The X-Variant (The Guardians Book 1)

by Rosemary Cole

  Kala swept the area with her drones, giving a start when they reported several large animals nearby. Then her night vision picked out three deer. The small herd caught their scent and fled.

  Breathing deeply, Kala flopped down in the high grass with the others. The night was still and dark, the moon a mere glow behind thick clouds.

  The shelter was far behind them.

  “They’re going to target it, aren’t they?” Liet muttered. She was trembling violently, her teeth chattering.

  No sooner had she said the words when distant sounds drifted to their hiding place, carried by the night breeze. Wood cracking, metal twisting and snapping. Shouts, screams, snarls.

  The survivors in the shelter cried out on the Dronet before they died.

  Liet screamed and buried her head in her arms. Kala scrambled over to her and held her tightly. Sunita clung to Crisfer as they both wept.

  When it was over and the night grew quiet once more, they curled up together on the ground and slept, heartbroken, dirty and hungry.

  Kala lay there for a time, wide awake, and then sat up when she realized no one was keeping drone watch. She wrapped her arms around her bare knees, studying the woods. The breeze picked up, rustling through the trees. Her skin tingled and she felt every sense grow keenly alert, every muscle fiber tense. A stream of energy burst through her and she trembled, feeling as though she might burst. She clapped her hands over her mouth.

  It’s nothing, dearest, Araka said. Just adrenaline. Completely natural in the circumstances. Shall I tone it down for you?

  It’s all right, Kala said, breathing deeply. I’m fine. She shook her head, not wanting to admit even to him that in this moment, surrounded by death and horror, for the first time in her life she felt truly alive.

  Chapter 4

  Belem Sobran

  August 2616

  Day 5 of X-Crisis

  IT BEGAN TO RAIN in the early hours of the morning, and the refugees roused themselves, grumbling. Their syms helped them with the chill and their cramped limbs, but their growling stomachs reminded them that there was an urgent need to take care of.

  “We need to find shelter and some food,” Crisfer said, and Kala nodded. She scanned the area around them with her drones. The horde of Xin that had attacked the shelter last night had moved on. There was no point in going back there, though—the survivors were all dead.

  Her drones picked up a lone Unathi male in a house a couple of miles south of their current position. Greetings, she said to him.

  Greetings. I’m Bren. There are no Xin around here, and there’s still some food in these houses. Would you like to come and join me?

  Kala looked at the others, and they nodded. Okay, we’re coming, she told him.

  Their drones guided them to a small yellow house. Like most of the others, its door hung half off its hinges and some of the windows had been pulled out. The clear round panes, tough and flexible, lay on the ground intact.

  Bren came out onto the small porch and found them looking at the damage. He looked to be in his forties and had a kind face. “Yes, the Xin were here hunting for survivors, but I think it was some time ago,” he said. “I’ve been moving from place to place. I figure it’s better than one of those shelters right now.”

  Crisfer said, “Yeah, those aren’t proving to be so safe.”

  Kala gave him a wry smile, nodding.

  “How do you get any sleep?” Liet asked Bren. “You’ve got no one to take drone watch for you.”

  “I don’t get much,” he said and motioned them inside. “Figured you’d be hungry; come in and eat. I’ve got everything ready.”

  Crisfer volunteered for drone watch while the others ate, but Kala opted for a shower first. Like most Unathi homes, the house was powered by a loss-free energy storage device called an arken, which lasted for years. She stepped into the cubicle and sighed with pleasure as hot water streamed over her, rinsing away the filth. She turned her mind off and concentrated on the sensation. It was a blessed relief to not have to think, plan or worry, if only for a few moments.

  Liet’s Journal

  August 2616

  Day 6 of X-Crisis

  Poor Mani. Snuffed out, just like that. I can still hear that horrible creature’s jaws grinding into his neck. We can’t even go back for his body to give him a decent burial—too dangerous.

