by Lizzy Ford
“Gianna, you’ll need this,” Teyan said. He pulled a light cloak free from his bag and draped it over my shoulders then fastened it around my neck. He tugged up the hood until it shaded my face then leaned in for a quick kiss.
I managed to smile despite my growing concern. “How do we find anyone here?” I asked. “Without running into monsters?”
“This portal is within a day of the seat of government for the Nidiani,” Hiko answered. “Although, I don’t know what might be left of it.”
“The monsters moved in that direction,” Teyan said, indicating one area of the great expanse.
“That’s where we’re going as well.” Hiko glanced at me. I sensed he was about to ask me once more if I wanted to do this. But he didn’t. He turned away instead and began walking. “We’ll want to find shelter before dark.”
Teyan stepped aside for me to follow. I did so. The heat here was similar to that of summer in southern Arizona. I didn’t think I’d have too much of a problem adapting, as long as we had water and kept the pace reasonable.
It took about an hour to circle the city along the range of hilly dunes. We left the area and headed towards the trail of smoke leading away from the portal and towards the Nidiani capitol. I now understood why the Nidiani wore cowboy hats with their intense suns. The cloak kept my skin protected while the gummy lenses seemed to work like sunglasses as well as to extend how far I could see. Hiko and his two men wore something similar while Teyan appeared comfortable without anything over his exposed skin. The soft brush of his weapons against his body as he moved was the only sound. Wind occasionally sent puffs of sand into the air, but the planet appeared otherwise desolate.
An hour or so after we’d left the city completely, the roar of one of the cats caused Hiko and Teyan to whirl. I turned more slowly and gazed in the direction the sound had come from. The cats had to have been trailing us, because I hadn’t seen them since the portal.
Danger. Tomtom’s faint voice in my head made me shiver at the odd sense of having an animal connected to my mind.
I saw nothing, except a faint glimmer of sun reflecting off metal. It appeared and disappeared so quickly, I didn’t have time to form a picture of what it was.
“Gianna, recall Tomtom,” Teyan said, pausing beside me.
Come here, Tomtom, I said into my mind and then held my breath to see if the cat would respond.
Teyan started forward, as if his cat warned him as well. He drew one of the squiggly swords whose flat tip glowed blue, looked over it briefly then replaced it.
“Hiko, remain here with Gianna,” he ordered and motioned for one of the others to follow him. He strode then began to run towards the direction where I’d seen the glimmer of metal. The Bikitomani soldier kept pace with him, and the two navigated the loose sands with nimble alacrity I would never possess.
Be careful, I told him silently.
“You’ll not see me arguing,” Hiko called with a shake of his head. “The Tili are the most effective warriors and the most foolishly brave. I do not know how they have survived when they never stop fighting.”
His words made my stomach twist as I watched Teyan bolting towards danger.
Tomtom’s head appeared over a dune as he bolted towards the two men running in his direction. They passed, and the great cat trotted to me, panting. I patted him, comforted by his presence.
Hiko and I watched the direction where Teyan had gone while the second Bikitomani warrior stood, lance in hand, waiting.
“Good job, Tomtom,” I murmured to the cat.
The flare of metal appeared once more, and I squinted. As before, it was gone too quickly for me to identify it.
“What is it?” I asked Hiko.
“Most likely a member of the culling unit left behind after the monsters razed the city. They don’t leave survivors,” he replied.
“What are these monsters?” I ventured.
“I prefer to let your eyes reveal this to you.”
What was it about their enemy that no one wanted to tell me what exactly these monsters were?
“The culling unit usually consists of five or six,” Hiko’s other warrior said.
Not even a second after the warning, Tomtom bolted away from me with a deep growl. We all turned – and I stared.
My first impression of the metal machine was that it was an android of some sort. It had the shape and size of a tall man, a long tail it used as a weapon, metal scales covering every inch of skin and mechanized parts that glowed with either blue or red light.
