by Kurt Johnson
Nonch and Mieant exchanged a glance and hurried toward the perimeter. Mieant was muttering something about girls. Lightning raced across the sky, followed a boom that shook the ground once again. Cri looked up at the clouds, which had grown into bruised, purple-and-black monsters.
“They’ll find you food,” she said, punching my shoulder softly, “but it might be raw.”
“What’s with you and…” I nodded in the direction Mieant and Nonch had gone. Cri looked down. Then she looked back at me, her eyes big and vulnerable.
“It just happened. Last night, that thing that we all felt, out there,” she lifted her chin toward the Ruins, “It was terrifying. We were sitting against each other…” She trailed off, keeping my gaze. “I’m worried about Dad. About them. What if no one comes for us, Ray? I don’t want to die alone.”
I frowned and looked at the dirt.
“I mean, yeah,” she said, hurriedly. “We’re all together. Mieant makes me feel good. I can stand this a bit more.” She shrugged, looking up at me from a curtain of hair. “All we may have is now. Together. ”
I didn’t need this. Now? I was the lone Human on this planet. I felt hollow. Galactics got along just fine with other Galactics, except me. I raised my eyes to hers and shouted, “I am dying. We’re supposed to be planning!”
My voice had grown loud. Which is why we hadn’t heard Godwill and Sarla approach.
“Planning?”
Cri and I spun to face the Jurisdictor and the enormous Sarla. Godwill wore his combat suit from the day at the school. Melted, bubbly scorch marks streaked the suit’s shoulder and stomach. His suit had been eaten away completely in other places along his calf.
Thunder cracked, deafeningly loud. Godwill’s lips pulled back over his emaciated face, revealing white teeth and a red mouth. His black eyes bulged from his skeletal head. He grinned.
The starbats, unable to remain quiet, shrieked, and by the thousands, they exploded from their shelter in the Ruins. They flew in sheer panic, and in all directions. Sarla whipped her appendages around, and several of the big creatures tumbled to the ground in pieces. I watched hungrily as the bloody chunks rolled to a stop.
“My Commander is amused,” Godwill chuckled, looking up at me. He smiled at the thunder clouds, closed his eyes and took in a deep breath like he’d just accomplished something. His matte-black eyes turned back to me. “Come, Raystar.”
I put a hand on Cri, who had tensed beside me. Sarla could have bisected us without blinking. Technically, the huge Crynit couldn’t blink, but that wouldn’t make our evisceration any more difficult. And we were not even close to a match for Godwill and his stolen Human nanotech. Even with Mieant and Nonch. Godwill saw my look, my hand on Cri’s arm and my other on my stomach, and narrowed his eyes before smiling again, broadly, to show his even, yellowed teeth.
“Once and for all, Terran, we shall be rid of your kind.” He tilted his head and flicked a glance toward the bruised turbulence above us. The clouds were getting closer to the ground. “Behold, the 98th Battle Group approaches.” He waved to the Ruins around us. “And we will have more than enough troops to recapture the boy, Artem.”
Artem. IT-ME. Now that I knew they were one and the same, I wondered if that’s who or what was watching us last night. If it was IT-ME who had damaged Godwill’s combat suit. I stumbled as Sarla yanked me away from my sister. The Crynit’s massive mandibles clicked. She flicked her head toward Godwill and said, in her husky voice, “Weak.”
Cri pulled away, her eyes huge and worried.
Godwill leaned in further, looking not at me, Raystar, but at Experiment 508. He poked my chest, testing where he’d injected me yesterday. Was he thinking that somehow, I’d have become mushier? A corner of his mouth crept upward. “Bring her.”
43
Sarla carried me gently toward Godwill’s vault.
“Sarla,” I said. She ignored me. I remembered what Nonch said to me in the library, and tried a different tactic. “Sarla, Crynits are brilliant, caring, and wise. Why are you helping Godwill?”
She shuddered, slowing, and lifted me to her orange eyes. She was terrifying.
“Explain.”
“Nonch, Broodmother Krig’s spawn, is my best friend.” Upon hearing this, Sarla tilted her sensor stalks forward. “I’d do anything for him. I think he’d do the same for me. He asked me not to tell anyone this secret, and so I ask you not to break my trust, as I have done to his.”
