by Nick Ryder
“Cara was just promoted to an A level. But she doesn’t have any points,” Surre explained. “You lose your points when you level up, and it happens all over again. You can either spend your points on trade or use them to level up and increase your rank. I get my points from the gardens. If there’s a problem with growth, I can help the plants. It’s kind of hard to be very useful without letting anyone see my powers though.” She frowned.
“You should be a class A,” Cara said.
Surre shook her head. “I don’t want them to know.”
“Why is it a problem?” Lisa asked.
“We had three hundred survivors in the beginning. My father told me it was hard. We struggled between the red and the blue.”
“Are you referring to the Republican and Democratic parties that are differentiated by the two-color system?” Ego asked, whipping through relevant human knowledge in the blink of an eye.
“No...” Cara said slowly. “We’re separated within the village between the reds and the blues. It evolved from the beginning. Only younger people, really, survived the Change. Many of the people who changed at the start that were older just turned into monsters.”
It occurred to me, the history of the last twenty years was mostly oral and told to children for bedtime tales. Somehow the survivors banded together but still took sides. And it all apparently had something to do with this supposedly great Seer. “This person you’ve mentioned, the Seer, he must have had powers too. I remember something about him, I can almost put my finger on it, but the memories are so murky. Don’t you have any records of him, Ego?” The AI was eerily silent, so I pretended not to notice rather than make him think I was suspicious.
“What happened to the others in the village?” Elaine asked. “You said there are only two hundred or so now?”
“We weren’t able to gather enough supplies to build a larger village. The council began asking for volunteers to leave. We turned away many who arrived later. The village maintains at two-hundred-fifty people. The few deaths we’ve had will allow the lottery to start for parents to have children. I’m not sure that’s exactly what the Seer had in mind when he told us to ‘gamify’ our lives to survive. It’s always seemed so cruel to me.”
“It’s a social structure that allows for interior growth within the community based on rewards through scoring and levels.” Ego articulated the fundamental econography of the villagers. “Is that how the world runs now?”
“My father says other villages exist like ours. He said they tried to have larger towns, even cities rebuilt, but something always happens between the reds and the blues and they feud for supremacy.” Cara’s hand was very close to Lisa’s hind leg, but I saw she resisted to touch the wolf.
“When was the last time you saw other people in the desert?” I asked.
“It hasn’t happened for a while.” She looked at the faces around her. The animals looked back at her thoughtfully. She saw Surre lay on the floor, the rats curled around her. “Mercury and Gemini were the last to arrive.”
“Was the number of villagers sufficient to allow them access to the village” Ego asked.
“You talk funny,” Surre said. She looked up at my camera.
“Your villagers were below two-hundred and fifty people before they arrived,” Elaine said. “They were young; do you think the council would have let them stay if the town was at capacity? It seems so barbaric.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Cara said seeming ashamed. “It’s just the way things are.”
“Did you see the light on the horizon?” Surre asked from under the gray fur of the rats sleeping on her.
“What light?” Lisa asked. Her ears pricked. “It’s daylight.”
“No,” Cara said. “There was a glow on the horizon before daybreak. It looked like a fire on the far side of the valley.”
Lisa never let anything just happen. She quickly rose and bounded out of the room as though in one fluid motion. Her movements made everyone uneasy, and Cara got to her feet too.
They waited for a few minutes. I turned my camera to the vehicle bay. I saw the flash of white fur dart through the opening Cara had made with her power. Outside, the camera faced the solar panels. It had no servos to turn the lens in any other direction.
Then I saw the white flash slip through the opening. She bounded through the doors of the lounge, panting. “There’s something wrong,” she called out so I would hear her.
It was impossible for me to see what happened. I was at the limits of the cameras and the base, trapped in the system. There wasn’t a body for me to access this time, after I’d died inside it once again.
“It’s bad! I smell fire. I think the village is under attack,” Lisa shouted near my external sensor.
“No!” Cara bolted for the door. She ran down the corridor toward the exit.
“Let us help you!” I shouted. The volume compressor on the speaker system made it come out at a moderate volume, but with a heightened sense of urgency not lost in my words. “We can do something.”
The beautiful Cara reached the vehicle bay and scooped up her weapon. Surre clambered after her.
“I’m not staying here,” Surre said. And she moved forward. Elaine hesitated because the new growth of plants around the counter and opening trembled a little when Surre walked by them.
“I’m going to help then too,” Marie said. She looked at Elaine.
The indifference of her cat side didn’t win against her human side. “Okay, me too. We need to do something,” she said and slipped through the hole.
I couldn’t follow them outside. I felt a surge of rage because we never anticipated more than our front door. It was frustrating beyond belief that I couldn’t go join then in whatever mayhem was taking place outside of the base. However, I did have something to contribute. It was only a matter of time.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The distance from the base to the other side of the valley was impossibly far. She had no sleep and running with the combat boots in the sand proved more difficult than she wanted.
Cara stopped momentarily. She glanced behind her. The sun began to scorch the western mountain range. To the east, the bright fiery orb saturated the cloudless sky. There was movement in the direction of the base. She saw the distant running figure of Surre. The girl was too frail, too small to close the distance. Cara had to choose, save the village, or save one. She turned her back on Surre and started running again. This was their way.
