by J. C. Diem
“I tried that already and my apology wasn’t good enough. Being who and what I am, nothing is ever going to be that easy,” I said glumly. “I don’t think I’m destined to be happy.” It was a new and dismal thought.
Geordie frowned in puzzlement. “What do you mean?”
“I was created for one thing; to dole out death.” Mortis was actually Latin for death and it was a fitting name for me. The irony of being named death by a now dead language wasn’t lost on me. “It doesn’t say anywhere in the prophecies that I’m supposed to have a happily ever after ending.” In fact, both prophecies had predicted nothing but horror for me and our kind.
“We have moved beyond the prophecies now,” Geordie said. “No one knows what is supposed to happen anymore. There is no reason why you and Luc can’t have a happily ever after together.”
Forcing a sigh from my airless lungs, I slumped back against the uncomfortable metal seat. The harness was far too large and pooled in my lap but it would keep me from being tossed to the floor in case of an unexpected collision with space debris. “This isn’t a story, Geordie. This is real life and real life rarely turns out how you want it to.”
Studying my face, his bottom lip pooched out in a pout. “So, you’re just going to give up on the man you love?”
“Why not?” I asked with a bitter glance towards the cockpit door. “He’s already given up on me.”
Geordie’s chin trembled and he subsided into tearless sobs. Covering his face with his hands, he muffled the noise as best as he could so he wouldn’t wake the others. Kokoro opened one eye, saw us trying to have a private moment and closed it again. I was inordinately grateful that she could no longer pick up on the self-pitying thoughts that were whirling around inside my head. As I patted my young friend on the shoulder, I wondered who was going to comfort me in my time of need. Luc had been there for me from the first moment we’d met. We’d fallen for each other and had become almost inseparable. He’d been the one good thing that had happened to me since my untimely death. Then I’d made one small mistake and he had thrown away our hopes of a future together.
Theoretically, you can all live forever now, my subconscious whispered insidiously. Why would someone as hot as Luc want to spend eternity with you? I wasn’t sure why my inner voice sometimes turned against me. I’d listened to it last time it had offered its advice and it had destroyed my relationship with Luc. The damage had been done so there was no need for it to continue to poison me against my former beloved. It claimed it was just trying to keep me from being hurt but I wasn’t so sure that was true. Some part of me obviously wanted to wallow in misery. Maybe, deep down, I believed I deserved to be alone forever.
The next four months passed in a tense blur. Thanks to imbibing Viltaran blood, none of us were starving yet. Geordie complained of feeling hungry every now and then but his cheeks didn’t turn hollow from lack of food during our lengthy journey. We would still need to feed, of course, but not nearly as often as before.
Like me, the rest of the group could sleep true sleep now instead of falling into a death-like coma when the sun came up. I was pretty sure we still shared the Viltaran allergy to the sun. While we would still be horribly injured if we came into contact with its burning rays, it no longer had the power to make us die for the day.
Luc and Gregor spent most of their time seated in the cockpit. I remained in the hold, upholding my former love’s wish to avoid me. I spent most of my time pretending to doze, mainly to avoid the pitying glances my friends sent my way.
Eventually, we had our first sign that we were drawing close to our destination. “A shutter has just descended across the cockpit window,” Geordie said as he took his usual seat beside me.
“We must be drawing close to Earth,” Ishida surmised from his seat to my right. The Viltarans would flash fry if the sun touched their flesh so the shutter had to be a protective measure.
We were almost home and I should have been ecstatic about that but instead my stomach felt leaden. It might be selfish but I was more concerned with my lack of love life than I was with the impending invasion of our home world.
“Have you picked your new leader yet?” I asked the teens. Not all of my naps had been forced so it was possible they’d had a meeting to discuss this issue.
Leaning forward, they exchanged careful glances across me, unsure of how to answer me. “If you and Lucentio would air your grievances like adults instead of sulking like children,” Ishida said, “you could possibly solve your issues and the point would be moot.”
