Eclipse the Flame

by Ingrid Seymour

  I resolve to watch and learn. Watch and learn. All isn’t lost yet.

  “Well, I can hardly wait to hear your tale,” Elliot says sarcastically, his golden eyes narrowed to slits.

  “Unstrap me then. Go ahead, go ahead. What are you waiting for?”

  Elliot leans forward, wearing a chilling expression. “I suggest you stop making demands and start talking. NOW.” He shouts the last word, pushing his leering face right in front of mine.

  No, not my face. This body in which I’m a prisoner isn’t mine any longer. I’m trapped in a dusty corner of my mind and what used to belong to me is now under the command of an infection: a parasite that knows how to operate my brain, and has turned me into a negated variable inside a hacked program.

  In the distance, I perceive a strange humming that is somewhat familiar. I strain to recognize it and then it hits me. It’s the buzzing I always felt whenever I was around Eklyptors. The agent is sensing Elliot.

  A general state of submission flows all around my space, as if through that mental signal Elliot is stating his superiority. Could it be that the buzzing somehow establishes a rank among these creatures? Is that its purpose?

  “All right. All right,” the agent says, growing meek. “Maybe give me, give me something for my burns. They hurt. Hurt like the devil.”

  A blank stare from Elliot.

  Another plea. “Okay, okay. Some water then, to clear my throat.”

  He considers for a moment, then concedes. The agent’s voice sounds rough enough to justify a small nicety such as water.

  After some rattling off to the side, Doctor Sting comes back and presses a metal cup to my, her, our, lips. There’s a swallowing noise followed by gurgling, which makes me aware of other sounds, like the rhythmic thudding of a heart and the constant whooshing that must be blood coursing through the agent’s veins.

  “Thanks.” She sounds pathetically grateful. Or at least pretending to be because, from what little I’ve witnessed so far, such qualities aren’t part of the crazy creature usurping my body.

  “Now,” Elliot takes the cup away and throws it to the floor, “You’d better start talking, Marci.”

  “No, not Marci. I’m not Marci. Call me Azrael because I’m her angel of death, and she’s gone, gone, gone. GONE!”

  Azrael? Really? I guess this stupid parasite doesn’t remember Gargamel’s cat? It’s true I haven’t watched The Smurfs since I was five, and I’ve read about the archangel of death more recently in social studies at school. But still.

  “Stop this nonsense!”

  “Sorry. Sorry. I’ll stop. Right now.” Azrael does a whine in the back of her throat like a chastised dog. Her voice has lost its initial edge and now sounds groveling and deeply submissive. I seethe in anger at her slimy cowardice. “But when I’m done, could you, could you unstrap me?”

  “TALK!” Elliot screams, wrapping a hand around Azrael’s neck and squeezing.

  “Okay, okay,” Azrael croaks.

  Elliot lets go.

  Azrael coughs and begins, “Uh, you want to understand why she, why I, she would betray her own kind. I can explain. Yes, I can.” A pause.

  Elliot stares, unimpressed, impatience written all over his face.

  “It’s ’cause she’s different. Different.”

  No. No. No.

  Elliot can’t know.

  Azrael continues, my protests nothing more than words written in invisible ink. I’m a glitch in a computer with an operating system I can’t hack.

  “This body’s different. I’ve been in here since she was nothing. Just two cells. In-vitro job. Should’ve been in control when she got a brain. She never let me. I tried and tried and tried. Nothing worked. Nothing. She was a step ahead. Always,” Azrael says bitterly.

  “That is impossible,” Elliot says between his perfect, clenched teeth.

  “No, no. It isn’t. They called themselves Symbiots. Fuckin’ Symbiots.”

  STOP.

  I fight to make myself heard, imagine growing a mouth, lips I can bite until they stop speaking, until they bleed. But all I manage to do is give my position away. Shadows reappear. They come after me and, this time, I don’t run. Instead, I attack, slicing with imagined swords but, when one specter breaks, another appears, then another and another.

  “James is a Symbiot,” Azrael says, sounding winded. “There are three others. Three more. Yeah, three.”

  SHUT UP. SHUT UP.

