by S. L. Dunn
“It was stupid to lock arms with me!” Hoff grunted heavily between breaths. “Y—you may be quicker than me. But I’m certainly stronger than you! Vengelis Epsilon himself avoids grappling contests with me.”
Gravitas focused on not losing control of the situation. The Lord General’s arms were six or seven times the girth of his own, and Hoff was indeed remarkably strong. For a time Gravitas refrained from using his full strength against the general, and even allowed Hoff to push and pull him through the air. Gravitas was hoping to trick Hoff into thinking his strength was less than it really was, though he was careful not to allow himself to fall in danger of any precarious hold.
Then, just as Hoff began to grow overconfident in his superior strength, Gravitas, quickly summoning his total power into one movement and pulled downward on Hoff’s enormous arms. The giant fell forward awkwardly. Gravitas then ripped his arms back and swung a powerful punch at the giant’s chin, connecting brutally.
Hoff’s huge head rolled from the blow.
Gravitas then spun, rounding on the general and launching a kick straight into his side, precisely hitting his already broken ribs. Hoff let out a wide-eyed howl and arched his back in agony. Gravitas leapt at the opening, and leveled a punch into the exact same spot, and another, and another. The Lord General’s side was bleeding profusely from the beating. Hoff fell toward the city, his upper body locked in a painful and immobile condition.
The fight was over.
For a time Gravitas watched Hoff fall, and longed to show him mercy, to extend to this oblivious soldier a sympathy that he had never given to another. Then he thought of Kristen Jordan’s beautiful face and felt a smoldering fury seep out of his very heart. This Lord General, this soulless and thoughtless monster, would have stripped her of her life without the slightest hesitation. All of her brilliance, all of her hopes and dreams and all she might yet come to be would have been devoured by this grotesque man’s hunger for conquest. His crimes ran too atrocious for forgiveness. And so Gravitas exploded down toward the plummeting Hoff. With the full gathered momentum of his approach toward the free falling general, Gravitas reached back to full extension and launched a killing blow straight into Alegant Hoff’s liver. Hoff made a gasping gurgle sound, and his body lurched toward the buildings below.
Gravitas then turned and accelerated toward the southwestern end of the city, where Darien had descended into the assemblage of shimmering skyscrapers.
Chapter Thirty
Vengelis
Vengelis stared at Kristen Jordan silently. He examined her closely, methodically weighing out her potential value. She was tapping a sneaker nervously against the stage and drumming her fingers along the side of the Harbinger I remote. Behind her glasses, she was reading Pral Nerol’s report with a mingling of apprehension and wonder. Vengelis was still not entirely convinced that Kristen was not in fact one of Pral Nerol’s researchers—a Primus—living incognito on Filgaia. But if this young woman was a Primus, she would have recognized the heir to the Epsilon throne enter the ballroom and consequently faltered during her presentation when Vengelis arrived. Yet Vengelis had distinctly seen Kristen notice and disregard his initial entrance. Beyond that, he had felt the delicateness of her jaw when he had grabbed her by the chin. It had taken a conscious effort to avoid inadvertently crumpling it with a mere squeeze of his thumb.
No. Kristen Jordan had to be a human, but how?
How were humans—by their own capacity—also on the cusp of Felix technology? It did not seem possible that a civilization so inferior to the Primus in every other aspect would be on an equal ground in this one solitary scientific respect. Vengelis had to admit that he was as perplexed by her existence as she no doubt was by his. They were each enigmas equal in kind, one physical, one cerebral.
Kristen drew a steadying breath and let it out slowly, and when she lifted a hand from the Harbinger I remote to massage her chin, Vengelis saw she was trembling.
“What do you mean when you ask me to show you how to defeat these Felixes?” Kristen asked cautiously, lifting her gaze from the remote.
Her question jarred Vengelis from his thoughts, and her tone stoked irritation in his chest. She was beginning to look increasingly worried, and it bothered him. “You need to tell me how they can be unmade. Tell me how I can disassemble them.”
Kristen’s expression showed a lack of understanding. “I know Vatruvian technology on the scale of the cellular level. You’re referring to these . . . Felixes . . . as though they are some sort of army?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. How many of them did this scientist create?”
“The number of Felixes is irrelevant. The question is how I can destroy one of them.”
“Well, you’re mentioning Felixes in the plural, so I will assume you people created more than one,” Kristen said. “But are we talking about some sort of, like, legion, or a few?”
“We created four.”
“Four?” the answer visibly took Kristen aback. “Four Vatruvian humans—or Primus or whatever you are—were cause for you to come all the way here?”
Vengelis nodded, in disbelief himself. “Yes.”
“Well, what do . . . hold on.” Kristen glanced back at the remote in her hands. “What do Pral Nerol and his researchers have to say about it? I really think you should be talking to them, not me.”
