by S. L. Dunn
He could hear only the swish of his legs as they slashed through snowdrifts, but as he came closer to the fire, he began to discern other sounds. Carried faintly through the snowfall came screams of anguish. Shrieks were rising and falling against the storm. And as Ryan came closer still, the screams multiplied, and he saw the bonfire was far larger than he had first thought.
Ryan halted in disbelief of a sight that turned his heart black.
What he had thought was a bonfire was an entire village caught ablaze. A dozen burning huts, made with little more than straw and sticks on walls of stones, were raging furiously against the snow. Flames roared and sticks crackled and broke with piercing snaps. Ryan saw the inhabitants of the village. They looked ancient and out of place and time, like a primitive people. Their numbers were uncountable as they fled the ring of huts. He realized now that the child had been running away from this village. The child had not been lost; it had been fleeing for its life.
An evil presence had descended upon this ring of huts.
A person who looked different than the others walked past the shadows cast by the fires. The man looked bizarre and foreign. He wore strange armor that glinted in the red firelight and he carried a gun-like weapon. This man looked so unlike the rest of the people with their furs and sticks. The villagers were running from the man with the gun and into the cover of forest. Ryan watched as a number of stragglers snuck into one of the huts that had not yet caught aflame to hide from the stranger. The armor-clad man calmly approached the hut and leveled his gun.
“No!” Ryan screamed as fire belched from the gun’s barrel. The hut erupted into searing flames. Now much more visible in the luster of the blaze, the man wiped his brow with his forearm and moved to the next hut.
“Stop! Stop!” Ryan called out, sprinting toward the man. “Why?”
As the man turned around and aimed at another hut filled with wailing villagers, Ryan ran in front of him. The gun screamed, but its fire sizzled and went out against his chest. Ryan somehow knew that while in this dream, neither fire nor injury could harm him; he was invincible. Stunned by his sudden intrusion, the armored man fell back into the snow.
“What the hell are you doing?” the man shouted, his voice so familiar to Ryan. The man rose to his feet, spitting snow out of his mouth and brushing it off his shoulders in indignation.
“What are you doing?” Ryan screamed, unable to hold back his emotions at the burning horror raging around them. “Why are you doing this?”
The armored man laughed. It was a great jovial laugh full of personality and humor. “What do you mean? You got the last order—kill the intelligent ones.”
Ryan swallowed hard. “Why?”
“How the hell should I know why?”
The fires in the village were spreading quickly now, leaping eagerly between the huts. Snow sizzled and evaporated with a high-pitched whine against the flames. The village people were scattering, their screams of despair horrendous. An infant stumbled out from one of the burning huts and fell to the ground with flesh blackened and smoking. Ryan looked in disbelief from the carnage to the man with the gun. “How could you possibly do this?”
“If you want to be court-martialed, that’s fine with me.” The soldier moved to push past Ryan, but Ryan grabbed him by the shoulder. He had never felt such fury, such certainty of hate.
“Are you serious, kid?” the man looked down at Ryan’s hand. “It’s almost over anyway, who cares?”
“These people are wielding sticks and stones!” Ryan screamed over the unspeakable massacre.
The man wiped his forearm against the sweat of his brow and shrugged, pulling the gun back up to this shoulder. “Just following orders.”
Ryan peered through the gathering smoke as the villagers tried to beat down the fires and usher their young away from the village and into the forest. Smaller children were foundering in the tall snow, unable to push through its weight. Ryan’s heart was pounding like a sledgehammer, his breathing constricted.
“Well, what’s it going to be?” the soldier said with the vacant certainty of one relying on authority. He held the gun out to Ryan. “Your turn.”
In a daze Ryan stumbled from the armored man and into the chaos of the burning huts. He realized the villagers were fleeing him just as they were running from the man with the gun. Something rough hit his back, and Ryan turned around to face one of the bigger villagers who was staring at him with rage. A wooden spear with a chipped stone head lay splintered and broken on the ground from the blow to Ryan’s back. The villager wound up and threw another spear. The spear sliced a path through the smoky air and fractured in two as it bounced off Ryan’s chest. Ryan looked down at the shattered spear, and for the first time realized he was wearing the same armor as the horrible man with the gun.
They were together.
“I—I’m sorry,” Ryan muttered, feeling nauseated by the hatred in the large villager’s eyes. A family was sobbing beside a burning hut. Some ran into the fiery entrance, but were driven out by the roaring heat. One after another, Ryan watched them leap over the flames but then fall backward, unable to stand the torrid heat. They were obviously trying to rescue someone trapped inside. He ran to them and slipped past the blazing doorway. Ryan felt nothing—he was utterly impervious to the heat—as he stood amid the crackling inferno and surveyed the pulsing cinders and roaring flames. Prostrate on the scorched dirt floor, amid a bed of fire, was a young child. With a horrible gasp Ryan realized it was the child he had encountered in the woods.
The child was dead.