“So, you haven’t chosen a new leader then.”
Geordie gave me a sour glance. “You are our leader. You promised you would keep us safe.”
“Yeah, just look how well I kept everyone safe,” I responded. “Everyone but us is dead. Besides, you’re all immortal now so you don’t need me to keep you safe anymore.”
Gregor, Igor and Kokoro were in the cockpit with Luc so we three were alone. Ishida checked to make sure none of the adults were in sight then gestured at the samurai swords on my lap. “I would like to test that theory. I want to see if I am able to reattach my limbs as both you and Geordie can.”
Appalled at the idea of dismembering my young friend, I automatically shifted the swords out of his reach. “I’m not going to chop one of your hands off!” I replied in a whisper-shout.
“I’ll do it!” Geordie said eagerly and tried to snatch one of the weapons from me. He distracted me long enough for Ishida to snag one of the swords he’d asked the Kveet to make for me. A second later, his left hand thumped to the ground. All three of us stared at it as black blood sluggishly oozed from both of his stumps.
At the sound of the door sliding open, we turned to see Igor watching us suspiciously. I was certain I looked just as guilty as the teens. “What are you three up to?” He turned a stern glare on us that made me feel like a naughty five year old. Igor had practice at that since he’d been a father once, a long, long time ago. Then he’d been turned into a monster and had killed his entire family. His maker must have been a colossal douchebag to force him to feed from his own wife and children. Igor had gotten his revenge in the end and had forced his master’s horse to stampede over a cliff. Vampires weren’t able to survive murdering our makers but he’d proven that there was no rule against engineering their deaths.
“We’re not up to anything,” Ishida said, hiding his wounded arm behind his back.
The Russian’s gaze latched onto the severed hand then flicked to the sword in the teen’s attached hand. Shaking his head, he crossed the metal floor and snatched up the appendage. “I take it this is yours,” he said as he handed it back to the former child king.
Ishida tossed the sword back to me since he’d been busted in a lie and took the offering. “It is mine. Thank you, Igor,” he said with stiff dignity.
The sight of his fellow adolescent holding his own hand stuck Geordie as funny and he giggled. My lips trembled and we were both howling with laughter. The dour expression on Igor’s face made me laugh even harder.
Ishida’s shoulders moved in silent mirth as he held his detached hand to his stump. He waited for a few seconds but nothing happened. My laughter dried up at his panicked look. “Give it some more time,” I urged him. “It’ll work.” Putting a hand behind my back, I surreptitiously crossed my fingers.
With a look of fierce concentration, Ishida held the raw edges of his wrist together again. It had taken a while before Geordie’s body had accepted his head and the same thing happened to Ishida. After a few more moments, the ends melded and a thin red line was the only sign his hand had, for a very short time, been apart from him. The line would soon fade and then no one would be able to tell that he’d performed the experiment at all.
That thought conjured up memories of what they’d all been through in the secret government facility in Colorado. I’d rescued twenty-eight of my kin from cells where they had been tortured in the most horrific manner the humans could devise. I sh
uddered to think of what they would try to do to us if they got their hands on us again.
Hearing the door open again, I turned to see Kokoro and Gregor standing in the doorway. Instead of wearing looks of disapproval, they studied Ishida as he tested his hand by opening and closing it. “I believe it would be prudent if we all experienced reattaching severed limbs,” Gregor stated.
I offered the sword to Kokoro first. For someone who had been blind for forty millennia and had only recently regained her sight, she handled the weapon as if she’d had extensive training with one. For all I knew, maybe she had been trained to fight. Her lack of vision had never seemed to slow her down much. She’d once told me that, when her eyes were open she was blind but when they were closed she could see very well. It hadn’t made much sense to me at the time and, frankly, it still didn’t make much sense.
