by Nick Ryder
She started away from the group in a limp. After a few minutes, Spencer caught up to her.
“Want to talk about what happened?” he asked quietly.
Cara continued to walk toward the mountain kingdom. She didn’t speak right away. She knew Spencer stared at her profile and she let him have a good look. It was just a body. Strong arms, shapely and toned, her back curved to the contour of her firm ass, and long legs.
“What I want to know,” she started and twisted her head a few times to let the thick hair fall away from her face and drape against her back, “is where Mercury and Gemini were last night,” she said, looking at Spencer.
They’d disappeared in tandem, weren’t anywhere near Isaiah while he cowered and watched his friend get dragged off. Maybe they’d run away as soon as the action started, but Cara was skeptical. They were impressive fighters, both of them. She’d watched them spar in the town amphitheater. After hunts they always came back with food.
Behind them, as they saw from a distance, Cara’s work was a stark reminder in the desert. The sandpit where Cara landed after her incredible leap had scorched black. The blast radius was several meters in an almost perfect circumference. It went about a meter down from the rest of the level desert.
The content inside the pit wasn’t sand any longer. The silica and calcium oxide crystals had melted. “Hey,” Maurice shouted to the front of the group from the rear of the line. “I think that’s glass inside the pit back there.”
“It takes over two-thousand degrees Celsius to make glass,” Gemini added.
“One-thousand-seventy-six,” Cara clarified. No one spoke again. She looked over her shoulder to the rest of the group following. “What? My dad’s the smithy, remember?” But she went back to walking and thinking, scanning the mountainside for the signs of crawling or running creatures that wanted to make a meal out of them. She realized the group was afraid of her. Not because she knew the melting point of sand, but because she was the catalyst that caused the sand to melt.
Rocks as a general rule didn’t move. It was one of those fundamental facts that came with life. While there was an opportunity for rocks to change their positions, for a number of reasons, on their own, without the addition of kinetic energy or gravity, or even a strong wind, they just stayed put. Cause and effect had a lot to do with the way rocks responded; especially when it came to gravity.
“There’s something up there,” Spencer whispered. If something had expected to get the drop on the group, the sizeable tumbling rock from the steep slope that finally came to a bouncing rest near them gave it all away.
Cara ignored his shoulder pressed against hers in a way that made her think about his bicep and how it wouldn’t fit inside both her hands if she tried to put her fingers around it.
“Be careful,” he whispered. Then he moved forward.
Above it was more of the same, various shades of brown desert rock. Bleached with the sunlight, the stones went almost white and dropped into deeper gloomy and drab color by degrees. The foundation that dropped from high above was the size of a football and the color of burnt umber.
Cara watched the crags and cornices of the mountainside. It was one of those particular jobs that took patience. Why rush toward something that had teeth, claws, and possibly venom? Eventually, whatever was up there would either attack or run off. After the swarm attack, she thought the creatures of the nearby slopes had a bird’s eye view of the events and knew better than to attack the group.
“What’s he doing?” Maurice asked when he slipped up behind Cara. They watched as Spencer crouched, rolled in the gravel, and skipped to the massive granite slabs that made up the base of the mountainside.
“I’m not sure,” Cara said. She lifted the halberd from the ground and carried it with her as she continued farther along the base where the rocks met the sand. Spencer was already several yards up from the desert floor. He free climbed, grit-covered hands, a weapon hanging from its sleeve on his back.
“Are we going up there?” Wilbert asked when he caught up to Cara and Maurice. They tipped their eyes up to the side of the mountain that seemed impossible to climb. Somehow Spencer was still managing the ascent.
“He’s going to get himself killed up there,” Isaiah added. He walked some paces behind Cara. Gemini and Mercury walked instep together, side by side. They shared conversation and kept a close eye on the dance of the skirt at Cara’s rump as she walked. It seemed the only view they were interested in and Spencer’s scaling the mountainside wasn’t as exciting.
From the shelf near the top, some distance from Spencer, Cara saw a sleek shape; the white fur caught a sliver of sunlight. It was just a flash. A specter of a beast, long and lean with a shifting tail, moving along the plateau near Spencer but not toward him; it went the other direction.
Fur wasn’t something Cara saw a lot of in the valley. The enormous carnivorous jackrabbits were one of the few creatures that had a coat. Most other animals had scales, shells, or, as in the case of the arachnids, hair. But fur, and white fur especially, was rare.
Spencer reached the edge where the creature had been moments before. The view across the desert from that height was spectacular; Cara thought the view from the mountain castle entrance was great too. But Spencer wasn’t near the door. They still had a mile or more before they reached the opening.
Another creature in the desert that didn’t have scales, or hair and fur, had feathers. It was a moment before Wilbert pointed to the sand in the desert.
“What’s that,” he said. As a group, they looked away from Spencer. The shape in the sand was full and black. It moved like a fluid over the surface, gliding on black wings.
“Spencer, get down!” Cara called. He crouched but waited. It was hard to see because something that large needed an advantage. It used the sun on its back to hide in the sky.
