The Seeds of Winter

by A. W. Cross

  I didn’t want to admit it, but I agreed. The expression on Oliver’s face as he’d shut the door promised murder. I don’t care. We’d deal with Oliver after Pax and Cindra were safe.

  We’d walked through the night and most of the morning to reach the area of the Terran camp. It had been a miserable trek.

  The mountain pass was freezing, a harsh coldness that was agonizing to breathe. Flanked by miles of sheer rock face on one side and near-vertical embankment on the other, we’d been forced to take the road. The asphalt was marred with potholes and long, vicious cracks, the painted lines weathered away.

  Avalanches had strewn sections of our path with debris, and we picked our way around the chunks of stone swiftly and silently, straining our ears for the telltale rumble. At the crest of the pass was a wide shoulder where tourists could pull over and view the forest in all its immense splendor. To me, it looked like an instrument of torture, infinite metal spikes waiting for a curious misstep.

  By the time we’d crossed and were picking our way down the other side, my lungs felt as though they’d collapse.

  “You’d think they would’ve given us reinforced lungs.” Each word felt like it would be my last.

  Tor’s laugh was barely more than a wheeze. “They were probably worried we’d make smoking a thing again.”

  “Ailith? Are you here?”

  Pax. I was finally going to be able to tell him yes.

  We could see the windmill now, cobbled together from stone and what appeared to be metal grating. It spun idly. The wind that had taken our breath away in the pass had little power here.

  The connection between us was clear, and I pinpointed their location.

  “Yes! Pax, we’re here. Well, almost. We’re about a mile away.”

  “Good. Is Oliver with you?”

  “Not yet, but he’s coming. And he’s leading reinforcements.”

  Pax’s relief swept through me, a flurry that warmed my chest. “Something’s happening. I think we’re out of time.”

  “What? What do you mean, Pax? What’s happening?”

  “The ones who insisted on using the nanites, they’re dying. I believe they’re going to kill us.”

  “Don’t worry. We won’t let them hurt you. Tell Cindra we’re coming.”

  “And Oliver is coming, for sure?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “He’ll be here any minute.” I hope.

  At the outskirts of the Terran village, an irregular wood-and-wire fence wove in and out of the trees, knotted scraps of cloth swaying in the mild wind. It was strangely still. No guards patrolled the perimeter; nobody was watching out for strangers.

  “I can’t see anyone.”

  Tor’s face drew tight. “Yeah, I noticed that too. Believe me, it’s not a good thing.”

  “What do you mean? Is it not just carelessness?”

  “It could mean they believe they’re too strong to fear outsiders. They have five years of experience surviving, so their confidence is probably justified. Or, like Pax said, something is happening, something important. It may also mean they’ve seen us, and they want us to think they haven’t. They might’ve been aware of us all along.” He put his hand on my arm. “Ailith, I know you don’t want to hear this, but you have to consider the possibility that Pax has told them about us.”

  “He wouldn’t! He…” Pax’s unnatural calmness. His insistence that Oliver be with us. Could it be that he…? “No. I don’t think it’s possible.” I didn’t sound convincing even to my own ears. “But Cindra…what I saw…what she felt—”

  “He may not have intended to betray you, Ailith. But if they’re being tortured…they’ve been captive for days. And people have no law but their own moral compass now. If you were a Terran, you would believe in the rightness of what they were doing, no matter how extreme the method.”

  “I would never torture someone! I don’t even want the Terrans to get hurt. Even if they are monsters.” The fuse on my temper started to burn.

  “I’m not saying what they’re doing is right. But you’ve only been awake for a couple of weeks. These people have lived in this world for five years. They didn’t survive through kindness.”

  “You don’t know that!” I didn’t want him to be right. Pax’s vision of the future hovered at the edge of my mind.