Was the technological divide why the Five Peoples referred to these things as monsters?
Tomtom smashed into the robot without hesitation. I jerked and covered my eyes, not interested in seeing my cat tear anyone apart. The android twisted in his suit and morphed onto all fours to face the great cat on his level. Tomtom sank his fangs into the tail and shook his head violently, whipping the monster around before he could react.
The robot stabbed something at Tomtom, but the blow glanced off the great cat after hitting some kind of invisible armor protecting the rawerah. Teyan’s explanation about the cat’s implanted defense mechanism made more sense after seeing the robot try unsuccessfully to land blows.
The robot started to morph once more, but the alarmed shout of Hiko’s second guard drew my attention.
This android wasn’t alone. Another had popped up ahead of us and was morphing too rapidly for me to make out exactly what shape it was. Rolling, running, leaping – the metal twisted and reshaped itself with lightning speed and in ways no human could survive. It couldn’t have been a suit – this had to be some sort of robot army.
Hiko’s soldier ran to intercept it, while Hiko bolted back towards me.
“They’re machines,” I murmured. “Your monsters are machines.” They weren’t as scary as I expected, though the way they moved defied anything I could’ve ever imagined.
The scout Hiko’s soldier fought threw something that knocked the soldier back and put a gash in his shoulder. The two charged into one another, and sparks exploded from the collision of the lance and the metal warrior. Hiko’s soldier fell away, stunned, and gripped his spear to stand.
Tomtom joined them and smashed into the machine. His mouth was red and his fangs and face covered in blood. He went for the machine’s throat and tore it out before the robot could plunge something shiny into the cat.
Tomtom shook him until certain the robot was dead, glanced towards me then bolted past us. Hiko and I turned in time to see him pounce on another robot while a fourth moved towards us.
Hiko snapped his spear off his back and pushed me back. His soldier was slowly climbing to his feet.
My heart racing, I could only stare stupidly at the activity occurring around me without knowing what to do.
Two more machines emerged from the sands and headed towards us.
“You have the shield?” Hiko called over his shoulder.
“Y …yes,” I replied. I pulled the defensive shield device Teyan gave me from my belt and held it tightly in my hand.
Hiko joined me and handed me the spear, taking the shield device. He squatted. “The Tili are the only race that’s created effective weaponry against the monsters.” He waved me to sit beside him.
I did so, eyeing the now four robots headed towards us. The sounds of Tomtom tearing into another one was followed by him slamming into one of the four. He was drawing blood from the androids, which made me think they weren’t really machines. But nothing remotely human could contort or twist like they did.
I glanced up, freaked out and a little worried about my fierce defender as well as Teyan, who had disappeared into a dune.
“The only problem with this one is the distance.” Hiko spoke, unconcerned with the scouts closing in. “Tell your animal to join us.”
“Um, you know what you’re doing?” I asked, eyes flying between the scouts and Hiko, who was twisting the device in his hand.
“I have seen the Tili use th
ese,” he confirmed.
Tomtom, come here! I cried mentally. I expected the beast to ignore me and continue trying to eat the robot it was tackling. Instead, it darted to me.
“Make sure he’s touching you,” Hiko said.
I wrapped an arm around Tomtom, terrified of the robots racing towards us.
“Close your eyes,” Hiko directed.
I did so and buried my face into the great cat’s fur.
The sound of metal smashing into metal made me flinch as I waited for one of the robots to stab me. An electric charge strong enough to jar me and make all my hair stand on end briefly rendered me unable to breathe for a solid ten seconds. Tomtom shuddered but stayed still.
When it wore off, I lifted my head.
The robots had all fallen where they stood, lifeless.
“Good,” Hiko said with a grunt.
Tomtom stood and paced warily towards the still robots, sniffing at them.
“They’re dead?” I asked and stood, dusting off my clothing.