  I want to believe we’re safe in this house, but knowing we’re not makes it hard to sleep. At any moment, we might have to jump up and flee because those horrible Xin are bearing down on our location. We all have our run bags packed and ready to go.

  So I was lying in bed last night, not sleeping and thinking about—well, everything, when suddenly Kala sat up next to me. “What is it, darling?” I asked, but she didn’t answer, just stared straight ahead. She began to shake her head slowly from side to side, as if negating something awful only she could see.

  A terrible premonition grew inside me. I reached out with my drones, and sure enough, the worst had happened. Fawan was gone. I searched frantically, but couldn’t sense any of them on the Dronet—Fawan, Marin or their lovely little boy, Onisha. They were all gone.

  In a panic, I reached out for Jaen, but he was alive and well. Before I had a chance to start feeling guilty about that, Kala let out a bloodcurdling scream that nearly broke my eardrums. Then she put her head in her hands and began to cry. I’d never seen her like this before, and it shook me. I started to cry too, but I held her as tightly as I could. Her sym must have loaded her with endorphins, because she relaxed just a little in my arms. I rocked her gently, trying desperately to think of something to say that would comfort her.

  Crisfer stuck his head in the room, his bristly black hair all mashed on one side from sleep, and I gave him the news. He came to the side of the bed, asking permission with his eyes. I nodded, figuring I could use all the help I could get. He climbed into bed with us and cuddled up to Kala’s back, stroking her hair. “We’re here, sweetness, we’re here,” he murmured over and over.

  I passed the news to the rest, who had also gotten up to see what was going on, and told them to go back to sleep, that Crisfer and I were handling it.

  After a long time, Kala’s wailing dropped to occasional moans, and then she was quiet. I think she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. Crisfer and I just looked at each other, and then his eyes filled up and he reached across Kala to take my hand.

  That night seemed to last for years. Crisfer and I grieved for Kala and for all the loved ones we had lost, including Crisfer’s own careparents, whom I found out he had lost recently as well.

  I took my shameful feeling of joy at Jaen’s survival, and the guilt that came along with it, and pushed them way, way down inside me. We cried as quietly as we could, so as not to wake Kala. We cried for her, for ourselves, for all this pain and loss and suffering that had been so hatefully, unreasonably visited upon us all.

  By the eleventh day of the X-crisis, as everyone on the Dronet was now calling it, Crisfer had decided that he was feeling better despite the miserable situation they were in. At the start of the crisis, he’d lost everyone he’d been close to—his careparents, friends, old bondmates. For the first time in his life, he had been completely alone. From a hiding place, he’d watched the Xin carry out their endless hunt for victims and food, and he’d had to suppress an urge to stand up and walk up to them, just put an end to all his fear and loneliness.

  But he had found Mani and Sunita, and his urge to help them had overridden his misery, and then he’d met Kala and Liet, and now the three of them were bonded. Just like that. He smiled to himself. He hadn’t meant to intrude on their relationship; it just kind of happened. And life had become tolerable again.

  On the other hand, if either of them turned or was killed, he’d probably lose his mind. And the current situation didn’t exactly give him peace of mind about that.

  The little band of refugees had left the yellow house three days ago, having decided it would be wise
to keep on the move so that the Xin couldn’t pin them down. They scavenged whatever food they could find along the way.

  They approached this new house warily. Crisfer’s drones had sensed a woman inside. She wasn’t a Xin, but she hadn’t responded to their hails on the Dronet.

  “Okay, everybody at once,” he said, and shoved his shoulder into the door. The board barricade on the inside gave way easily, cracking and splintering, and the refugees entered, calling out greetings. Crisfer’s drones told him the woman was in a room off the main hallway. He exchanged a glance with Kala and she nodded. The two of them went in while the others waited in the hall.

  The room was lined with shelves filled with tools and technical equipment. An older woman sat on a stool, the innards of a complicated gadget spread on out on a table before her. A holo schematic hung in the air.

  “Hello,” Kala said.

