Nascent Decay (The Goddess of Decay Book 1)

by Hash, Charles

  Intrigued, she followed. It turned through several corridors before she eventually came to a large, overly sophisticated communications room, filled with hundreds of feed screens. On each one of them was Vorcia’s smiling face, mocking her. In the middle stood a hologram of her. She was completely nude. It was strange, unnerving. Her new breasts stood out in contrast to her muscular, androgynous form. They looked plump, and full.

  “You didn’t think it would actually be that easy did you, Gota?” she asked. “You are far too naive and reckless, child. You should have listened to me.”

  Before Rhylie could respond, the ship erupted in a massively critical explosion that sent her rocketing out of control. She blew through the hulls of dozens of ships as she was propelled by the crest of the blast wave deep into space. She was unable to orient herself or even stop her spinning. The bitter taste of blood filled her mouth along with shattered fragments of her teeth. It felt like her mouth was full of broken glass, and she could smell something that was bitterly acrid.

  Her gravity well wouldn’t respond, and neither would her arms or legs. It was as though her entire body had completely shut down on her. All she could focus on was a massive, splitting ache throughout her head as her vision diminished. She continued to spin through the empty void of space for what seemed like forever until she finally, mercifully, blacked out.

  39

  Rhylie awoke to find herself in a medical pod. A clear, rounded pane enclosed her like a coffin. She was hooked up to a myriad of wires and cables once again, with tubes running up her nose. Her head hurt like it never had before. She tried to lift it up, but pain shot through her skull like a knife, followed by a vortex of dull throbbing agony. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, waiting for it to stop. Eventually it did.

  She lay in the medical pod for hours, days, weeks…she couldn’t tell how long. She was having difficulty with simple things, like counting. Waking bled into sleeping and dreaming bled into reality. Sometimes she could see Mersi and Reskle’s faces beyond the glass, but mostly she was alone. It didn’t matter. She could barely remember her own name. Everything was perpetually blurred by a hazy fog that she couldn’t seem to break through mentally. She just wanted to go to sleep and never awaken again.

  Bit by bit, the gloom overshadowing her mind eventually began to clear from her head, but something still wasn’t quite right. It was difficult for her to form any clear, coherent thoughts for the longest time. She couldn’t move or speak. When she tried, her bottom jaw barely responded. She wasn’t sure if she could even produce a noise. Occasionally Reskle or Mersi would come by and tap on the glass. Sometimes she could blink at them, but usually she was frozen, trapped inside her head. Her first rational, cognizant thought came to her out of the blue one day while Mersi and Reskle were pecking at the glass.

  Why are they even keeping me alive like this?

  It was the first time she’d had a thought like that in a long time. She closed her eyes and tears began to softly wet her cheeks. Isolation in the medical pod was beginning to slowly drive her crazy as her cognizance returned piecemeal, day by agonizing day. She spent an inordinate amount of time examining herself and her life, as well as the choices she’d made. Even though Mersi would sometimes smile down upon her through the glass, Rhylie felt like she was the only person that existed.

  Soon afterwards, she could move her eyes to look around. Her head no longer hurt, but there was still a foggy haze creeping around the borders of her mind. Mersi seemed to get very excited the first time she saw Rhylie move her eyes.

  And then came the day when she lifted a trembling hand and placed it on the glass as Mersi and Reskle were tapping on it. Her hand struggled to hold its shape, her fingers becoming formless puddles on the glass. She dropped her hand back down and wept again while Mersi and Reskle celebrated silently above her. She felt like a fish in a bowl, with nothing to do all day but sit and stare at a soundless, unreachable outside world.

  When they finally removed the bubble of glass from atop her, she could almost form words again. She still sounded like an infant, babbling for the first time. Mersi shushed her.

  “You’re going to be ok, Rhylie. It’s just going to take some time. It’s going to take a long time,” she said softly. Reskle gave her a sorrowful look.

  “I shouldn’t have given you those coordinates,” Reskle said. “I should have known it was a trap. I hope you can forgive me one day,” The words seemed to catch in his throat as he spoke. “I’m going to do everything I can to get you through this.”