Blistering burn marks covered its pitiable body and an expression of dread and agony was etched on its face. It had endured a death by fire, not smoke. Ryan stepped through the flames, picked up the pathetic form and carried it out as the hut collapsed in embers. He placed the child in the snow and for a long moment stared into the young terrified eyes. The terror upon the child’s expression ripped a gaping hole through Ryan’s soul as ashen snow fell softly on its face. The long crimson cloak was still hung around the poor child’s body. A few spots were still smoldering, and Ryan patted the embers into the snow and pulled the burned cloak off the child’s slender shoulders. A few of the villagers, perhaps the young one’s family, watched from the distance as he looked down at their child.
Another spear hit Ryan’s back.
“I’m sorry. I—I’m sorry,” Ryan murmured. He turned to the armored man with the gun, who was busy setting fire to the last remaining hut. A sweltering wrath like he had never known surfaced within him, and Ryan sprinted at the man in an absolute rage. His velocity felt unreal, the strength in his legs and arms incomprehensible as the snow in his path exploded from his speed. He felt the power of a god within him, and his fury. . . .
Ryan let out a broken shriek, his body suddenly sitting upright in his dark dorm room.
The copy of Frankenstein had fallen from his chest and lay open on the tile floor. An inky evening claimed the sky beyond his window, and the dorm room was cast in shadows. Ryan was covered in a cold sweat, and he wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his sweatshirt with a long quivering sigh in the still darkness. Steadying his feet on the floor, he stood shakily and flicked on his lamp. He leaned his palms against his desk and stared quietly out the window. Under the streetlights students were walking to dining halls for dinner.
It had been a year since the last time he saw that child’s burned face in his dreams, and Ryan had even begun to think—to hope—that he had at last made peace with his recurring nightmare.
Ryan turned, his socks sliding against the tile floor, and walked to his closet. He sat before it, his gaze resting on a locked trunk pushed to the back. A plaid shirt lay draped over the top, the wrinkled arm falling over the front of the trunk and concealing a heavy padlock. His attention lingered on the heavy trunk for a long time, his expression pained. With a heavy heart he reached out and pulled the trunk to him, the metal scraping against the tile. Slowly and despondently he turned the d
ial of the padlock and removed it from the latch. Ryan carefully opened the trunk and stared in suffering silence at what lay within.
With a delicate touch, Ryan reached into the trunk and slowly pulled out the child’s burnt and tattered crimson cloak. He held it up silently and looked with anguish at the armor that rested underneath it. On the breast of the armor, a grave and familiar symbol reminded Ryan that it was not a dream, but a memory. He stared silently at his Imperial First Class armor and the embossment upon the chest: the crest of house Nerol.
Chapter Fourteen
Kristen
Kristen Jordan sat quietly on her couch, untouched takeout sushi for two on the coffee table and a television program murmuring on her dated flat screen. She could not bring herself to look at the containers of food or the show, so instead Kristen stared contemplatively out the window into the fall night. Beyond the rusty fire escape and the building across the street, her studio had a surprisingly impressive view of the city considering her monthly rent. The lit skyscrapers of Midtown shone through a dreariness of fog that had taken hold of Manhattan. High above the lofty rooftops, she could trace a dome of light as it illuminated the moisture hanging over the city. With a tired gaze she looked out at the skyline as the rooftops disappeared into the foggy mists of the heavens.
Ryan was coming over, and Kristen was thankful for it. There was something about him that calmed her. By all accounts he should have made her nervous, as she was usually shy around guys she liked. And yet every time they were together she felt at peace with everything. At first glance he was so attractive, painfully so. It was sometimes hard to hold his eye contact and keep herself from blushing. But his looks were of an athletic type that she did not usually go for. Her affection for him was not based on his attractiveness; it was something about the way he carried himself that drew her in.
Looking out over Manhattan, Kristen realized that she would have been utterly alone in this city—in her little social sphere of scientists and laboratory small talk—were it not for him. Her research had come to alienate her from everyone. She would not let it stand between her and others any more, especially Ryan.
The thought of the next morning’s scientific convention at the hotel amid all those tall buildings made her ill with angst. The day would prove to be a great networking opportunity, but Kristen’s discovery of Professor Vatruvia’s private research had left a vile taste in her mouth. Any thought of the Vatruvian mice in their secluded cages made her feel sick. Kristen could not stop thinking about Cara’s revelation: the Vatruvian cells were stronger than the natural cells they replicated. Would the same phenomenon hold true for larger systems? Were those mottled mice with their bluish eyes superior to natural mice?
Kristen’s apartment doorbell rang and snapped her out of her thoughts. She roused herself from the couch and pressed the intercom button. “The buzzer’s broken, I’ll come let you up.”
She slid her feet into her slippers, pulled on an old MIT sweatshirt, and walked out to the stairwell, leaving the door ajar behind her. Beyond the lobby, the October night was chilly and wet. Ryan was waiting outside, the hood of his rain jacket pulled down over his forehead. He smiled at her through the drizzle. She folded her arms with a shiver as she pushed open the door. The damp autumn air was cold and laden with the smell of cigarettes from people smoking outside the bar next door.
“Hi,” Kristen said.
“Hey. I brought some booze.” Ryan held a bottle of wine wrapped in a brown paper bag. “You like red wine?”