“Little creature, I could rend you limb from limb, make you tell me anything, without even breathing hard.” Sarla laughed, but not unkindly. Her voice was surprisingly comforting. She’d only said a few sentences, but I liked it when she talked.
“Trust, Sarla. I tell you freely, and ask only that you keep my secret.” Before she could comment, I continued. “Nonch told me he didn’t want to be a Crynit. That Crynits were feared and only viewed as enforcers.”
We stopped. She froze, and when I didn’t say anything more, out of fear, she gently bopped my head with a sensor stalk that had the weight of a soft, heavy pillow. “Continue.”
“What I know about your kind is that you are creative, inquisitive, loyal, and nurturing.”
Sarla snorted and resumed moving toward the vault. “Are you not afraid?”
“Terrified. And yet, in the face of this”—I waved my hand weakly toward the camp, the guards, the autoturrets, the threatening sky, pretty much everything—“I persist. Because I believe.”
She was silent.
“Sarla, help me, please.” We were almost at the vault. “I know you think I’m just trying to save my life. I don’t want to die. But this larger thing that’s happening to us all is wrong! You don’t have to believe me. Talk to Nonch!”
With a swish, she sped up, and we flowed past the guards at the front of the building. Sarla’s armored hide rasped against the corroded Galactic alloy walls as she wormed her way down the stairs and into the metallic, foul-smelling heat of Godwill’s rusty torture vault. She gently laid me in the chair, next to the vid-screens. The screens flickered to life. My body view showed a shrunken circle of red. I was still winning. My eyes scanned the room.
New, angry stains covered the walls. Fresh scars had been gouged into the floors and ceiling, from Godwill’s lightning claws. I shuddered. Whatever gruesome thing happened here was just hours old. Godwill stood, his back to us, by the coffin-shaped collector that would be my home when I finally “liquefied.” He was inspecting a new device, an upright holding tank, that was a much larger version of the containment unit we’d tried to use on IT-ME.
Sarla whispered to the AI in her language, and I turned my attention back to her giant, insectoid form. Straps slithered around my neck, wrists, ankles, and stomach.
“Stay alive, if you can,” she said, leaning in close for a final look at me, “or die well. I…would not be unhappy if our paths crossed again.” Like a black wave, she rippled away, exiting via the stairs.
A few moments after Sarla departed the room, Godwill turned to me. He held two syringes in one hand and smiled, gums showing. He patted the containment unit. “Do you know what these are?”
My blank gaze must have been amusing, because he grinned wider.
Nova. How in the great gravity well would I know? I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of watching me guess for real, either.
“A bookcase? Shoes? ” I rasped.
The smile vanished and he flowed over to me, a fist pounding the chair above my head. I flinched, squeezing my eyes closed.
“IT IS NOT A BOOKCASE! It is your doom! Raystar of Terra!” With every “t” and “s” he uttered, flecks of spittle landed on my cheek. “That,” he pointed, “is the culmination of millions of Human specimens being harvested, their DNA sorted, refined, concentrated. It is EVERYTHING we have.”
“YOUR DOOM!” he screamed. “It is your end and our beginning! You, little Human, have sequences and aspects that not only complete the base genetic sequence, but also have oth
er DNA codes that seem to point to avenues of Human knowledge we weren’t even aware of. If we had found you centuries ago, we would not have needed to process the millions of other Humans. But then, the population of Humans today would be much greater.”
His words hammered away at my guilt. I’m special. So special that I could have averted the deaths of millions of my kind, if I’d been born earlier, or surrendered myself sooner. I closed my eyes, processing what my guilt was telling me. Strike a bargain? Sacrifice yourself sooner, and save more lives?
I didn’t ask for any of this. Godwill continued his gloat, droning on as I left my mind and returned to his words. “….With you finally processed, and then with 507 collected, the Human genome key will be assembled! To think, after 1,800 years, I will be the one to elevate my species…” He drifted off in the bliss of his dream, and as he did, his voice dropped to a purr.
There was no bargain to be struck.