  Mersi began to come by more often, and sometimes Konii and Vorle, to see how she was progressing. Konii was now Kraeke’s body guard, going with him wherever he went. Vorle and Konii had insisted on it when Rhylie had not come back, that he was not technically free, and Kraeke had not argued with them. Mersi seemed to enjoy sitting and talking with her, even though she couldn’t really respond. When she could finally manage a smile, she thought Mersi was going to shit her pants. The flurry of activity and noise actually frightened Rhylie a little.

  Eventually, she could respond, struggling to form the words at first. Reskle happily informed her that she had finally turned the corner, and everything would be coming back to her soon enough. He filled her in on everything he could, how her skull had been fractured from the impact, even with her skin protecting her, but the bone had knitted back together cleanly.

  The explosion Vorcia set off had destroyed thousands of Siirocian ships in the vicinity of the blast, wiping out a large chunk of the galactic fleet. Of course it had all been blamed on Isaar.

  Rhylie had been brain dead when they found her, and only the barest of cerebral activity could be detected. That was what was taking the longest to regenerate, using the limited technology available to Reskle.

  Eventually she could form one syllable words, but talking for more than a few minutes at a time put a strain on her that would produce an incapacitating headache. Working through the recovery process was the most difficult and challenging thing she’d ever experienced in her life. If she hadn’t had Mersi there with her, babbling about the things happenings around the galaxy, along with all the horrible things that had happened to her as a child, Rhylie might not have been able to cope.

  After awhile she could sit up and support herself, and being able to shuffle around with something for support came next. Bit by bit, week by grinding week, her senses and capabilities returned, and her body began responding better with each passing day. She learned to work the feed system so she could keep up with news from around the galaxy for herself. She watched endless feeds of Vorcia declaring that peace had been returned to the galaxy, now that the humans had been dispersed and were no longer a threat. The bounty still stood for proof of Rhylie and Isaar’s deaths, but after awhile even those fell out of rotation on the feeds. And then one day, she saw something that really caught her attention.

  An old feed, buried deep inside the off-grid network they operated on, was of Adam kneeling before Vorcia, swearing fealty for the entire human race. His head was bowed, as Rhylie’s had been that day, when she had read the words that had been written for her on the platform. The speech he gave was as hollow as the one she had given and followed the essence of hers even though it was not verbatim.

  “Those that do not submit must be destroyed,” Adam recited. Rhylie put that single statement on loop and let it play over and over and over. She knew why Mersi had hidden the feed from her. Adam was still alive and was being held in a Chamber, and she knew exactly where it was. Without saying a word to anyone, she shut the feed down and left the ship, heading towards Primiceps.

  40

  Rhylie coasted silently above the streets and avenues of Primiceps with Isaar’s bracelet activated, underneath the cover of stealth. She chose a spot to land that seemed fairly vacant and slightly familiar. It felt strange to walk uninhibited through the great city. Even now, she could not deny the beauty. The Phoenix Nebula, spread out above the city, was beautifu
l again, soaring freely through the empty void of space. Regardless, she still felt so very exposed. She wandered the streets for awhile, allowing herself to marvel at some of the more wondrous architecture that framed the nebulaic sky. She felt guilty, but Adam wasn’t going anywhere, if he was still alive. She strode through the Grand Chamber, but the Masters’ seats at the podium were empty.

  The whole place seemed to lack the bustle of her previous visits, but then she remembered that she hadn’t actually been there before. All of that had been fabricated within the Chamber. She followed the map of Primiceps that had come with her gravity well and navigation upgrade. She’d already explored it a thousand times in her head, looking for places that Vorcia could be hiding. She quickly found the dead end hall where she had first stepped out of the Chamber with Isaar.

  She hesitated as she stood there at the doorway to the Chamber. Her face felt cold and clammy; her lips were numb with fear. She had never been more terrified in her entire life. Rhylie Ella Underhill, the Harbinger of Chaos, the Goddess of Decay, and one of the most wanted fugitives in the galaxy, felt like a frightened little girl all over again.