Vengelis scratched his chin, pondering how much he should risk telling her. He did not trust Kristen Jordan. The young woman before him was obviously intelligent; her exceptional intellect was on par with Pral Nerol and the greatest minds of his own people. He could see in her eyes that she was putting pieces together, attempting to solve the puzzle of how he and his men were flying through the sky, throwing people across rooms, and ripping down skyscrapers. The growing glint in her eyes was unmistakably her mind trying to establish how her notion of reality was so obviously deficient. Kristen was not a sheep who would curl up and write him off as a god. Instead she would use her mind and figure out what they were, perhaps by tricking him. She was proof the humans were not as archaic as he had believed even hours previous.
Vengelis broke it down simplistically in his mind. Felixes, or creations of modern Primus science, brought about the fall of the Epsilon empire. The humans were capable of replicating the Felix technology on their own accord. By logical correlation—in this one respect—the humans were equal to the Primus. It was then possible as an equal race, however obscenely unlikely, that the humans could pose a genuine threat to him. The key factor missing in their hypothetical equality was, of course, Sejero genetics.
Yet Kristen Jordan’s very first question had gone straight to Sejero genetics. In a few mere sentences Kristen had been able to pinpoint and question the source of his tremendous power. There was cleverness to match intellect in that mind, a combination that made Vengelis uneasy.
“Well? What does Pral Nerol think about it?” Kristen asked.
Vengelis knew if he told her the Felixes destroyed his world, Kristen would think it possible for humans to fend him off, perhaps with the very Vatruvian technology she was capable of manipulating. That could not be risked. He decided to err on the side of caution and keep her in the dark about the broader picture of the destruction of Anthem.
“Nerol is unable to answer my questions.”
“Okay,” Kristen said, skeptical toward his reticence. “There are four Vatruvian entities created using your genes as architecture. That is the situation?”
“Yes.”
“And the creation of these entities has forced the emperor of these people to travel to a different world in the hope that a scientist there would be able to help them? And all this has been done without simply asking the creators of the technology what should be done.”
Vengelis held her gaze and said nothing. There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice as she said emperor that he did not like, but he let it slide. He needed to start making headway in unraveling the mystery around th
e Felixes, and he was certain she could help if he allowed her to continue without intimidating her.
“Well,” Kristen looked at him with doubt. “The best I can do is to tell you what I know about the technology, and how it might relate to your situation. Though I will be the first to admit my knowledge is limited.”
“I’m listening.”
“I don’t know how familiar you are with the technology itself.”
“Then explain it carefully.”
Kristen drew a deep breath. “Well, okay. Just recently we discovered a peculiar phenomenon of Vatruvian cells; it was a trend that may shed light on your situation. There is something inherent in their artificial conception—the very molecules of their fiber and being—that allow Vatruvian cells to be stronger than the natural cells they are modeled after.”
Vengelis’s face turned severe, but this was not a surprise. “Continue.”
The noises of a hysterical uproar traveled in with the breeze through the shattered windows where Hoff and Darien had entered the ballroom. It sounded as though the entire city was trembling under the throes of havoc and struggle. Voices could be heard like gales in a storm outside, and there were clamors not unlike a battle. Kristen turned her attention to the noise and stared in disbelief out the windows. Vengelis leaned forward and snapped his fingers again to get her attention. She brought her gaze back to him and raised her voice uncomfortably over the mayhem.
“O-one of my colleagues first noticed the unexpected trend in a bacterium during stress testing of one of the Vatruvian cells.”
“The unexpected trend?” Vengelis asked. “What do you mean?”
“Yes. Well, the results were . . . bizarre. You have to understand that all Vatruvian technology, or in your case Felix technology, aims to accomplish is a mimicry of natural cells. The end goal is to imbue biological elegance upon an entity created in the lab. But what we found during stress tests was that, in fact, a Vatruvian cell bacterium was more resilient to inhibiting variables than the natural cell it replicated.” Kristen paused. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Now it was Vengelis’s turn to shift uncomfortably. He drew his attention to Madison, and saw she was listening intently to their conversation from the side, though she was staring out the windows toward the outside racket. He wondered if their feelings were similar to when he descended on the burning Municera and felt the pit rise in his stomach. Kristen and Madison were surely far from inured to the degree of destruction that was being brought down around them.
“Do you understand?” Kristen repeated. “What I mean to say is that a Vatruvian cell is able to live in environments that would destroy a normal cell. The specific example I was told was of a Vatruvian cell bacterium functioning in an environment far beyond the heat threshold of its biological version.”
Vengelis nodded, glaring at the stage floor. “Okay.”
“I can only speculate what kind of other superiorities would surface in larger organisms or tissue structures. As far as I know, we have not done stress tests on the Vatruvian mice.”
As he listened to Kristen, the perilously beautiful face and gleaming sapphire gaze of the Felix woman he fought over Sejeroreich seared across Vengelis’s vision like a ghastly specter. He placed his fingers on the healed gash across his cheek, remembering the gaping hole it had been, and he shivered. The shudder did not go unnoticed by Kristen. She cast him a measuring gaze as if to guess what was going through his head.
“By all means, speculate,” Vengelis said, quickly composing himself.
“Well, if the artificial cells that comprise a Vatruvian entity are superior to biological cells, it can be assumed the tissues of the entity will also be superior.” Kristen shrugged and looked again to Pral Nerol’s report on the handheld screen. Her lips articulated a few of the words as she scanned through it. “The scientists who performed this research were clearly also aware of this occurrence. They even mention its possibility in the synopsis here: Potential alterations of complex muscular-skeletal system physical traits resulting from the aberrant and anatomically enhanced Felix stem cells are currently unknown.”