  “Look, I hope you’re right.” He squeezed my hand. “Ailith, despite what these people have done, we can’t let them be hurt. We were supposed to act as a bridge between the Cosmists and the Terrans. Nothing’s changed. If we play it right, maybe they’ll let go of the past and work together. I mean, none of that matters anymore, does it? Nobody’s going to be creating artilects now. The war is over. They need to help each other. You’ve seen what will happen otherwise.”

  “I agree with you on that, at least,” I replied.

  We found a copse on a rise close to the camp that would allow us to observe it while keeping out of sight. Not that it mattered. Either the Terrans had already seen us, or they were too distracted to notice. We finally had the opportunity to see the people who were capable of committing such terrible acts against other human beings.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d expected evil to look like, but I was disappointed. The Terran village seemed like any other village before the war, albeit more rustic. The houses were similar to those of the Saints, though clad in patched, modern, slatted siding rather than metal sheets. Behind them, the backyards were open, strewn with the debris of normal lives.

  The few children I saw were bundled up against the cold, darting from house to house as they chased each other. Teenagers gathered sticks, which they threw onto a growing pile. Women and men alike were busy with a slew of mundane activities. Some were hanging plants for drying, others, meat. Laughter wafted on the air, mingled with the smells of cooking.

  If I hadn’t seen them electrocuting Cindra with my own eyes, felt it on our skin, I never would’ve believed it.

  “How many people do you think there are?” I asked Tor.

  He scanned the village. “I’m not sure. Eighty, maybe ninety. There may be even more inside.”

  Ninety people. Less than half the number of the Saints. I liked those odds.

  “They look so normal,” I said.

  A sad smile tugged at the corners of Tor’s mouth. “What did you expect? Evil comes in all forms. It’s a matter of perspective.”

  I was about to argue with him that, no, torturing innocent people was not a matter of perspective when there was a stirring below us. Whatever Pax had predicted was going to happen was happening now. And Oliver was nowhere in sight.

  Word passed quickly and quietly through the crowd. Terrans gathered at the north end of the village, where two thick poles stood. A commotion from the south drew our attention. Pax and Cindra. For the first time, I saw them from the outside. They looked different through my own eyes.

  The Terrans hadn’t bothered to dress them for the cold. Cindra was stumbling, long hair matted over her face. Her bronze skin was marred with burns, and the scars of many others were fading on her thin arms. It made me ill, knowing how quickly we healed. Those marks weren’t torture for information, but for pleasure.

  Pax walked calmly, head up, eyes searching for me.

  “No one’s coming to help you, freak,” someone jeered.

  That was some good news, at least; they didn’t know we were here. One of the men flanking Pax punched him in the back of the head. As he fell to his knees, I gently pulled on his thread.

  “Pax! Stop looking for us. You’ll give us away.”

  “Is Oliver here?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “He must be here!”

  “He’ll be here, I promise. You’ll understand when you meet him. He likes to make a grand entrance.” I hoped it was a promise I would keep. Come on, Oliver, you asshole.

  The Terrans led Pax and Cindra to the two poles and began tying each to one.

  “Scared yet?” one of the men asked Pax.

  Pax seem
ed to consider the question for a few seconds then shook his head. The man slipped a knife from under his coat and slid it between Pax’s ribs. He grunted and doubled over, but didn’t cry out. The man angled the knife for another thrust.

  “I’ve had enough. Forget waiting for Oliver. I’m not going to sit here and watch Pax get stabbed to death.” I started to stand.

  “Ailith, stop.” Tor’s voice was cold steel.

  “Tor, we have to help him. We can’t—”

  “He’ll heal. We have to give Oliver more time.”

  “What if he doesn’t come?” We were both thinking it.

  Tor ignored me. “We still have some time. Wait.”

  Every nerve in my body was pulled taut as the Terrans finished tying Pax and Cindra to the poles and piled up wood around their feet. They were going to burn them alive.

  “Tor.”

  “Not many other ways to kill a cyborg.” The muscles in his jaw worked overtime. He was getting close to his limit. Had Pax seen what I had? The others like us, immolating themselves? Had he told the Terrans? Or was it a lucky guess?