“If it has alcohol in it, I’m happy. I need a drink.” Kristen laughed mirthlessly and held his gaze.
“Yeah,” Ryan sighed. “Me too.”
Kristen looked to the congregation of smokers standing under the nearby awning. Someone must have said something funny, as there was a great roar of laughter. “I’m okay with going out for a round or two if you want. Don’t feel as though we have to stay in—I can totally throw on a change of clothes and go out for a while.”
“Eh,” Ryan shrugged and regarded her thoughtfully as he passed into the doorway. “I’d rather stay in, to be honest.”
“Okay. I ordered some sushi.”
“Perfect.”
They walked up the several stories of aged stairs to her apartment. Kristen took the wine from him as he looked around her tiny studio, the bed by the window and the living area set up around narrow walls of exposed brick.
“I like your place,” Ryan said.
“Thanks. The rent is actually pretty reasonable, considering.” Kristen flipped on the kitchenette light and rummaged through a drawer for the wine opener. “Tell me about the meeting with your professor.”
Ryan let out a halfhearted groan as he took off his shoes and sat down on the couch. “More of the same. I think I’m going to have to turn my mind off and play the game.”
“And whose advice was that?”
“Yours,” Ryan admitted. “I guess I’ll have to start following your advice more often. How are things going with your research?”
Kristen twisted the wine opener into the cork and smirked grimly down at the bottle.
“That’s a loaded question.”
“Oh yeah?”
Kristen nodded. She picked up two glasses from the cupboard and sat down with him, curling her legs beside him. “Professor Vatruvia has really let me down, to be honest. It’s strange. He’s so brilliant in some regards, and so woefully lacking in others. I don’t think he’s thinking clearly about what we’re doing with the Vatruvian cell. It’s as though he has no notion of the fact that we’re working on something that could have a huge impact on the world—whether it be for good or bad. He’s pushing forward just for the sake of pushing forward.”
“ ‘Now, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,’ ” Ryan said quietly, his voice matter-of-fact as he leaned forward and poured some of the silken burgundy wine into each glass.
“I beg your pardon?”
“ ‘Now, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,’ ” Ryan repeated with a dark smirk. “It’s what Robert Oppenheimer said when he watched the detonation of the first atomic bomb. The bomb he created.”
“Right,” Kristen said with a slow nod. There was a sadness to Ryan that she just noticed, not maudlin or readily apparent, but nonetheless there behind his sharp gaze. It was easy to overlook amid his good looks and easy smile, but she saw it clearly for a moment. He was trying to hide how much he truly cared about a world that had little interest in hearing about its flaws. People wrote him off as uncompromising, but Kristen could see that it was not based in stubbornness—it was based in sorrow. He carried a curious grief within himself, as if it were a memento to something in his past. Kristen decided to let him divulge that grief in his own time, and simply said, “I thought I recognized the saying.”
“He was a genius and an artist, the visionary of an age, and his gift to the world was a weapon. I wonder if it was at that moment—only right then—as Oppenheimer watched the mushroom cloud rise into the skies over the desert,” Ryan shook his head, “that he realized the true nature of what he created.”
“I think it’s sad,” Kristen said, “I’m sure he never really thought anyone would drop one. He invented the technology and then lost all say in its use to lesser men.”
Ryan took a sip of his wine. “More motivated men.”
Kristen nodded.
“It’s not with the calculations in front of them, but in the man beside them that most brilliant minds make their blunders. The science is the easy part, from a certain point of view.”
“I assure you, what we have done with the Vatruvian cell has been anything but easy.” Kristen tilted her gaze at him. “If that’s what you’re implying.”
“No, no. That’s not what I meant.” Ryan shrugged his shoulders uncertainly. “I have my own past to bias my opinion on the matter, so don’t think this is directed at you. It’s just that, my father was a pretty serious scientist, and I always resented his blind fai
th to the notion of progress.”
Kristen sipped her glass of wine coolly. It was the first time he had mentioned his parents since he told her they died when he was a teenager. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ll have to take my word for it, my father was no fool. In fact, he was far from it. But you don’t need to be a historian to know that throughout history technology has been used for evil just as much as it has been used for good.”
“Of course,” Kristen said.
“So despite his intelligence, he chose not to acknowledge that one simple truth. Ultimately, I think the world becomes a better place only through the willful actions of living men, not from the furthering of scientific knowledge.” Ryan brought his palm to rest on Kristen’s leg. His hand felt warm on her thigh. She liked it. “Take my father for instance. He devoted his unbelievably brilliant mind to the search for answers in technology, when—in my opinion—no true answers have ever, or will ever, be found there. What answers could he have discovered had his brilliant mind been devoted to solving one of the countless everyday problems facing society instead of trying to expand academia’s rote knowledge of physics and chemistry?”
“And by answers, you mean what exactly?”
“I couldn’t even venture a guess. You know, the grayer social issues. Human rights, politics, poverty and so on. I don’t know—but I also could never claim to be genius.” Ryan laughed silently and met her gaze with a serious expression. “Just an observer of it.”
