maera’s example. “We all do.”

  We do? Elei holstered his gun and waited for Hera, then followed her down. He wasn’t sure how he felt about Hera, not yet.

  “No, I don’t think you understand.” Maera was whispering so loudly Elei heard the words before his feet hit the ground. “An Echo princess would never give up her position to be a spy for the Undercurrent. Use your heads, for the gods’ sake!” Maera’s voice rose slightly. “Listen to me. We must take over this aircar and go. Leave her here. Go hide.”

  Hera opened her mouth to retort, but Kalaes pulled his gun and aimed at Hera’s head.

  “Maera has a point.” Kalaes shrugged. “But without fuel we can’t go far. Hera, you’re coming with us.”

  Hera let out a low growl.

  “Kal.” Maera spluttered. “Are you mad?”

  “We need to keep an eye on her. Make sure she doesn’t betray us again.”

  “Are you out of your damn mind?” Maera leaned back. “She’ll be tracked, she has to have a transmitter on her. Probably even embedded in her skin. High-tech.”

  “Hells. Hadn’t thought of that. But leaving her here’s just as bad.”

  Hera produced her longgun seemingly out of nowhere and aimed it at Kalaes’ head. “You think you can tell me what to do?”

  Elei’s heart boomed and colors flashed around him. Hera’s yellow, Kalaes’s red and orange — and the trajectories the bullets would follow crisscrossing space like silvery snail tracks.

  He drew his Rasmus, pointed it at Hera’s chest. “Stop.”

  “Drop your guns, damn you,” Hera grated. “I would give my life to save your kind and you do not even give me the benefit of a doubt.”

  “Save our kind, or yours?” Elei asked.

  “Drop your guns, or I shoot Kalaes.” Hera’s aim was steady. “I would like to save both our kinds, if possible. We are the same species, after all.”

  “Well, fe,” Kalaes drawled in thick street accent, “after what your kind’s done to mine, can’t see why you’d expect any trust from me.”

  “Someone has to take the first step,” Hera snapped.

  Elei didn’t move. “Then maybe you should. Who says it’s us who must take the first step?”

  “Never said it was.” Hera lifted her chin in defiance. “I took the first step by helping you so far, and I have no transmitter, no matter what the little girl here says.”

  “You must report to the headquarters somehow.”

  “I use a glitcher. It does not mark my position.”

  “Yeah, right, whatever.” Kalaes snorted. “Hand it over.”

  “Fine.” Yet she didn’t make any move. “No need for it now, is there, seeing as I’m a fugitive. Drop your gun and I’ll hand it over.”

  Kalaes chewed on his lip. He glanced at Elei, who shrugged minutely, his heart thumping.

  Kalaes lowered his gun. “Fine.”

  Elei kept his gun trained on her as she reached with one hand into her pocket, her gun still aiming at Kalaes. She took something out and threw it at Elei. He caught it, one-handed. If she thought she’d distract him, she was wrong.

  He kept his gun trained on her, not daring to look down at the glitcher in case she shot Kalaes.

  “You know I have to destroy it.” Her link to her world. To her line. To the other Echoes.

  “Do it.”

  “This is all crap,” Maera said. “I don’t buy it. With such technology, would they depend on a portable glitcher to communicate?”

  Hera lowered her longgun and something inside Elei relaxed a fraction. “The latest mutations of Regina have rejected the biotransmitters. The Gultur labs are working on a different version now, using Regina strains to make them work.”

  “But your variant of Regina is weaker now, because of the drug, or so I understood.” Maera rested one hand on her hip and flicked her brown curls from her eyes. “So perhaps you’re carrying one and this is all just a full load of shit.”

  “I’m still a Gultur, and a hatha — an Echo,” Hera said softly. “Pure Gultur. I carry the principal mutations of my generation.”

  Maera shook her head. Kalaes held his gun pointed to the ground, his stance tense and unsure.

  Elei lowered his gun, laid it on the ground and knelt next to it. He opened the glitcher and located the micro-grain. “Maera, give me your tweezers.” He pinched the grain, dislodged it and shook it out into the palm of his hand. Then he crushed it with the tweezers until there was an uneven lump of metal. He threw it down and stomped on it for good measure.

  “Now what?” Hera said.

  Elei looked at the others. Kalaes shrugged. Maera looked pissed but said nothing.

  “We can’t stay in here forever.” Elei gestured at the agaric grove. “We need to find fuel or another vehicle.” The mass of the aircraft caught his eye. It loomed over them, a dark, brooding presence. “We need to hide the aircar too.”

  “I’ll get the camo.” Kalaes climbed inside and dragged the net out. They threw the camo over the craft and secured it with the hooks. At least from the air it shouldn’t be visible.

  Now to the hard part. Elei turned to Hera. “Give me your longgun.”