  I kick and punch, attacking the thoughts as they form, trying to scatter them just the way the agent always scattered mine.

  “No no no, you little hack. She’s still here,” Azrael says, jerking from side to side on the restraining chair. “I won’t let you. Never let you. I have you now. You’re mine. Mine.”

  More shadows swarm, pouring, seeping, obscuring everything. I fight, visualizing arms as fast as windmills of light, slicing with speed, but still failing to make a difference because this fight is immaterial.

  “The little bitch is fighting.” Azrael catches her breath. “But she won’t win. I’ll tell it all. All. You hear?”

  Elliot’s mouth twists in distaste at the sight of what must look and sound like a psychotic Eklyptor. Is this how they all behave when they first come into being? Or have all the years trapped inside my head driven Azrael insane?

  Gaining a bit of hope, I fight harder, faster. And it seems I’m making progress until my strength dwindles, slowing me down, then finally bringing me to a halt. I’m spent. I’ve been through hell and back, and the wisp that I’ve become only seems to get more ethereal the harder I fight. So much that I’m afraid I’ll disappear. So much that the shadows stop and just stare at me. I collapse inwardly. And I think I’ve become the ghost of a ghost. And I think maybe this is it. This is death.

  Azrael exhales in relief. “She’s … she’s done for. Done for.”

  “Go on, then,” Elliot orders.

  “Yeah, yeah. Symbiots. I was talking about those Symbiots. Those little fuckers. Flukes. They can resist us. Not sure how. Can’t tell. It’s all jumbled up in here. Guess there had to be a few worth a damn out the millions. Filthy millions. James says there aren’t many. Nice little blessing, that.”

  Elliot’s expression has shifted. His head is cocked to one side, his eyes alert. “So, I could sense you, but the human was in control. You couldn’t overtake the body?” He still sounds skeptical, but less so than a minute ago.

  “That’s right, right, right,” Azrael says.

  “Remarkable,” Doctor Sting butts in.

  Elliot puts up a hand to silence him, eyes flashing with irritation.

  “And that thing, that thing she did with the knife,” Azrael says, “the little bitch has been using me. They all do it, then call themselves Symbiots, ’cause they use us. They steal. She punished me, made her mind so empty, empty. Tortured me, the little creep. Damn her. Felt so special making things move, but she’s not special. She’s nothing without me. NOTHING.”

  The sounds of agitated breaths join the fast thumping of my stolen heart.

  “Can we trust this?” Elliot asks.

  “It would explain why she was fighting alongside the humans and the rumors we’ve heard about superpowers during some of the battles against the Igniters,” Doctor Sting says with a shrug.

  Elliot looks almost convinced.

  “Trust me. You can trust me,” Azrael blurts out. “And you will. I’ll tell you where their hidey-hole is. Yes, I’ll tell you. It’s made of glass, of light. Right under your nose, all, all, all this time. Tried to tell you, but you couldn’t hear me. Unstrap me. To go there, go and tear it all down. Make them pay, make her pay.”

  A maniacal laugh erupts out of Azrael once more. Elliot and Doctor Sting watch with mild distaste. The laughter grows more deranged, almost like an involuntary spasm. She’s crazy, crazier than the game room at a psychiatric ward.

  “It’s perfect,” Azrael says. “Just perfect. I’ll go. I’ll kill them all. The best part? She’ll
see everything and be able to do nothing, nada, zilch.”

  Slowly, all the shadows around me pull away as if they can’t see me, leaving me alone. I imagine myself shrinking, folding into myself, reduced by fear and remorse. I thought that being able to hear and see from this prison could help, but now I know I was wrong. This is worse than being shadowed, cut off from all sights and sounds. Because this wisp that I’ve been reduced to—this state of knowing without really being—is the most excruciating torture imaginable. And Azrael knows it and intends to use it against me, intends to make me watch all the destruction and death. Worse yet, she plans to let me drown in guilt, because whatever happens to IgNiTe after today is my fault.

  All my fault.

  Up until now, I had thought my life was pointless. Now, however, I wish it really was, because the knowledge that I was born to bring destruction to humanity’s only hope is far worse than having no purpose at all.