  A heated discussion broke out within the crowd beneath us.

  “I can’t believe you’re actually going to go through with this. I though you merely wanted to scare them. We can’t do this.”

  The speaker was one of the women I’d seen hanging herbs.

  “They’ve not done anything.”

  “Not done anything? They’ve killed us, Naomi. Cole, Seska—they’re dead because of these two.”

  “They told you the nanites wouldn’t work on us. They told you it would kill them. You didn’t want to listen.”

  The man ignored her “They’re abominations, anyway. If it weren’t for their kind, we wouldn’t be here, living like this. Like savages. I was a fucking architect before their war.”

  “It wasn’t just their war. And abomination?” she scoffed. “You were perfectly happy to take advantage of their abomination when you thought it would help you. When we found each other, when we established this camp, we agreed there would be no more unnecessary violence. How else are we supposed to survive?”

  “They’re not human.” He said it slowly, as though he were speaking to a child. “How many times can we have this discussion? Does that seem human to you?” He pointed at Pax, who was standing straight again, his wounds forgotten.

  “Of course they are. Look at them!”

  “I am. This is how they get you. Why do you think they changed them only on the inside? Why do you think the Cosmists wanted to make artilects look human? They will invade us quietly, like a cancer, destroying us one by one until we’re extinct. How can you be so blind?”

  “Who’s they? There is no ‘they.’ They’re not artilects! They’re human. So what if they’ve been…enhanced? We should be working with them, using their abilities to help us survive.”

  Murmurs of assent passed between some members of the crowd, but none spoke up for us.

  “Anyone else who thinks we should let them live, step forward. Let them murder us in our sleep. Enslave our children.”

  “Oh Jack, for God’s—”

  “Who else?” he thundered. The crowd was silent. “Right. It’s decided. Let’s get on with it. I want to have this ugly business finished. Now.”

  Oliver, where are you?

  “Can’t you see into Oliver?” Tor asked. “Find out where they are?”

  “Yes. No. I can’t. I need to be here if something happens. I might not be able to get out of him in time.”

  The woman, Naomi, stepped back into the crowd, her face ashen. Jack and another man lit two large torches and approached the poles. Cindra screamed. Pax remained as calm as ever.

  “Tor?” I gathered myself into a crouch.

  Jack bent to place the torch at Cindra’s feet. Naomi shouted and tried to push her way to the stakes. While some people strove to hold her back, reality set in for others, and they began pushing through the crowd.

  A roar sounded behind us. Oliver had arrived. But that wasn’t right. We were supposed to go in quietly, diplomatically, our hands raised in peace.

  The Saints rushed past us; they were armed.

  That future was happening, now.

  “We believed we would know our Divine when we saw him. How could we not? Not only would he emerge from the maelstrom unscathed while the rest of the world was branded by the fire, but he would bring the dead back to life, sort the righteous from the unbelievers, and lead us forward into a new future.”

  —Celeste Steed, The Second Coming

  “You’ll regret this.”

  I should’ve paid attention.

  Someone once told me that when something terrible happened, time slowed. I wished that was true. I could’ve stopped what was happening. But it didn’t, and I couldn’t.

  Oliver and his followers swarmed into the Terran camp and cut them down. They wore their martyrdom on their faces, their destiny finally coming to pass. Oliver gazed up to where Tor and I were still crouched in shock and smirked his triumph.

  There’s always a choice.

  The Saints didn’t discriminate as they killed. Axes rose and fell, metal grated against bone, and precious bullets shrieked from the mouths of rifles. The air became hazy, and the ground finally got the moisture it so desperately needed.

  Celeste reigned in the middle of the fray, her hair braided on top of her head like some warrior of old. Her lips were drawn back in a primal scream, and blood smeared her teeth. The Terrans scrambled for whatever weapons they could lay their hands on and tried to fight back.