“I know,” Vengelis said, frustrated.
“Look, I’ve told you all I can based off the information I have.” Kristen exhaled. “I’m sorry if it wasn’t helpful.”
“No,” Vengelis said. “You need to tell me more. I will not leave until I am shown specifically how to destroy a Felix.”
“I don’t understand. You said yourself that you’re a god. Just . . . I don’t know . . . pull them apart. Kill them.”
Vengelis knew it was a trap. He was certain her concern was not in the strength of the Felixes, and how could it be? The Felixes were imaginary to her. No, Kristen’s concern was instead on the strength of the baffling humanlike being standing before her. Kristen had her own agenda, her own race’s self-interest, in this conversation. Ultimately, he did not hold it against her, and part of him even admired it.
“I told you the machines were constructed using the genetics of my people.” Vengelis looked away from her, the admittance of his defeat hard to voice. “The Felixes appear to be as superior to my race as your Vatruvian bacterium cell was to its natural counterpart.”
Kristen nodded. “I don’t doubt that.”
“Then I will ask you this: how would a natural mouse go about killing one of your Vatruvian mice?”
“I would say, based off of my colleague’s data and what you have hinted about these Felixes, a natural mouse couldn’t kill a Vatruvian mouse. The Vatruvian would be too superior.”
“But we aren’t dealing with mice, are we?” Vengelis said. “How would a human murder a Vatruvian human?”
“Well, that’s a completely different situation.” Kristen said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Humans can wield weapons capable of creating far greater force than their bodies alone can produce. The firing of a gun created by a natural human would still kill a Vatruvian human.”
Vengelis nodded gravely. “And if the template species—the natural cells themselves—upon which a Vatruvian replicate has been created, are more powerful than any weapon? If a Vatruvian entity was created using the cells of a life form that was impervious to any technology or weapon of science? What then?”
Kristen paused as the panic of their surrounds pushed in on the bubble of their conversation.
“Then, somewhere out there, there are synthetic organisms more powerful than gods.” Kristen’s eyes began to widen in sudden comprehension of the gravity of Vengelis’s situation. “And they are called Felixes.”
“Do you now understand the task I’m asking of you?” Vengelis said.
“I—” Kristen stumbled. “How can I possibly tell you how to destroy these Felixes when I don’t even know what you are, let alone them? It isn’t that simple! That’s the very intent of Vatruvian technology—vast complexity.”
“I don’t know how you’ll do it, but that is your task. And if you can’t succeed, I will begin a genocide that will leave a gaping and disfiguring scar across your civilization’s memory. That is, if they don’t do it themselves.” Vengelis nodded to the rising sounds of unrest filtering from outside.
“You can’t,” Kristen said. “You’re asking the impossible!”
Vengelis reached out and forcefully yanked the Harbinger I remote out of Kristen’s hands. She fell forward and looked up at him with a fierce aversion. Vengelis decided she was going to need some motivation. If a technology could be made, it could be unmade. That was Vengelis’s position on the matter, and he was not about to stray from it. To suggest the Felixes were indestructible was to suggest his civilization had reached its end, and that was not an option. There had to be a way. It was a matter of ingenuity, and this young woman obviously had ingenuity aplenty. Kristen just needed help coming around to the severity and actuality of her plight; she needed to have as much depending on her efforts as he did.
Like him, Kristen needed the fear of destruction driving her labors.
Vengelis pressed the transmit button to connect with Hoff and Darien. He would order them to begin destroying the city from the south portion of the island upward. The building Kristen, Madison, and he now occupied would be the last remaining structure in a desert of ruin if necessary. He waited a long moment, but received no answering transmission from their end. Again he pushed the button on his Harbinger I remote with growing irritation.
There was no response.
“Hoff! Darien! What the hell are you two doing?” Vengelis held the remote close to his face for a long moment, expecting to hear Hoff’s deep voice.
Yet nothing came.
At last he let his arm fall to his side in bewilderment. What could they possibly be doing? Faint tremors of angst traveled through him. Now was not the time for unforeseen complications.
“Wait. Whatever you’re about to do, wait.” Kristen said, seeming to guess his intention. “I will try to help. I really will. But you are going to need to tell me more about what you are. You can’t simply demand results and expect them to appear. I need more information to work with.”
“What do you need?”
“Well . . . first, we need to discuss your power. You and those giants . . . how are you so strong?”
“We simply are.”
“You have the power to destroy cities. I think it’s safe to say we have established that.” Kristen looked up to the live broadcast of a devastated Chicago on the projector screen and trembled, but continued. “Does that power reside in you? Or are you and those two giants wielding some sophisticated weaponry or technology that I can’t see or, I don’t know, is somehow beyond my comprehension?”
“We don’t brandish smoke and mirrors, if that is what you’re asking. The power you have witnessed is raw, corporal; it is within us. Technology itself is archaic and ineffectual when compared to my people’s innate power.”