The speed of the enormous black shadow that sped across the valley floor, straight at Spencer like a sleek arrow the size of a city bus, came in so fast that Spencer had no time to react.
The average wingspan of a golden eagle used to be about seven feet across. They could weigh up to eight pounds. That was before everything changed.
It slammed against Spencer before he saw it. The talons punched through the chest plate and punctured his ribs. There was a blood-curdling screech from the bird with wings that were over six meters from tip to tip.
Cara felt the hot drops rain down on them. There was the trembling of Spencer’s foot hanging off the side of the cliff before the eagle flapped its wings again. Its prey clutched in both claws, pressed to the plateau, didn’t move again.
Cara felt a deep pang of primal loss, but didn’t bother trying to save her new friend. He was gone, She looked farther along the rock shelf. Something white bounded out of a split in the rocks and ran at the eagle. But the bird’s immense wings lifted it off the perch, carrying the lifeless body of Spencer in its talons. Cara watched as a huge white wolf lunged at the bird. Its body arched and twisted, one claw slapping at the eagle’s tail feathers. But the eagle screeched again, used gravity to pull it off the rocks, and glided away with its meal.
The white wolf landed on the plateau. It shook its fur and looked down at Cara from its higher vantage, but made no signs it intended to come closer. The creature was something Cara had never seen nor heard of, like a wolf mutated into a humanoid form. The thought of something that powerful with human capabilities and maybe even matching intelligence sent a cold shiver down her spine.
There was a unique moment like being hit by lightning, when the two alpha females stared at each other for the first time. Then it slipped away, and Cara turned around.
“Wait!” Isaiah said as she wandered by him. There were crimson drops on her face and shoulders. “Where are you going?”
“Home,” she said quietly.
“I thought we were going into the mountain,” he demanded.
“Go ahead,” she said but didn’t look back at him. “It doesn’t
matter anymore.”
Maurice and Wilbert caught up to her. They said nothing. Both of them watched the sky. Looking at the sun was impossible. If any more eagles were flying around, they’d use the same hunting tactic, and no one would see them.
Gemini and Mercury watched Cara walk by them. They shared a look, observed Isaiah standing closest to the mountainside, and turned around to follow Cara. Isaiah stood for a long moment, waiting. But eventually, he ran after the rest.
Cara looked one more time to the high shelf along the mountain. The white wolf creature sat very still, watching the group’s retreat.
“That thing is huge. Never seen anything quite like it before.” Wilbert moved closer to Cara.
“Yeah,” Maurice agreed. “It’s a big male.”
“Female,” Cara corrected him. Somehow the amber eyes of the wolf stayed in her mind. “Can’t you see it has tits?”
“I think it wanted to get Spencer to eat before the eagle carried him off.”
“I don’t think that’s what it wanted,” Cara said quietly. She lamented the dead in her own way. Often it was alone, so no one could see her cry. “I think it tried to save him.”
“I’m going to tell the council that you are forfeiting your rights to the mountain kingdom!” Isaiah took up the lead back to the village. “You can’t keep us from what’s inside.”
Cara said nothing. Plans were moving around her. She understood the consensus of the ruling parties. If red wanted the cache, they’d find a way to claim it, even if it rightfully belonged to Cara. She suspected the disappearance of Mercury and Gemini had to do with scouting ahead, looking for a way to collect loot before she retrieved anything. But she still had blue members who understood her view on the good of the whole community. However, now it became a bureaucracy, and she wasn’t good at politics.
Cara was better on her own. And when the time came, she needed to get to the mountain kingdom by herself. So no one else had to die because she’d found something that might not indeed belong to them. If members of the red team went to the mountain and found someone survived inside, they’d lay claim, kill any survivors, or at the very least, start a war. Cara largely wanted to go because she had a curiosity that wasn’t sated. But they had to mourn the dead and tell the families.
“Here,” Maurice said, handing Cara a square of material from his shirt. “You got blood on your face.”
She took the rag and pressed it against her eyes first. The charcoal mascara had started to run.
Chapter Seventeen
Lisa was a solitary creature who spent more time outside than Marie and Elaine. I often wondered since she’d awoken in the new body, if she had the same personality as a human. Was she the woman who went against the flow, the kind that danced solo in a sea of people dancing the Electric Slide? There was something sad about her. But for an instant, I thought about that. Was it possible that her solitary attitude came from the fact that wolves, by every account, were a noble and social creature? Did she need a pack to make her feel part of the whole?
We had a long meeting after the midnight fireworks show from the gorgeous girl I still didn’t have a name for.
Marie and her brood took up a corner of a couch in the lounge room. She had to work to keep the rats from tearing holes in the cushions. She only won the argument because she used scolding techniques mothers knew instinctively. There was a stern look followed by the countdown of numbers. Depending on how much she wanted them to behave, the preparation either started at five or three. That day it started at three because the group had a lot to unpack.
I watched the footage from the camera near the solar panels. It was a long way into the desert, and there was no zoom on the lens, but I saw that the girl had extraordinary powers.
“I think this is what we dealt with in the beginning,” I said to the group.