  From the pain in my throat, I was shouting, but the sound was drowned out by the furor below. Pax and Cindra were still tied to their posts, vulnerable and forgotten. The future Pax had shown me was supposed to be a distant one, not today. Darkness bloomed behind my eyes.

  No. No. this can’t be happening. I have to stop this.

  I sprinted down the hill and entered the churning mass, grabbing the woman called Naomi from behind. I needed to make her stop, help her see reason. If anyone would listen to me, she would.

  Her shoulders and her collarbone crushed and splintered beneath my hands. My hands. They were too large, too strong.

  Tor’s hands.

  She tried to turn toward me, but I held her fast. My hands wouldn’t let go. The jagged ends of her collarbone had punctured her neck, and she was bleeding.

  Too much. Too fast.

  When I finally released her, it was too late. As she fell to the ground at my feet, something in me that had been stretched too thin finally broke. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but I could no longer stop myself.

  I seized the body closest to me. Saint or Terran, I didn’t care; I just wanted them to stop. To be still. But the strength of Tor’s body was out of my control. He’d had five years to learn restraint. I had seconds. Skin tore beneath my hands. Muscles ripped away from bone. Bullets peppered my chest, and still, I couldn’t stop.

  Finally, someone managed to slice the tendons in my legs and I fell facedown onto the sodden earth. A sudden rush, a painful tearing in my mind, and I was back on the hill, on my back above the battlefield.

  Tor lay motionless below; Pax stood above him, holding an axe slick with blood. Someone must’ve cut him free. I charged down the hill and barreled into him, crushing the breath out of his lanky body.

  “You! You’ve betrayed us.” I closed my hands around his throat.

  “No. It was the only way to stop you,” he said, his voice low and soothing. “It’s over. Look.”

  I wanted to believe him. Tightening my hands around his neck, I risked an upward glance. He was right; it was over.

  The ground was littered with bodies. Not a single Terran had been spared. Taken by surprise, they hadn’t made sense of the chaos in time to fight back. Of the Saints of Loving Grace, nearly all were still standing. Celeste stood amongst the survivors, her face rosy with victory. She caught my eye and winked conspiratorially.

  Dead. So ma
ny people. Dead. All because of me.

  This time, I didn’t vomit.

  Tor.

  I released Pax and dropped to his side. The gaping wounds in his calves flaunted bone, though the flesh had begun to knit together. It took all my strength to turn him over. He was a mess. Blood leaked from the slowly closing wounds in his chest. The bullets, pushed to the surface by the nanites, seemed far too small to cause such damage. His face was pale, his eyes closed.

  I leaned forward to whisper in his ear. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was, how I hadn’t meant for this, any of this, to happen.

  As he felt my breath on his face, his hand shot out and gripped my arm. “Don’t. Don’t touch me. Never touch me again.” His words were a splinter in my heart.

  “Tor, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” His fingers on my arm were agony, but I didn’t pull away. “Tor, please.”

  “Go. Away.”

  “Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?” Oliver swaggered over to where Tor lay, not a mark on him. “So much for your ‘let’s-all-love-each-other’ plan.”

  “You did this.” This kind of rage was new to me, and not unwelcome.

  I’ll kill him. Why not? I’ve had some practice today.

  The voice inside me whooped. As I struggled to my feet, Tor’s body twitched, and the blackness swirled at the edge of my vision.

  No. No. No!

  I was thrust back into myself by Celeste’s scream. She was pointing at Tor, upset because he was injured.

  But not for his sake.

  “Blood. He’s bleeding.”

  I didn’t understand until I saw Oliver’s face, horrified and frozen.

  We’d been outed. Artilects didn’t bleed.

  We were in trouble.

  “…and that’s just in the short-term. Eventually that smoke would generate an ash cloud substantial enough to block the sun. And the effects would last for years. Freezing temperatures, very little sunlight, reduced precipitation, a thinning ozone. Nothing could survive. Not plants, not animals, not people. That’s it. The human race is extinct. Yes, some would survive initially. But without food, potable water, or medical attention, for how long?”