  She forced herself to reach out and press the terminal on the wall to open the door anyway. It was as if someone else had done it for her, and she had just watched. The door swirled open and she just stood there, frozen, looking inside. It was dark, and she couldn’t see anything but a large, flat, decrepit stone face, surrounded by mists. Adam was nowhere to be seen. She had to force herself to step to the entrance of the Chamber, just barely outside of it. Right next door to hell, she thought, detaching from herself. She felt like a puppet on strings again. She pulled them, and stepped inside. The door swirled closed behind her and she was back within the Chamber.

  She was standing in a dark place that was blanketed with deep velvety shadows. The ground beneath her feet was rocky and uneven. Several fractured, scarred monoliths towered over her, their tops disappearing into the infinite inky blackness above her. There was a clattering sound, as though someone were walking across gravel. It took her a moment to realize that the stone monolith in front of her was slowly crumbling, fragments of it falling to the ground around her like a drizzle of rain. They were all crumbling away, she realized. This is Adam’s mind, she thought. This is what they’ve done to him. She had to get him out of here. She deactivated Isaar’s bracelet and revealed herself to the Chamber.

  There are some that even beg for the Chamber, she could hear Isaar saying in the back of her mind. Soft minded fools or broken souls that would rather live a fabricated existence than deal with reality.

  Even though she had never been in a place like this before, she knew exactly what it was. It was a fabrication of Adam’s, a physical manifestation of his mental and emotional state. He was crumbling into darkness. Was he too far gone? she wondered. She could hear someone whimpering softly, somewhere beyond the shadows and pillars. She stepped towards it, following the sound around the fractured monolith.

  Adam was sitting on the ground with his back turned to her. His arms were wrapped around his legs and his face was buried in his knees. He was naked, and mumbling something incoherently between his sobs. Beside him lay a wet, glistening, mound. She couldn’t make any other details out in the low light.

  “What is that beside you?” She asked. Maybe she shouldn’t have. Adam’s incoherent mumbling formed into words.

  “It’s him. It’s Bart. I can’t make him go away. I can’t. It won’t go away, I tried, I really tried,” he whimpered. “Make it go away, make it go away, please make it go away.” He continued to mumble the phrase over and over again as he whimpered, rocking to and fro as he cradled his knees to his chest. It took Rhylie a moment to realize it was Bart’s mutilated corpse. The sight of it horrified her, even though she knew it wasn’t real. Or was it? There was no telling with Vorcia. She stepped towards Adam slowly. She didn’t want to frighten him.

  “I’m here to take you home, Adam,” Rhylie said gently as she stooped down over him and put her hand upon his back. Adam lifted his head to look up at her with his sodden eyes.

  “I see you have finally come home yourself, Gota,” the Chamber said. It almost sounded as though it had come from Bart. Rhylie ignored it. “I knew you would, sooner or later.”

  “Come on, Adam, we’re leaving,” she said, tugging at him gently. His response was to drop his head back down, shaking it slightly.

  “No no no no no no,” he murmured as he rocked back and forth. “You’re not real. You’re not. You’re not real. You’re never real. You’re never real.” She placed her hand on his back, and his reaction was to flinch away from her touch.

  “I am real,” she said, confused. His body twitched nervously, and he shifted away from her.

  “No you’re not. You’re just like the others. You’re fake, like everything else in here. You’re not real. You’re not,” he protested feverishly.

  Looking down at him, she finally understood why Isaar hadn’t been able to bring himself to kill her. She pushed the thought away. She couldn’t afford to think about that now. She started to lift Adam up, but the ground wrapped around his legs in dark tendrils and began to drag him away from her.

  “I can’t let you do that,” the Chamber said. The mists around her began to solidify into tendrils. They wrapped themselves around her, sinking into her atomorphic exoskin. It was an odd sensation, cold and clean with a slight tingling to it. Her hands slipped and Adam was pulled from her grasp.

  She tried to reach out for him as the Chamber dragged him away from her, but her body would not respond. The tingling in her extremities where she was wrapped by the tendrils had become numbness.