Elaine sat with the iguana that we’d enlarged for her curled at her side snoozing beneath a hot lamp. Ego had been very impressed with the success of the enlargement—it was now the size of a pony—and the stats it had! Good vitality and fortitude meant that it would be a good line of defense for the agile but fragile Elaine. It kept its loyalty to the cat woman, too, even when made so much more powerful.
Elaine studied the footage on the large flat screen monitor. I didn’t know if her eyesight was mostly cat or human. I didn’t ask. But she seemed intrigued by the recorded data.
“She’s dismissive of her abilities,” she said analytically. “By the way, the rest of the group reacted oddly to her blowing up that horde; they didn’t know she had the powers either.”
“I wish I could see better,” I said. The view was stagnant and took up only a small part of the whole picture. Ego had enhanced the footage, expanded the shot to take up the entire screen. But it was snowy because of limited pixilation. It reminded me of war footage from guidance missile cameras before they found the target and detonated.
“Her stat reading is incredibly powerful,” Ego said. “Her strength and intelligence are higher than any I have seen.”
“You can get a reading from that blurry image?” I asked, surprised.
“No, but when she first came to the facility she was close enough to the camera for me to see.”
“And you didn’t think you mention this until—”
“She’s in charge,” Lisa said, cutting off their bickering, and I tried to control my irritation. It wasn’t like it would have made a difference to know before now anyway.
I waited to hear more from Lisa. She was thoughtful and didn’t talk often. She wasn’t one for small talk. Like the base we occupied, there were many layers to Lisa, and we’d only scratched the surface. “I followed them for a while. They lost two of their group and returned to the village.”
“How many people live in the village?” Elaine asked. She was right on the mountain, surefooted and quiet. She saw the horde attack the group before Lisa because cats used their eyes more than wolves. At night she had the advantage. But she didn’t venture far from the opening in the mountain. Either she wasn’t sure of her abilities, or she was still afraid of the situation. Marie and Lisa were most comfortable with the arraignments. They took to their new bodies. And I felt Marie’s social interaction with the rats helped her roam freely and experiment with her powers.
“I’d guess there’s over two hundred.”
“Well, two less now,” Ego pointed out. It was something I noticed of the AI whenever we were in a group. Ego stayed in the background, observing, listening, and I think most of all, absorbing how humans, even protohumans inside genetically modified bodies, interacted.
Still, I felt outside myself, so to speak. The human form Ego prepared still percolated in a viscous goop that eventually went back into recycling. The body was nearly ready, but nothing we made was plug-and-play. We were at the mercy of the nanobots. Once the connection happened, the brain’s interaction nanorobotics and the genetically enhanced bodies fused on a subatomic level, and once the relationship occurred, we didn’t see a way to separate the parts without damaging the whole. Their union was symbiotic. That meant once I went into a body it was a permanent gig, just like before. Only we didn’t have surgeons anymore who removed brains from bodies. Now we had a rat that was a little squeamish around blood. And the nanobots weren’t able to operate on whole parts, only on a microscopic plane.
“The trouble is, we’re running out of time,” Elaine said. She stood up, arched her back, stretched her front limbs out, and allowed her razor-sharp talons to extend, hooking the carpet in the lounge. She yawned, showing very white and very sharp teeth. Her very long tail switched, rubbed against the wall before she settled again.
“What?” she said, looking around at the faces watching her. Even Marie’s rats watched in mute fascination.
Lisa lifted her head in a regal manner. She crossed her hands in front of her, and I saw those amber eyes lost in the video, deep in thought.
“What are you thinking?” I asked her.
She heard me—it was impossible not to listen to my speaker—but she didn’t respond immediately.
“I think,” she finally said. She looked over the rest of the group. “We need to build defenses and prepare for the worst.”
It was like my heart sang and took flight, somewhere a course of angels called from the highest mountains. Then I realized it was the klaxon and the girls were on their feet and ready for action.
“What’s going on?” Marie asked. The hackles on her shoulders stood. Her tail vibrated.
I went through every camera I had. But there was nothing visible.
“We’ve reached the next level,” Ego said triumphantly.
“Oh,” Elaine said and climbed off the back of the couch. She shook out her fur again. She licked the fur on her wrist and ran it over her nose and ear. “What?”
“Do you have to do that?” Lisa asked her.
“I,” she started and dropped her hand. “No. But you know sometimes you want to give into temptation.”
“I don’t,” Lisa said. She sat up.
“I think you’re right.” I wanted the rest of the group to know that Lisa was onto something. “I think the next visit we get isn’t just a bunch of kids. It will be an army. And we’re going to need one of our own.”
“So you’re going to breed more rats?” Marie asked.
“And wolves, lizards, cats too, and I think we need to branch out.”
“We need to see the next level.” Lisa wandered out of the lounge, and the rest just fell in step behind her. A born leader; they just followed without orders, without asking.
As if there was a deity of artificial intelligence, the fourth level to the base was dedicated to the genetic replication of creatures. It was impossibly well timed for our needs. But I silently thanked the programmers for their earnest attempts to fight back against the wave of monsters that had taken over the rest of the world years ago.