  The woman didn’t answer right away, and they waited patiently. Crisfer sensed no hostility from her; it was just that she was deeply absorbed in her work.

  Finally she turned around and smiled at them. He guessed her to be in her fifties, although it was difficult to tell with anyone over thirty; people didn’t start to show signs of aging until well into their sixties or seventies.

  “Greetings,” the woman said pleasantly. “I’m Maika. There’s food downstairs in the pantry; help yourself.” With that, she turned back to her project, as if nothing at all unusual was going on.

  Crisfer and Kala exchanged an amused smile. “What are you working on?” Crisfer asked Maika.

  “Something to make us safer,” she answered.

  “Your barricade wasn’t much good. If we got in, so could the Xin.”

  “I trust you can remedy that,” she said without looking up.

  They went back downstairs, found some tools and re-barricaded the door as best they could while Bren prepared a meal, skimping to preserve Maika’s rations.

  Sunita had drone watch; they brought her a plate, which she picked at absentmindedly.

  The others attuned to the Dronet while they ate. The number of people who had died or mutated was now in the millions. Survivors were holed up in random houses, like they were, or in shelters that had been hastily reinforced to keep the Xin out, like the one in Belem.

  And look what happened to that one, Crisfer thought.

  “Maybe we can move to the far north,” Liet said. “Maybe they won’t like the cold.”

  Crisfer shook his head. Their drones couldn’t carry the Unathi communications network across the oceans; for that, the Jiki was used, a device which connected the Dronet between continents via sets of paired micro wormholes. The entire system, crowd-run by Unathi directing their drones, had wound down to a standby state, but it was enough to pass on the news that the X-crisis was happening all over the world.

  “No, they’re everywhere. We can’t run away from this,” Kala said, her voice dull with resignation.

  Crisfer put his arms around her and kissed her shoulder. “Hey, we don’t know that,” he said. “There might be an answer yet.”

  She didn’t reply.

  Crisfer was trying his best to keep his bondmates’ spirits up, but his efforts had little observable effect on Kala. Liet was hanging in there, but he suspected that was only because Jaen was still alive.

  As they were cleaning up after dinner, Maika appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, lugging the contraption she had been working on. “It’s ready,” she said without preamble.

  “What is it?” Crisfer asked.

  “It’s an antigrav device. I took it from the lift of a public building and adapted it. All we need now is something to use as an air car. Then we can get around more safely to look for food.”

  The others looked at the device and then each other, breaking into smiles.

  “We’ll build a barge tomorrow,” said Bren.

  The resultant vehicle, which they called a “floater,” was clunky and primitive, but it worked. They fitted it with Maika’s antigrav device and an arken to power a small propeller in the stern. The refugees developed a system in which they would hover over a building and drop ropes to its roof. Then two brave souls would climb down, find a way to break in and quickly search the building for food while the others kept watch with their drones.

  That was how they found Ral. Crisfer had spotted a boy of about ten running desperately across a clearing below them, Xin converging on him from all sides. Maika lowered the floater and Crisfer dangled Kala over the edge of the craft, holding tightly to her legs, until she could grasp the boy’s hands. The others all held onto Crisfer. They’d pulled the boy up into the floater just in time to avoid the grasping hands and snapping teeth of the Xin. Crisfer was glad; he rather liked the kid.

  Chapter 5

  Belem Sobran

  August 2616

  Day 17 of X-Crisis

  AFTER A SPARSE SUPPER, Crisfer and the others sat around Maika’s sitting room. The laconic woman herself was in her workshop, fiddling with some new project.

  “Maybe the Xin will eat up all the food in the world and then starve,” Ral said. The boy was sprawled on the floor, idly brushing his arms and legs across the soft carpet.

  “It’s true they don’t seem capable of producing their own food,” Liet pointed out.

  “Let’s all contemplate it, and perhaps the Oneness will bring it about,” Sunita suggested.

  Crisfer didn’t have much faith in that as a practical solution, but he didn’t voice his thoughts aloud. The Oneness was a name for all awareness and conscious thought, taken together as an entity. He doubted that it could act on anything.