“They are. The Tili created a charge burst that immobilizes and shorts out the machine aspect of the monsters. It also tends to stop the hearts of anyone weak or ill, and the range hasn’t yet been perfected, so the results sometimes are unpleasant,” he said and studied the small device. “But it’s the best defense we’ve got against them, and Teyan’s people are getting better at the technology as the war continues.”
Perhaps it was morbid curiosity, but I inched forward, towards the nearest dead android, as Hiko spoke. Man or machine? I felt compelled to know, to unmask the robots if possible.
Is it safe? I asked Tomtom without knowing what kind of response he would give me.
Safe.
Startled he understood, I stared at the prehistoric animal for a moment before I joined him to get a better look at the machines referred to as monsters.
It didn’t resemble what I thought of as a monster. I squatted beside one, uncertain where the blood came from. I nudged the robot then slid a finger beneath the scaled helmet covering its head and tried to push them off. The scales collapsed in on themselves to reveal half of the wearer’s face. There was a real person beneath the metal. How did he move and contort the way I’d seen him?
He looked … normal. I wasn’t able to tell the different races apart but the man beneath the suit didn’t look any different than the Bikitomani or Nidiani. I touched the metal scales, curious about the kind of technology that let its wearer shape shift.
Tomtom nudged me away.
“It’s okay,” I said and pushed back. “He’s dead, remember?”
His yowl of complaint wasn’t one I understood. I pushed at more of the scales to see what they’d reveal, and those covering the man’s chest collapsed away to reveal the thin, latex-y suit beneath that fit like a second skin.
Something was written across the material. My eyes skimmed over it. I didn’t expect to be able to read an alien language and froze in place when I realized I could.
“Model twenty four,” I read aloud and then frowned.
Tomtom pushed me again. This time, I let him, thoroughly confused. I stood and lingered, unable to explain what was at my feet: a very human man wearing a technologically advanced suit with markings in English. The knot of dread in my stomach was familiar.
“Caretaker,” Hiko called and hurried to me. “You should not be so near. Sometimes their gear is not completely …” He stopped at my look.
“Why can I read the writing on its … his suit?” I demanded.
Hiko said nothing.
“Everyone’s been so vague about these monsters. I thought it was because people were afraid or because they were huge, horrible creatures.” My eyes returned to the dead man. “But that’s not it, is it?”
“It is not for me to say.” Hiko walked away.
I twisted to watch him and saw with some relief that Teyan was jogging back towards us, his cat loping ahead, and the Bikitomani soldier at their heels. Please to see him, I joined them and hugged him without caring what the Bikitomani thought.
Teyan smelled of sweat and espresso. He hugged me back tightly. I listened to his pounding heart. All three of them appeared to be well, unlike the Bikitomani soldier who stayed back with us. Hiko had moved to bandage him up.
I looked up at Teyan. “Tomtom protected us,” I said. “And the shield.”
“Good. This was a small ambush, perhaps to take care of any survivors from the nearby cities. As far as we know, they don’t know about the portal system yet,” he said. He glanced at Hiko then back at me. “What is it?”
“Can I show you something?”
He gave a brusque nod.
Taking his hand, I led him back to the dead man and paused. “I can read his uniform,” I said and gazed up at Teyan.
My Tili warrior wasn’t surprised. If anything, he appeared grim.
“But you already knew that,” I murmured. “Teyan, what’s going on? Why did you tell me these were monsters when they’re clearly men?”
He studied me.
I had a feeling bad news was going to follow, and I wasn’t disappointed.
“They’re humans,” he said quietly.
“As in… from my planet?” I asked.
He nodded. “The portal to your world opens to a point in the distant past,” he said quietly. “I and the rest of the Five Peoples are from your future.”
“How many years in the future?” I asked, startled.
“A million.”
My jaw dropped and I stared at him in dumb silence.
“At some point in your near future, your world is destroyed by these monsters.” He motioned to the dead robots.
Speechless, I couldn’t look away from him as he continued to talk calmly about my world ending.