Twirling the sword in an arc, she neatly sliced off her right hand then handed the weapon to Gregor. His hand thumped to the ground next to hers a second later. Igor took the sword then Gregor bent to retrieve his and Kokoro’s hands. Geordie covered his mouth to politely hide his gag reflex as they held their still bleeding hands to their stumps. Apparently, it wasn’t quite so funny to him anymore. Again, it took half a minute or so before their bodies accepted their severed appendages.
Igor was next to perform the experiment but he chose to hack off one of his feet instead of a hand. Geordie giggled at the sight of his mentor trying to keep his balance on one foot and holding up his pants leg while hacking at his limb. Ignoring his apprentice, Igor picked up his severed foot and placed it against his sluggishly spurting shin. When it was safely reattached, he tested its performance by kicking Geordie. Shrieking with laughter, the teen cringed against me and drew his legs up to avoid the blow. His mood swings were sometimes enough to make me dizzy.
Taking the weapon when Igor had wiped it clean and offered it to me, I wasn’t surprised when no one offered to give Luc the opportunity to test his healing skills. I figured he was far too busy brooding to bother interacting with the rest of us.
·~·
Chapter Six
It was impossible to tell how fast we were moving in the artificial gravity of the ship, or if we were even moving at all unless looking out through the only window. Only the automatic closing of the shutter a few days ago had alerted us that we were nearing our destination.
The droid had reluctantly programed our craft to land at what would hopefully be a safe distance from where the Viltaran ship had touched down. Presumably, the only way we’d be able to tell we’d arrived would be when the ramp slid open to let us out.
I was wondering how much further we had to travel when the ship lurched sideways and went into a shuddering nosedive.
“I suggest we should all strap ourselves in,” Gregor said with false calm as he reached for the oversized harness on his seat. “It appears that we are about to crash.” From the way the ship was dropping towards what I presumed was the ground, I didn’t think we would be in the air for much longer. The quiet sound of the engine had been snuffed out, probably from the same electromagnetic pulse ray that I’d seen the Viltarans use against the army choppers in my dream.
Already strapped in, I braced myself for impact and didn’t have long to wait. With a tortured groan, the ship hit a solid surface, skipped for what felt like a few hundred yards then quickly began to sink. I reflexively pulled my feet up when the ramp suddenly opened and water spewed inside.
Unbuckling his harness, Igor jumped down into half a foot of water that was rapidly rising. “Quickly, we should escape from the ship before it settles to the bottom and we become trapped.”
We were all willing to follow his advice and slid to the floor. The door to the cockpit opened and Luc joined us. A deep gash on his forehead from where he must have hit it on the console was already healing. It faded completely before he reached us.
Igor was the first to dive into the water and make his way through the opening. Geordie went next, followed by Ishida, Kokoro then Gregor. Luc brushed past me, leaving an ache in my chest where my dead heart lay. The water was now up to my waist and would quickly be over my head. I wasn’t worried about drowning, since I no longer needed to breathe. However, I was in danger of being trapped in the hulk of the downed ship when it settled on the bottom of whatever body of water we were in. I’d be able to break myself down to minute particles and escape easily enough but I’d have to leave my clothes behind. Like the others, I was dressed in the castoff clothing of robots. The clothes were black, unimaginative and had been adjusted to fit us by clever Kveet tailors. Gregor had very reluctantly donned his outfit and still managed to seem more sophisticated than the rest of us while wearing it.
Holding both of my swords in one hand, I dived into the water and followed the thrashing figures of my friends. With the sun down, it would be safe enough for us to surface. Igor wisely swam underwater for some distance from the ship before heading upwards. He stopped just beneath the surface. No spotlights searched the area so Igor deemed it to be safe to rise.
When my face met fresh air, I accidentally swallowed some salt water and coughed it back up again. Thrashing around in a half circle, I saw the familiar Manhattan skyline looming over us. It felt almost strange to be home again, even if we were in a foreign country. If we’d been on solid ground, I would have been tempted to drop to my knees and kiss the soil.