  Chapter 27

  I am the spectator of a 360 degree nightmare. No eyes to close. No ears to plug. No escape. I’m immersed, soaked through and through in the macabre proceedings that will lead to the end. Even the rank smell of the twenty or so bodies pressed against Azrael permeate to my secluded corner and the tattered remnants of my being.

  Azrael is jittery with excitement, packed inside a large army truck. The roof is a thick green tarp. The sitting arrangements: two long benches facing each other. When she looks down, I see her knees, bouncing up and down, the fingernails of her good hand worrying at the bandages through the burned hole in her leather pants. I feel the threaded texture of the bandage in a detached sort of way.

  “He said ‘kill them all.’ Every single one of them,” Azrael says.

  God, she won’t shut up. I command her hands, my hands, to strangle her. They remain where they are.

  “Can’t wait to see it. Can’t wait. They deserve to die. Slowly would be better. Oh, yeah. When I—”

  “Shut up!” a deep voice rumbles like a diesel engine with a lisp. The command sounds more like “ssshudup”.

  Azrael startles, looks to the left. She’s packed in the back, surrounded by Eklyptors in varying degrees of grotesqueness.

  The one with the threatening voice has curved tusks sticking out of his mouth. A strong electric buzz runs through Azrael’s head. I feel her shudder and shrink. I guess that means he’s the leader of this group? The more I see her reactions compared to the intensity of the buzzing, the surer I become the annoying trait indicates rank.

  “Shut your mouth unless you want me to throw your ass out,” the tusked creature says, spittle flying in all directions through his unclosable mouth. All the words ending in “s” give him trouble. He sounds like Sylvester the Cat.

  Sufferin’ Succotash.

  For the first time since Azrael took over, the crazed yapping stops. Quiet fills my space. I focus on the thumping of her heart—no, not hers … mine!—a heart I must somehow reclaim. As I listen, a level of calmness suffuses me and not even the horrid faces that materialize in my space as Azrael looks around seem to matter. Not hearing her blabber on and on has to be the closest thing to bliss in my situation.

  In the quiet, I have time to pay better attention to what Azrael sees. First, it’s the bandages around her torn fingernails. I don’t feel the pain the same way I used to, but I sense it. The wounds will heal fast, but she can’t be happy about inheriting the pain. Then, I notice how everything looks muddled, as if through a dirty window. It’s the same for my other senses. They are there, but somehow subdued.

  Okay, Marci, think.

  How do I get out of this? I’m trapped, yes, but my senses are all here. I can see, taste, hear, smell, even if it’s just what Azrael chooses to. It’s like I’ve switched places with the agent. Something similar or worse has happened before, so I have to be able to do it again. The glitch needs to become the operating system again. Maybe I just need to rest, to gather. Maybe I’m spread too thinly, hidden too well in the untouched corners of my brain.

  Azrael’s eyes begin to swivel back and forth, from one ugly face to the next. I have front row of her perspective, even if a bit dull.

  As distracting as my situation is, I do my best to pay attention, because I never know when Azrael will decide to stare at her fingers again and I will miss something important. As the scene unfolds before me like a movie, I notice that creatures of similar features sit together. I think of herds, flocks, prides, murders. Divisions like the ones we humans create. We’ve always found reasons to segregate each other—things as stupid as skin color. It seems they do the same. I wonder, if they’re anything like us, can they be united enough against humanity to finish their orchestrated assault? Up until now, they must have had an easy job, because most people didn’t have a clue. We were sitting ducks.

  After a good look at everyone, Azrael stares at the tusked guy, the only unique specimen. There aren’t others trying to go for the wild pig look. Hogzilla has nothing on him. His vibe is strong, though, and that’s what seems to make him the leader. It’s hard to miss everyone’s surreptitious looks his way, including Azrael’s.

  He sits there, practically grunting through his huge nostrils, drool running down his chin. It’s disgusting. I assume he hasn’t had enough time to morph his face properly to avoid that little inconvenience, because I doubt he wants to add bibs to his required accessories. But what do I know? It’s not like I understand why they want to look like animals. Having night vision, lithe muscles, extra strength, all of those things, I can grasp, but tusks? Beaks? Goat’s eyes? I really can’t. I know many of them are still in the process of morphing, but why put up with half-formed, disgusting features for so long?