But something bounded up behind her. She felt the thunder in the sand. When she looked, the head of the white wolf woman appeared running at her side. And the other two animal women had caught up to Surre, hopefully ensuring the girl would remain safe.
“Get on,” Lisa shouted. She dipped her head; Cara snatched a clump of fur and swung her leg over Lisa’s back. Pressing her boots into Lisa’s flanks, she dug her hand into the thick band of hair at the stunning wolf woman’s neck and held on tight. She didn’t look back.
What typically took all day, only took a few hours. The closer to the perimeter fence, the more devastation they saw. It was an army, a swath of red tunics, tartans, and armored jackets.
They had a working trebuchet. It was like an old catapult she once seen being tested, only much more powerful. The machine had Tall steel twin triangles on a wheeled base had seven people working its pulleys and loading ammunition. Several carts with enormous rocks for the swinging arm basket. Another stone scratched through the track of the trebuchet. The basket shot the boulder through the air. Cara found it hard to see through her tears.
“We need to stop that,” Lisa said. “We’ll give away our position the moment we do.
“There’s got to be five hundred people out there.” Elaine had appeared at Lisa’s shoulder, riding her huge lizard. Surre sat precariously behind her, arms wrapped around the cat woman’s waist, clinging on for dear life.
“They’re getting through the fences,” Cara pointed out. There were several explosion
s, and arrows sailed out.
“Marie’s coming,” Elaine said. Surre slipped from the back of the iguana. “Her legs aren’t as long as—”
“What’s that?” she asked pointing to the writhing mass behind them. As a group, they turned toward the desert valley.
It was a small army. Solomon must have released the creatures he’d been gestating in the two labs beneath the mountain, and now they were going to fight the invaders.
Lizards like Elaine’s led the charge, moving with surprising alacrity over the desert floor with their tails wagging behind them. A small group of wolves ran together in a pack.
The skies were the scariest. Cats with wings and birds with huge, deadly beaks headed straight for the invaders.
It might just be enough to turn the battle, especially since they were genetically enhanced creatures. They might just hold enough surprises to give them the upper hand.
“Wait, Cara!” Lisa shouted. The trebuchet had another round loaded, and Cara wanted it done before it could do any more damage to her home—her people.
She ran with a burst of speed. The dust curled at her heels. The halberd turned in her fist. Its tip passed over the sand, every grain the glowing blade touched began to burn.
There was a sound she heard building from somewhere, and as Cara reached the point where she saw the scatter of frightened faces, she pushed off the ground. The tips of her combat boots stepped in the air as if running upstairs. Once she’d reached a height over the trebuchet, Cara rolled and bore down on the weary-looking, frightened faces.
Before anyone scattered, the tip of the halberd touched the ground at the base of the siege weapon. The impact was so intense that twisted metal and wet red chunks exploded in all directions.
Lisa bounded after Cara. She snapped at arms and legs in her path. Chunks of flesh and severed limbs, bits of legs, fell in her wake. The screaming was incredible. A fiery cloud of dust and smoke engulfed the area. Chokingly dense, she couldn’t see the girl; she smelled only blood and fire. She raged onward.
The battle came from two fronts.
The villagers continued to try and hold the invaders back, and the mutant animals, led by Elaine and Marie, dove into the back of the forces.
Cara’s eyes widened when she saw Elaine’s iguana breathe an arc of orange fire that turned the two men in front of her into charred meat. Elaine looked equally as surprised but recovered quickly. She had a collar and chain around the neck of the iguana that she used as a, anchor as she darted around the battlefield, always being able to tug on it to send her flying back to the huge beast. She was like a kite.
The appearance of mutated creatures was a shock to the red leaders. Their horses showed signs of spooking. There were five of them. Five men sitting on horseback, far from the main army, pointing and shouting, Cara saw them through the gloom. She wanted their heads. She began moving forward, still weak from the concussion but unwilling to lie down and die.
The pole weapon swept out in front of her. The bodies split in half. People ran screaming from her weapon as it burned and sliced through flesh, setting fire to the bone.
Then a young man was in her path. She recognized him. He stared at her through hateful eyes.
“Gemini!” Cara screamed. “Did you do this?” Was this why he’d disappeared during their expedition? Had he sent word for this cruel red slaughter? They came from across the desert only to take what wasn’t theirs. It was the way of so many humans, destroy everything in their path and take anything along the way.
Before she could level the pole weapon down on Gemini, something clicked in her brain. She dropped the halberd and rolled away. A moment later, she felt the scratch of the claymore as it barreled down and impacted with the earth where she had stood just moments earlier. The ground erupted in a ball of fire.
Cara turned and saw the smirking face of Mercury as he pulled the claymore from the ground.
She brushed at the flames still licking her arm. The acrid stench of singed hair filled her nostrils.
She saw Gemini moving around her left, while Mercury went to her right. “You brought them here!” Her face contorted with rage and confusion. “Why?”