Expecting to see either a toxic cloud enveloping the city or skyscrapers in ruins, instead I saw lights blazing from intact buildings. Tilting my head back, I was relieved to see a normal black sky and bright stars instead of sickly yellow sky and madly boiling clouds. The air smelled of salt water and pollution but I detected no hint of rotten eggs from the gas. Whatever the Viltarans had planned for the city, they hadn’t launched it yet.
“What forced our ship down?” Luc asked. He treaded water gracefully with a minimum of movement. In comparison, my hands and feet clawed at the river in an attempt to stay afloat. I held my swords tightly, wishing I had sheaths for them both so my hands could be free.
Gregor searched the sky for an answer. “It must have been the Viltarans.”
Geordie tried to peer between the buildings but there were too many of them to catch a glimpse of the aliens. “Where are they? Have they attacked the city yet? I don’t hear any humans screaming.”
Igor turned his wet, shaggy head to me. “Can you pinpoint where they are?”
Closing my eyes, I forgot what had happened the first time I’d used my newly enhanced skills back on Viltar. Opening my mind wide, I was instantly inundated with human lives in an almost incomprehensible number. Attempting to catalogue every life that it picked up, my consciousness automatically shut down in self-defence before I could become overwhelmed. Our brains might be like highly sophisticated computers, but mine had its limits and I’d just reached them.
When I woke, it was to the unlovely sound of screams. I lay on the filthy ground in a dark, narrow alley. Geordie was crouched beside me. One of my swords was clutched in his hand and the other lay on the ground beside me. He’d presumably stayed behind to guard me, which I found both amusing and endearing. He could easily protect my unconscious body from humans but I wasn’t so sure he’d be able to stop a bunch of Viltarans from dismembering me in a murderous frenzy.
The teen started in surprise when I sat up. “How long was I out?” I asked. I doubted it had been long. My hair and clothes were still dripping and so were his.
“Not long,” he confirmed, brushing his hair out of his eyes absently with his free hand. “Ten minutes, maybe.” Sparing me a strained smile, he turned his attention back to the mouth of the alley. A dumpster blocked most of his view and he leaned sideways to peer around it. Humans moved past in a steady stream. Most were sobbing, wailing or screaming in terror. The familiar high pitched cries of Kveet imp clones carried even above the humans’ cacophony. Their endless quest for food had ceased and now they could feast to their heart’s content.
“They are assessing the situation and will be back soon.” Standing, Geordie offered me the other sword, knowing I would be able to defend us both from harm. He pulled his Viltaran death ray out of the waistband of his pants and checked the setting. “Are you feeling well?” he asked in an abrupt change of topic.
Nodding, I swung the swords in an arc, limbering up my wrists, not that they needed it. “I’m fine. I just forgot how much stronger my ability to sense things is now.”
“What happened?”
“I didn’t filter my senses and opened them up too wide.” Remembering the barrage of coloured mental dots that had filled my head, I froze the image and sorted through it. Humans had shown up as bright yellow dots that covered the globe. Thousands of imp clones and murderbots had been placed all throughout Manhattan and they were our main concern. I would ponder about the two other differently coloured dots I’d sensed when I had the time. Both were a surprise that I found disturbing in their own ways.
Keeping a tight rein on my senses this time, I cautiously sent them out in search of our friends. I found them only a block away, heading towards us. “The others are on their way back,” I told my companion.
Geordie grabbed my arm and pulled me into the shadows as a small unit of droids jogged into view. There were twenty in total and all were armed with nanobot guns. Aiming at the fleeing earthlings, they opened fire.
Halting in mid-step, several humans screamed in pain as their bodies were instantly transformed. In seconds, they were almost the exact image of the seven foot tall, grey skinned imps I remembered so well and had loathed so much. Only their eyes were different. Instead of orange, they were scarlet. I figured that was due to the faulty micro-robots the First had been infected with.