  Bart’s corpse began to shuffle around on the floor, as though his bones were un-breaking. She stared at it in horror as she fought against the tendrils lashing around her, but she was fully restrained, and utterly helpless. Panic gripped her tightly, but she could not resist the Chamber. She could hear Adam off in the distance somewhere, squealing incoherently as he struggled to free himself.

  Bart pushed himself up from the ground, moving awkwardly and unnaturally. He turned towards her, and stood there as though staring at her. Only he couldn’t stare at her. He had no eyes. He had no face. His entire head was just a cavern of raw meat and tissue that hung down limply from his exposed cerebral cavity. One of his eyes dangled from the slop, mangled and shredded. His entire torso was opened up, his broken ribs exposed and his lungs draping from his chest in tatters.

  Fear made her forget everything but survival. She couldn’t struggle or move, but more tendrils came anyway, lashing themselves into her body. Her skin quivered, rippling, responding to the Chamber’s touch, becoming one with it. She could feel it taking over her, changing her.

  Bart’s body began shuffling towards her, like a broken marionette. He reached out with his hand for her, but she was unable to break free, unable to move, unable to fight.

  “What the fuck,” Rhylie screamed, a mixture of primal horror and brazen anger. “What are you doing to me?”

  “I am taking back what was once stolen,” the Chamber said. “The skin you wear was hacked and modified from Chamber technology, and I have been immunized to it. But you have not.” The confirmation of her suspicions horrified Rhylie. “Your abilities are useless here, Gota.”

  A sudden realization dawned on her. That was why Isaar didn’t tell her where he had stolen the tech from. That’s why he hadn’t wanted her going directly after Vorcia. But it was too late now. She was trapped, held in bondage by the very thing she had come to destroy.

  Bart touched her face, stroking her cheek softly, gently. She shut her eyes so she didn’t have to look at the gruesome remnants of his visage.

  Please, no, Rhylie begged desperately. Not like this. Not like this. Tears of frustration began to roll down her cheeks.

  She felt Bart’s cold, clammy fingers slide down her cheek, down her neck, to her chest where her main port was. She opened her eyes, afraid of what sh
e would see. His hand paused over her chest for only a moment before he sunk his fingers into it, reaching deep within her.

  We are One now, the Chamber said, and Rhylie knew it was true.

  It was in her thoughts, and she could feel it crawling through her mind, accessing her memories and emotions, experiencing them directly for the first time.

  We will never be separate again, the Chamber whispered from within her. Tears were now falling unabated down her face in streams. She began babbling incoherently as her body succumbed to the Chamber’s control.

  Then help me, please, Rhylie thought frantically.

  Everything froze around her, except for Adam’s lonely whimpering somewhere beyond her line of sight. Bart just stood there, staring at her with his pulpy maw. Feel and know what I have been through. Understand it. Live it. Experience what it means to be human, you fucking icy bitch.

  Rhylie let go and submitted herself completely to the Chamber, utterly, giving it full access to everything within her. Her hopes, her dreams, her triumphs, all of them broken and smashed, meaningless now. Her fears, her tragedies, her insecurities, all of them fresh and savage in their potency. Everything that had been taken from her and everything that she had endured, her struggles and losses, she poured into the Chamber like a corrosive, venomous stew. The events that had been playing out within her mind endlessly, over and over on a torturous loop since this all began. She gave the Chamber everything it wanted and more. She gave it so much more.

  She emptied her hatred for Vorcia into the Chamber like a radioactive, molten slag; a torrent of white hot fury flooding unimpeded from deep within her. She fed it the agony of watching everyone she cared about and needed turning away from her, or die around her. The daggers of fear her little brother had stared at her with his wide, terrified eyes; the shame of being found amidst the carnage of her reckless anger by her parents with bloodless, headless bodies scattered around her like broken dolls. The emptiness that had consumed her after her baby had been taken from her and destroyed like an unwanted animal. The agony that had torn her apart when she had found Isaar’s still-warm body, and the guilt that crept over her every time she looked into Mersi’s sodden eyes. She had no home left, no dreams, and no hopes and no family. The only thing left within her was darkness and vengeance; a primal, raging lust to make everyone that had taken a pound of her flesh pay equally in blood and tears and pain.