  “You’re out of your mind.” Hera spat.

  They stood there, staring at each other. He supposed he would have answ
ered exactly the same, had she asked him for his Rasmus. But could he trust her? She’d pointed the gun at Kalaes, and she could do it again. “Maybe you’re lying. Maybe you do have a biotransmitter somewhere in your body, giving away our location.”

  “Or maybe I’m not the one who has been betraying your position.” Her dark eyes flashed with annoyance. “And I do not lie.”

  “So you say.” He held her stare, annoyance burning in his chest. “Funny how the whole Gultur race could call you out on that, though.”

  Her brows lifted in surprise, as if she hadn’t seen it that way. She humphed and turned her face away.

  “What if we tied her inside the grove and left her there?” Kalaes said. “A decoy. She’d give a false position as we move away.”

  “That’s assuming we find another vehicle,” Elei pointed out. “And that she really does carry a biotransmitter.”

  “You’re not leaving me here.” Her eyes glittered and her face paled. “You do not know what they’ll do to me. They have no mercy.”

  Elei shivered and turned to the others. “What do you say?”

  “There’s a way to trace biotransmitters,” Maera said. “Saw it once done in Artemisia.”

  “What way?” Kalaes raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  Hera’s gaze jumped from face to face and rested on Maera’s last. “You also learned that at the hospital, little girl?”

  Maera didn’t rise to the bait. “You need to pass pure dakron over the skin. It reacts with the transmitter’s metatite crystals.”

  “That will burn like all the hells,” Elei protested.

  “A small burn.”

  “As if you care whether the burn is big or small.” Hera sneered. “It will not be on your flesh, will it?”

  It was a solution — find the transmitter, snuff it out, make sure their position wasn’t known. Elei nodded. “We can try it.”

  “The hells.” Hera folded her arms across her breasts. “I’m not doing this. Not unless you all go through with it.”

  “You’re the one under suspicion here.” Elei shrugged. “You’re the Gultur.” He glanced over his shoulder at the hamlet. The streets and houses were dark. No sounds came. “Let’s go to the grove. Someone might hear us.”

  “I may be Gultur, but you have your share of parasites,” Hera retorted as they walked toward the grove. “I’m no traitor because of the mutations I carry.”

  Elei had nothing to reply to that.

  The agaric stalks shed white light into the night. He led the others underneath the huge milky caps. Kalaes and Maera huddled at the base of a huge mushroom. Their breaths rose in clouds into the air, mingling with fireflies and scintillating flying spores.

  Hera slid down the trunk of another mushroom till she sat on the soft, moist ground. She stretched her long legs, crossed her ankles and sighed. Her face looked peaceful, but her eyes observed them with unnerving intensity, never leaving them.

  Elei sat opposite her. His heart thumped none too gently, but the colors never changed. The parasite sensed no immediate danger. He unclenched his fingers around the gun and dissembled it, taking out the dakron energy unit, unwrapping it from the isolating film of surin. He held it in his hand, a dark, shiny cube, practically unused. He wondered briefly how Maera knew this, why someone would perform such a procedure at a hospital.

  “Here.” Kalaes held out his hand, his eyes hard and flat like metal. “Hera, undress.”

  She snarled and drew out her longgun again, though she didn’t take aim. “And if I refuse to put on a show for you?”

  “Then we know for sure you lied, that you’re carrying a biotransmitter, and we kill you.” Kalaes grinned but his eyes narrowed and he laid his other hand on the handle of his gun. “What will it be, fe?”

  Hera held his gaze for a moment and then dropped her head, dark hair sliding forward to hide her face. “I’m so tired of all this fighting. Of this running and getting nowhere.” She looked up, her stony façade crumbling for the first time. Lines of pain etched her mouth and her eyes held the sheen of sorrow Elei had noticed in them once before. “Fine.”

  Elei’s chest tightened.

  She rose and unglued her belt, dropped it to the ground. She jerked when Maera reached out and took it, pulling out the longgun. Hera reached out for it, a jerky, instinctive movement, and opened her mouth as if to shout.

  Kalaes tapped the handle of his gun warningly, and Hera said nothing. She pulled back. Her face became blank, wiped clean of all emotion. She kicked off her boots, unclipped her soft gray suit and shrugged it off. It pooled around her feet as if made of liquid. She stepped out of it to stand naked in the white glow of the agaric grove.

  Well, that’s nice, was all Elei’s stunned mind could supply. Very, very nice. Gods. For another race, she looked perfectly human. Perfectly beautiful.

  Hera stared at some point beyond them, not meeting anyone’s gaze, a nude sculpture, so still she didn’t seem to be breathing. Most of the changes had taken place inside, as was Elei’s case. Her skin was so smooth it glowed, the proportions were pleasing, the breasts were small, the belly flat, the shoulders strong. The legs were long and graceful, the arms sculpted, the neck arched, the face… Well, the face had pulled him from the beginning and it was elegant in its beauty. Her mouth was small but full, her cheekbones high, her eyes large.