“I have you to thank, Raystar.” He moved back to the giant containment pod, and I watched him look at it with the adoration of a proud parent. He caressed it. “With the arrival of the 98th Battle Group, ancient Nem’ will establish the final Lethian dominance over the Convergence and all Galactics. We will inject our soldiers with this processed DNA, not only eliminating the need for Humans, but”—he pulled my hair so I could see him—“All. Other. Species. Crynits, Gleans, Char—everyone shall have their place in the Convergence redefined.”
This was insanity on a Galactic level.
Something jingled. Godwill’s head whipped toward the sound that came from the staircase. I craned my neck for a view. Sarla flowed into sight.
“Jurisdictor,” she said, her husky voice carrying no threat, just cooperation. “You called me?”
He blinked at her. The Crynit’s giant form was blacker than the shadows in the stairway. Her spikes, ridges, arm claws, and reflective orange eyes made her a nightmare of silhouettes blocking the entrance. “What?”
She flowed a meter closer. Sweet sugar and loam smells blossomed around us, drowning out the acidic, pungent smells of rusted metal.
“I thought you said ‘Crynit,’ which is your usual designation for me.” Great nova. She hadn’t left. She’d hung in the stairway…and had heard the entire conversation.
“Is that so?” Godwill’s voice was low as he took two strides toward her. Lightning flickered around his head and hands. “Commander, I suggest you return to your duties.”
They faced each other. After a moment or a year of stillness, Sarla dipped her head and backed up to and through the doorway. The vault door clanged shut behind her.
“Beast,” Godwill muttered. “Vermin,” he spat. “She will be the first.” He ignored me as he strode up to the containment unit’s controls. My eyes caught something bright by the stairway. It was a bell. That’s what had jingled before. It was attached to a clump of green hair.
Nova.
Godwill returned to my side, intent on the injectors and their vials of Human Reclamation solvent. He did notice my gaze, however, and followed it to the hair. His tongue flicked out, wetting his lips. “This power we have, Raystar, is exquisite. You and Artem will be the last Humans in the Convergence who understand this,” he said, leaning in close.
I could smell his breath, the sweetness of caramel, of meat. I looked at him from the corner of my eye, as I was unable to turn my head without the collar choking me. Tiny blood specks spattered his cheek; they were only noticeable when he drew in so close. “You know the feeling. The exquisite feeling of consuming someone. Of not merely ending their life, but unmaking them, molecule by molecule, until their self-awareness loses enough of itself to not recognize its end. And in that final moment of fear, they turn their soul’s eye to yours, and ask you…to stop.”
I did know that feeling. It repulsed me.
Godwill caressed my face. Smiling almost paternally, he dusted off flecks of dried blood from my nosebleed that were still stuck to my chin. With an almost dreamy sigh, he turned back to the matted hair and chime beads. “Jenna was delicious. Did you know that each individual has a unique taste? No, you wouldn’t. You’ve only experienced the nurse.” He frowned. “That must have been revolting. A Syllthan?” Wow. The Syllthans weren’t even good food.
Godwill regained my attention with a pulled-back grin that suggested I should know something he knew. He leaned in. “Jenna’s mate-to-be,” he said, pointing to the beads again. “Darien. He yielded more energy, but much less flavor.” Godwill shrugged. “Maybe I will be able to taste all of the races.”
It was too much. Did my ancestors know the potential for destruction they had created? Jenna and Darien were spikes, for sure. But they were kids. They didn’t deserve what he did to them. And, as if it mattered now, he had used them at Blue River to bully and manipulate other students. They were his own team!
I had absorbed Nurse Pheelios. Was I better than Godwill, because I had done it only once? Did my reason for doing it make me better than him? Or the same?
Unbidden, Mom’s words came back to me. We don’t leave anyone behind.
I thought of AI, and my face burned. I was going to die. Had I given back to the people in my life as much as they’d given to me? Nonch, Mieant, Cri—they were all here because of me. I wanted to thank them, to tell them how grateful I was. I wanted to protect them.