  Point in case, the gray-looking trio at the very back. I don’t know what they’re going for, but they look sick, I-just-smoked-forty-packets-of-cigarettes kind of sick. Their skin is no longer … well … skin colored. It’s dry and thick and a shade of pewter. One of them, the youngest, has only managed to grow a few patches and looks like some sort of Dalmatian mutt.

  Azrael seems particularly interested in the couple across from her, a male and female with bare, furred torsos in a striped pattern that resembles a tiger’s, if tigers were black with orange stripes, instead of the other way around. Their hands are tipped with claws, and their ears are larger than normal and rounded at the tips. The female is slender with small breasts completely covered in black fur the exact color of her skin. Her face is still human, except for her penetrating green, round eyes which, at the moment, are almost all pupil. She bares her teeth at Azrael, flashing a set of sharp canines.

  “What are you staring at?” she hisses.

  “Uh, like your look,” Azrael whispers. “How long did it take?”

  Tigress, which is what I decide to call her, lets pride into her mean expression.

  “Three years. And don’t you dare think of copying me. I’ll paw you to shreds,” she says with a French accent that almost sounds like a purr.

  “No no no. Wouldn’t dream of it. Just admiring. Felines are cool. Yeah, very cool. So, how far are you going with it?”

  Tigress coolly lifts a furry hand, examines it, and sets it back down on the machine gun on her lap. “Nothing that would prevent me from pulling the trigger on this petit bébé.”

  For the first time, Azrael focuses her attention on the guns. Her eyes flicker all around, showing me a quick glimpse of more weapons. I fear what is headed IgNiTe’s way, wish there was a way I could stop it. Azrael told Elliot where to find their headquarters while all I could do was float in dread and impotence.

  “They didn’t give me one. They didn’t,” Azrael says, sounding like a kid who’s been denied an ice cream cone.

  “Shouldn’t even be here,” Tusks grunts, clearly the ice-cream snatcher in this picture. “But if Whitehouse wills it, so it is.”

  Just because there’s a pecking order doesn’t seem to mean every Eklyptor is happy to follow it. Not different at all from the way it works for us humans. Azr
ael makes a soft noise in the back of her throat—clearly another Eklyptor displeased with the chain of command. If I could, I’d mock her.

  “Screw you,” Azrael says under her breath.

  “What was that?” Tusks demands, spittle flying from his ugly mouth.

  “Nothing. Just, I wish I had a bigger gun than yours,” Azrael says.

  “I bet,” he grunts.

  She wants a gun to kill all I have left: my Symbiot family—if I can call them that. Anger ripples through me. I’m inside this brain, occupying the same space the agent does, presumably using the same cells and synapses to transmit information, and I can’t do anything to fight back. At the thought, a surge of energy thrills through me. What if, somehow, I can intercept some of the commands this brain sends to the rest of the body? Not all, I’m not greedy, but some—important ones maybe. And what if I can find the agent itself and … and …? Do what? I don’t know what, but trying to do something is preferable to folding over, waiting without hope for all hell to break loose.

  I set into motion, sliding along what I imagine as gray passages, while the outside world—seen through Azrael—goes on its merry way around me.

  “Where are we going?” Tigress asks in a low growl, eyeing Tusks from the corner of her round eyes.

  “To kill some human vermin. Nom, nom.” Azrael excitedly pats her thighs. Tigress exchanges a look with her partner.

  Azrael cups a hand around her mouth. “There’ll be regrettable casualties. Sad sad sad. I know what those poor bastards are suffering.” She points at her head. “Wish they could be brought out, given a chance. Bastards never had one. But too dangerous. Those Igniters have powers. Especially James. He’s evil.”

  “What in the devil is she talking about?” Tigress’s partner asks, also in a French accent. His upper lip lifts in sync with one of his eyebrows while his irises—or what little can be seen of them around the dark, dark pupils—glint vivid blue.

  Trapped in my reduced world, I go, passage after passage, searching, finding nothing. The corridors are endless and empty. I speed forward, like the wind, hoping something around me changes, catches my attention. But it’s all the same.