  There were differences, of course, not visible at first glance, but when Hera shifted her weight and placed a hand on one slim hip, glaring at them, tiny scales on her neck and on her breasts caught the light and shimmered. Another shift, and more of them glimmered on her thighs, pearly and iridescent, reminiscent of telmion’s rough snakeskin, Regina’s close relative, yet fine like jewels. They were strangely beautiful, and Elei drew a sharp breath.

  Her scent of fruit and flowers hit him so hard he’d have staggered if he stood. He gasped, his free hand digging into the soft soil, his body tightening low. The need to touch her was so strong it verged on the point of pain.

  Maera cleared her throat, snapping Elei out of his trance. “Just be quick.”

  Kalaes stepped toward Hera, his cheeks flushed. He passed the dakron cube all over her, making her twitch a couple of times when he touched her ribs, her nipples, her ears, her eyes. He pressed it deep into her belly, against her thorax, in the small of her back, in her calves, in her thighs. Anywhere a transmitter might be hidden.

  Elei tugged at the polo neck of his pullover, too warm. A burning flush climbed up his neck and his pants felt a size too small. “Nothing, huh?”

  Kalaes nodded. “She doesn’t seem to have a transmitter.”

  Hera leaned over and pulled on her suit with jerky motions. She clipped it closed and pulled on her boots. “My gun.”

  “Uh-huh, no way.” Maera grinned. “This little girl’s keeping it.”

  Hera scowled. “Was this just a ploy to get my gun?”

  “No, it really is supposed to work. Basic chemical reaction.” Kalaes passed the cube idly over the back of his hand. “Maera’s right. Even though the transmitter’s tiny, the metatite’s signal is strong enough to react.”

  Hera sat down and folded her arms across her chest. “The little girl should give it back.”

  Maera stuck her tongue out at the Gultur woman and laid the gun by her side, way out of Hera’s reach. “The difference between you and us,” she grabbed the cube, passed it over Kalaes’ thigh, pressing into the dark material of his pants, “is that we aren’t traitors, huh, Kal?”

  “Stop it.” He tried to push her hand away, but she laughed and slid it down underneath his knee. He jumped a little. “It’s cold. Maera…”

  “If you’re done playing like little children,” Hera sniffed, “give me my gun back.”

  “Tsk.” Kalaes grinned and tried to grab the cube from Maera’s hand. He failed and she snickered. “Maybe without your big gun you’ll finally have to learn to be polite, fe, like us simple mortals. See it as a good thing. A chance to learn to be nice.”


  Hera growled. “I have no need for sugary words. It’s my gun, and I’ll have it back.”

  “Well, fe, this is the difference between your military Gultur culture and the real world. Here, we negotiate. We barter. We don’t demand things as if we have a right to everything.”

  The cube glided down his calf to his ankle and back up to his knee. It sparkled in the milky light. Elei couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  “The gun is mine. She’s a thief.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re a traitor, so…” Maera tapped the longgun by her side and started caressing Kalaes’ other leg with the dakron cube. Kalaes shivered as the cube traveled up his left thigh.

  “Give me the gun, Maera.” Hera pursed her lips. Her brows knitted. “Please.”

  “Hey, hear that?” Kalaes cocked his head. “Did she say please?”

  Maera chuckled. “No way.”

  Hera smacked the ground, her lips pressed together in a firm line. “For Sobek’s sake!”

  Kalaes snorted. “Well, this isn’t how it’s supposed…ow! Dammit!”

  Maera gave a small cry, scrambled back and let the glittering cube fall. It rolled to a stop at Elei’s feet.

  What the hell?

  Kalaes’ eyes had gone very wide. As Elei watched, all blood drained from his face.

  “Kal?” Maera came closer.

  Elei jumped to his feet and took two steps toward them. Shit. He swallowed hard and wished for a moment he was blind. Wished he couldn’t see the burn.

  The dakron had burned through the cloth of Kalaes’ pants, leaving a black mark inside. That had to hurt. Elei winced.

  Kalaes looked at them, mouth open. “No. I… No!”

  Maera’s cheeks already shone with tears. “Kal?”

  “Mae,” his voice broke, “you can’t believe this of me.”

  “So it was you.” Hera stood, hands on hips. “I knew there had to be a mole. After all, someone had to have told the others I betrayed them, and it was too big a coincidence that it happened when I started helping you. All along, it was you!”

  Kalaes’ face grew paler.

  Again I misjudged, Elei thought bitterly. The one person I was starting to feel as close to as a brother. The one I thought I could really trust. He’s the one who betrayed us all.