Godwill’s hands were warm against my skin. This time, he lifted my shirt so my navel was exposed. He talked calmly the entire time, like he’d done this every morning with his eggs and gratcher steak. “With the last treatment, you somehow managed to isolate and neutralize the solvent. I cannot allow that to happen again. My preference would be to deliver it directly into your brain; however, that might terminate you, rendering you useless.” He slid the needle in, and I screamed.
He rubbed another spot on my belly, probing to find the right spot for the next injection. I gulped in hot, metallic lungfuls of air as I tilted my head as far as the collar would let me, trying to track where the needle would go next. His hand went out of sight, and I felt the sting pierce my stomach. I screamed again, my throat hoarse.
“I’m distracting your defenses by making injections in two other areas. Your nano is not strong enough to contain all three infections. One of the three will get through. You simply cannot be that strong.” He lowered my shirt and moved the nanocontainer tub over to my chair.
Six-millimeter-high walls ran along the perimeter of the chair, and at my feet was a x-tube that Godwill connected to the nanocontainer collector. Soup. I was going to dissolve into soup and drain into a tub. Not a glorious ending.
The monitors showed three red splotches in my body—the first one, above my heart; the second two, on my abdomen, on either side of my belly button. Red fingers now spread out from all three.
Godwill sat down on a chair and watched the screens with me. He stood, walked over, and poked me in each of the three injected areas, frowning. I had no idea of time, but he must have been growing impatient. My vision was blurry and a fever-chill crept from my insides out.
“Extraordinary,” he said.
And then, suddenly, Sarla was back. Whatever tension had existed between them previously wasn’t apparent now. “The Human is resisting all three injections. Take her to the enclosure. Have the cruiser ready. 507 may come for her as well. Two for one.” Godwill commanded.
“Is the Human safe to touch?” There was a pause, a moment of crackling tension.
“Beast,” Godwill said, in a low voice. “My command is your only concern, nothing else.”
Lost as I was in my own feverish battle, I could still smell sugar and dirt as it infused each breath. That Godwill didn’t even react spoke volumes about his one-track mind, or his ignorance. Or maybe he simply didn’t fear Sarla.
It seemed like he should. Because the aroma of her hatred was overpowering.
I wondered, through the haze of pain and dizzying nausea, what Sarla was getting out of her alliance with Godwill. She picked me up with
the care one might reserve for a newborn. Despite her massive, razor-sharp sword arms, she carried me so gently that I felt only a soft swaying as we moved as one. Through my chills, I couldn’t help thinking that sleep would be nice. A blanket, and warm sleep. That would be nice.
“Why are you helping him?” I groaned. “Can’t you see what he’s doing?”
After what seemed like an eternity of swaying, Sarla returned me to the covered concrete square my friends and I had called home these last few days. “Take what peace you can find, little one,” I thought I heard her say. Thunder rumbled and cracked continuously. I squinted at the flashes of lightning that were coming so fast, they created a strobe effect. My friends were not in sight.
The ground thrummed as she raced away. Die. Dying. Did any of it mean anything? Sleep might erase the pain in my heart, the stabbing fire in my gut. Life was effort. Right now, I wanted oblivion. Yes. I could feel my nanobots surging through my body, innocently responsive, waiting for an order. THE order to end myself.
Ray.
What was that?
I’m not your imagination. You’re going to wish I was.
Someone was in my head. WHO THE FLIP WAS TALKING TO ME?
It would be too much to expect that you’d get any smarter over the past few days.
There was light, a flash of pain in my forehead, and bewilderment. I opened my eyes, and in a moment of clarity, looked around me, at the enclosure. There was no one here.
But you know what? It didn’t matter. I didn’t want to go to the darkness. I wanted to live. The biggest decision of anyone’s life is the decision to live. To be, or not to be. I closed my eyes and could feel the three points of infection growing inside me, destroying me molecule by molecule. But I was…strong.
Stronger.
I want to be here.
I love my family. My friends.
Maybe myself.
I want to be here.
I closed my eyes and gave my nano the control, the energy, and the will they needed to win. I wanted to see the sky. The clouds. I wanted to wake up and take a deep breath of air. Drink a glass of water. Get a hug. Turn in my homework late. Be invited to the cool kids’ parties.