“The history we know varies, but at some point, something happened to your planet. A war, resource shortage, or something threatened the existence of humanity and necessitated the need for your people to expand beyond your Earth. From what we have learned since the monsters began attacking us, these machines were originally soldiers created to survive in space for as long as it took to reach another planet. They cannot think for themselves, but they self-repair, are programmed to work in teams and obey the simple orders given to them: find new planets, remove the inhabitants, terra form them, and move on,” Teyan continued.
“We haven’t figured out yet how to stop them,” Hiko said slowly with a glance at Teyan. “There is talk of a time loop as well, that this cycle is a self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuating itself with no real start or end and possibly no way to break the loop. Your world will be destroyed before these monsters are supposed to be created. It’s evidence that time, or at least this series of events, exists in a circle.”
My brow furrowed. I felt like I was talking to Carey again – completely lost on concepts these people all tossed around with ease.
“The monsters leap from your time to ours, and from our time to yours, destroying everyone in their paths as they do so. It’s possible they do this over and over, bouncing between times, in an endless cycle,” Teyan explained. “What we know from our histories and from monitoring your world is that, within fifty winds, your people will be almost completely wiped out by the monsters. We can’t identify when the monsters are created, because your history ends too soon.”
“The survivors from your world will flee through the portals to our worlds and be safe for a million years,” Hiko said.
The level of technology required to create the monsters was beyond anything I thought existed in my time. Sure, technology was improving at light speed, but these robots? I didn’t know enough about my own people’s capabilities to understand what was and wasn’t possible.
But the time loop, the self-fulfilling prophecy, made too much sense. I had already seen how the portals could open into different times.
“If this is a time loop …” I drifted off, struggling with the concept. “… then this means it’s possible we’ve been here before
and all of this might happen again and again until the loop is broke, right?”
“Yes,” Hiko said.
“And that’s possible?”
“It is.”
The sinking feeling in my stomach made me nauseated.
Teyan and Hiko watched me with sympathy in their expressions. Carey’s explanation of how the Five Peoples considered humans children in the universe made more sense. These people were gentle with us because they knew what was coming.
“Are you sure? How can you possibly know they’re going to wipe out my planet?” I demanded finally.
“Oral tradition,” Teyan answered. “The Five Peoples, and other planets, were settled by survivors of what remained of your world after the monsters destroyed your people. Your people are my ancestors, the ancestors of the Nidiani, Bikitomani, Woli and Komandi and perhaps many more Peoples. This history has been passed down through many generations.”
“You being able to read their suits is a sign as well that they were originally from your time, or close to it,” Hiko said.
I looked down at the soldier.
He was human.
A sense of betrayal was taking hold, one I didn’t want to experience when it came to Teyan, the first person I’d let myself become vulnerable with. I didn’t think I’d survive if he crushed me.
“Why do you call them monsters?” I whispered.
“It was part of the agreement we made at the Discovery, when the portal opened to your time a hundred winds ago,” Hiko answered. “We could never reveal to the people of your world what your future held. For all we knew, we ceased to exist if we altered what happened to your planet. We couldn’t tell you that your people destroy all we know, so we called them monsters.”
“Then why do you come to my time at all?” I asked, struggling to wrap my head around his explanation. “Why not wipe us all out so the machines never get built?”
“Our fates are linked,” Hiko said, drawing near. “We are the descendants of survivors of your planet’s war. The Five Peoples all agree on, at least until Nidiani went off course, the rules we created during the Discovery. One of them was to find a way to stop the annihilation of humanity without destroying the existence of our worlds. As we have visited over the past several dozen winds, we have monitored your world for signs the monsters are being created, for ways to break the time loop and for shifts in the portals. We gradually taught the Caretakers and their Council what to look out for. The hope was, if we could stop the monsters and break the potential time loop, the Caretakers would know to ensure our planets are populated when the portals open to our distant past.”