“They were coming anyway.” Gemini said, “We just picked sides.”
The rolling smoke blotted them from her vision. Both still acted wary of Cara. She’d already exceeded their expectations before, and neither of them seemed eager to test her limits.
The ground around Mercury’s feet churned. He looked down just for a moment. The writhing patch of thorny branched clutched at his ankles and pulled him backward, screaming into the roiling black smoke. Cara saw Surre, the girl in full concentration, her hands pressed to the ground. Three rats were surrounding the girl, protecting her from anyone who tried to get to her. Attached to the cord that served as her belt were her many water skins. No doubt she would have to retreat from the fray if she ran out of water.
Gemini rushed Cara. It was an impact that sounded like a thunderclap. Cara snapped backward, tumbling several meters away from him. Gemini recovered. He pulled a black cord from his belt and gripped it in his fist. The cord caught fire. He whip-cracked it through the air, creating a deafening sound like a thunderbolt.
Cara got to her feet. She fell over. She pressed off the ground with her hands. Then she narrowed her eyes. Gemini snapped the end of the flaming whip again but this time right beside her her—the sound exploded in her ear, and Cara was flung away.
When she tried to get to her feet again, she couldn’t see out of her left eye. There was a crimson patch on her forearm when she wiped at her face.
Through the blinding smoke, the fiery whip snapped again. The explosion burst, pluming out the smoke like a stone in a pond, clearing the air around him. He marched toward her.
“Fuck this,” she hissed. Crouching, Cara grunted. She pressed her hands together, the hair on her arms and scalp stood on end as she gathered the electrons in the air, supercharging them in the compressed blue ball of electricity suspended between her two open hands.
Gemini saw the big blue ball as Cara hoisted her hands up. He cocked his arm back. At that distance, the end of the whip would slice her head off her shoulders. Aiming what was to be his finishing blow, he whipped and made impact this time.
Cara would never want to admit it, but she closed her eyes a moment before expecting her death. The whip snapped her halberd and sent it flying from her grasp. The electric charge still in her hands, Cara said, “Really?” She’d been robbed of her special attack now, but at least she was still in one piece.
That was about to change now that she was essentially defenseless against Gemini’s flaming whip attack.
Then something blurred into her vision, and she saw him looking shocked. The whip, as Cara saw its fiery trail, snaked around like a tail yanked off a lizard as its light died in the distance. There was a sleek leathery form carrying the whip away. It was a flying crocodile!
Gemini looked at his arm, only it wasn’t there. A fount of blood shot across the battlefield as the young man fell, screaming. The winged cat hadn’t only snatched up his weapon; it had taken his entire arm clean off along with the whip.
“Now we’re both unarmed!” shouted Cara.
The electric charge still in her hands, Cara said, “Really?” She’d been robbed of her special attack.
A sharp whooshing sound cut through the air immediately behind her. She spun on the spot without thinking, just in time to see a glint of metal bare down on her. Cara held up her hands, which were still energized with the telltale glow of her halberd attack. The blade halted before hitting her, connecting with the energy ball coming from her extended hands.
For a moment, the world stopped turning. The cataclysmic explosion rippled outward in a full circle. Creatures and humans spun away as if caught in the draft of a tornado.
Cara opened her eyes. The long blade caught suspended inside the blue electrical charge. It was Mercury’s claymore. He grunted, bearing down on the w
eapon with his weight but unable to make it move farther.
He was close. Cara felt his breath, hot on her face.
Mercury’s face was a mess of hot desperation as he struggled against a force he clearly did not understand.
Looking into that pathetic face, Cara felt clarity for the first time in her life. She didn’t need weapons to fight. The power was inside her, not just an extension of her like her halberd was, or like the claymore was to Mercury. She just needed to harness it. For now, they seemed to be at a stalemate, the hefty sword stuck in the ball of energy, and each of the youths unable to break free of their grips.
At that moment, Cara was glad Sampson had made her reinforced battle boots.
The toes had rounded steel caps. When the tip of her boot connected between Mercury’s legs, the explosion was like a lightning strike.
“These are my friends,” Cara later said, after the battle was over. She lay on a soft bed. Sampson held her hand.
The white she-wolf took up most of the small room with her muscular form, arms folded, amber eyes on anything but them. The lithe redheaded cat woman sat near the door, in a sunbeam, her tail swishing.
“We’re going to need time,” Lisa said from the side of her mouth. “A lot is going on.”
“What’s left of the red army has finished retreating over the horizon. They went back the way they came into the desert.” Sampson finished bandaging Cara’s head. The wrap covered the left side of her face and her eye.
“We’ve got scouts watching them.”
“I don’t think they’ll be back any time soon,” Elaine said. “After all, when was the last time they saw a crocodile flying around?”
“This isn’t going to end here,” Lisa said. “I have a feeling word’s going to get out about the mountain base.”
There was a commotion outside the hut. Cara looked around. Through the window, she saw Wilbert and Maurice watching the cat and wolf women. Their eyes told the tale of the village. Everyone distrusted the creatures. Many of the defenders had retreated to the base. They’d lost some of their numbers. People died on both sides.