  He relaxed into the comfortable chair and tried to imagine, just for a moment, that everything was normal, but the knotted rope dangling in a corner of the room spoiled his fantasy. They had boarded up all the doors and windows of the house; the rope was an escape route to a crude hatch they’d made in the roof, where the floater rested.

  That gave him an idea. “Maybe we could start catching fish from the floater,” he said. “We could make some nets.”

  “Oh, cool!” Ral said. “Can I catch fish too?”

  “I’m not eating any fish,” exclaimed Liet, making a face. The Unathi were strictly vegetarian.

  “You will if you get hungry enough,” Sunita said.

  “Uk,” Bren said. He sounded strange, and Crisfer looked at him more closely. His eyes were unfocused and his nostrils were flaring intermittently.

  Liet asked, “What is it, Bren?”

  The man’s face looked grayish. Crisfer tried to connect with him, but his drones were reading him as some kind of large animal.

  Crisfer’s heart leaped into his throat. He scrambled to his feet and backed away, pulling Kala with him. Get away from him, he ordered the others. Get up to the roof, now!

  But it was too late. Bren—the Xin—sprang at Sunita, his face contorted, and delivered a powerful blow to the side of her head. She tumbled forward and landed facedown on the floor, where she lay still.

  Ral, with the quick instincts of the young, had already dashed to the rope and was climbing.

  Liet, in a blind panic, ran into the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

  The Xin hesitated, chattering its teeth, as if trying to decide whether to maul Sunita further or pursue fresh prey.

  Pulling Kala with him, Crisfer maneuvered his way toward the rope, trying to keep heavy furniture between them and the Xin.

  Liet, Maika, get to the rope! he ordered.

  Kala stopped abruptly, forcing him to halt too. “No,” she said, her voice hard. “Not again. I won’t let this happen.”

  The Xin grunted and started toward Ral, who was only halfway up the rope.

  “Distract him!” Kala shouted as she tore herself from Crisfer’s grasp and ran into the hallway, where Liet and Maika were hovering.

  The Xin dragged Ral down to the floor and crouched over him, baring its teeth as if to sink them into the back of the screaming kid’s neck. Just l
ike the one that had attacked Mani, Crisfer thought through a paralyzing blanket of fear.

  Forcing himself to move, he snatched up a heavy vase from an end table and hurled it at the Xin. The dried plant stalks in it flew everywhere.

  The vase hit the Xin’s shoulder with a satisfying thud. It rose and turned to face him, snarling. Ral scooted up from the floor and began climbing the rope again.

  Crisfer picked up a small table and held it with its legs toward the Xin, hoping to fend it off.

  Then Kala was back in the room, carrying something in her arms. Crisfer recognized the heavy base of the winch-and-pulley system Maika had been working on, for lifting supplies up into the floater. Holding the base out in front of her, Kala charged the Xin, driving it squarely into its chest. The air whoofed out of its lungs and it fell backward, an almost comical look of surprise on its face. Kala leaped after it, her teeth bared.

  Crisfer blinked—he’d never seen her like this. With a yell, she brought the base down hard, directly onto the Xin’s head. There was a wet-sounding crunch and a geyser of blood sprayed up, splattering her face and clothing.

  She stepped back, breathing deeply, gripping the bloodied base.

  The Xin lay mostly still, its limbs twitching minutely. Crisfer took a step closer. Where the thing’s face and head had been, there was now only a mass of blood and brains and hair.

  Kala looked down and dropped the base. She twisted away, falling to her knees, and vomited.

  Fighting back his own nausea, Crisfer hurried to her and knelt, holding back her ponytail and rubbing her back. When she was finished, she grabbed his arm and he helped her rise unsteadily to her feet.

  Ral dropped down from the rope and joined the others as they gathered around the corpse, staring first at it and then at Kala. Liet moaned and covered her face. Maika pulled Ral into her arms, turning his face away from the sight.