Garden of Spiders Volume 2: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 3

by Quil Carter

  The sounds of tinkling glass continued, as did the sniffing. But it wasn’t until every piece was picked up, that my sengil spoke.

  “I have always trusted my master’s decisions,” he said simply. “And today will be no different.” And with out another word, he walked to the kitchen, shards of porcelain in his hands.

  CHAPTER 53

  Science is like unravelling a thousand puzzles inside a complicated math formula. It was easy to get confused, and easy to get overwhelmed, and when your hypothesis didn’t work out, it was easy to want to throw every single breakable object at the wall – which sometimes happened.

  This puzzle that I was trying to unravel wasn’t just some random science experiment either, I, Elish Dekker, was trying to find the solution to a problem that had been plaguing mankind since our beginning…

  How to become immortal.

  But whereas every other person who had tried to create the fountain of youth had nothing to go on, no solid idea as to how they would make themselves everlasting… I did. Not only did I have the knowledge that Sky Fallon had done it before, I had, in front of me, an immortal man who was a hundred and ninety years old, but yet he didn’t look a day past twenty-four. He wasn’t the only one either, in Alegria right now was his fellow born immortal. They were two men who had spat in the faces of Death, and had mind powers that also gave nature the middle finger.

  Every thread of genetic code was known to me. I had made super clones of them, mutant arians we called chimeras whose DNA I’d manipulated with my own hands. Hell, I was one of those mutants, the first ever created, and I had been created by one of these immortal men.

  “Don’t let it get to you.”

  I glanced over at Perish who was reading lines of code on his laptop. He had a bottle of Triple C in his hand (ChiCherryCola) and resting beside his elbow was an unwrapped sandwich and a half-eaten peach. “You’ll figure it out,” he said, his eyes twitching back and forth as he scanned the data that would’ve been hieroglyphs to any man who wasn’t a Skytech genetic scientist.

  “So mind reading is another gift that you have?” I asked. I minimized the game of solitaire that I’d been playing to distract myself and pulled up the program Perish had created. I was moving around different formulas and levels, forever trying to find that miracle combination that would turn me and my brothers and sister immortal.

  Sky had done it… and I will do it.

  Perish, Perish… why can’t you snap out of it? Surely your old self would be able to help me more…

  “I know your facial expressions by now,” Perish said with a chuckle. “We’ve been working together for how many years? Has your returned mind helped you with any new theories?”

  And was it you who repaired me? So many questions, and yet I don’t want to seek the answers. For both of our sakes.

  “I haven’t given it much thought… life has been busy since my return,” I said honestly. “But I will now that I’m back to work.” I pulled up all of the genetic information I had compiled over the last decade and sighed as I stared at it. “You grabbed all of the information from the lab you and Silas were created in? There’s nothing left?” All of the files he’d been able to grab had been translated and put on his laptop. I had a copy of the files on mine, but it just never seemed like enough.

  If only Sky hadn’t destroyed his research. Who was he to decide that no man should have the knowledge?

  Perish nodded and I let out a long breath. “Yes, I got all of it,” he said. “They destroyed a lot of their files when we left. They didn’t want the information getting into enemy hands and the Russians already knew that we existed.”

  I glanced at the camera in the corner. That camera was always recording, and the audio was as well. Silas hated talking about his life before the Fallocaust and since his alterations of Perish’s mind, Perish’s own memories of his previous life came and went. And they went more than they came.

  “Is that why they sent you guys to Canada?” I asked.

  “Oh, we weren’t sent,” Perish said. He took a drink of the cola, appearing deep in thought. “My brother and I were given to a family to look after us. The family was paid money by our creator, but then the money ran out and winter came. That family had to leave their house to stay with relatives in the east, and we weren’t welcome to come along. We ran around Europe for a while, but eventually found ourselves in Canada. We think perhaps we were following Silas, but we could never be sure.”

  “Born immortal attraction…” I said, recalling the day I’d learned of such a strange thing. I remember overhearing Silas talk to Perish about it, and I’d been listening. Silas had been in a good mood that day and had told me about this strange phenomenon.

  No matter how far apart born immortals were… they’d eventually find their way back to each other. It may take years, but like magnets, they were drawn to one another. Silas, Sky, and Perish were all born in a lab in Germany, yet they didn’t know about each other. Or they’d been too young to remember. Silas eventually wound up in Canada, and years later, met Sky at a convenient store. With no knowledge of who the other was, Silas stayed with Sky and Perish since he’d been homeless after leaving an abusive boyfriend. Eventually their secrets were revealed… they were born immortals created together in a land far away.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Perish said with a nod. “Master Silas and I will be near each other always. Which is just fine with me.” He gave me a sunny smile which I returned out of politeness, but inside the blind loyalty made my skin crawl… because that had been me only weeks ago.

  Perish had had the same surgery done to him that he’d ended up doing to me, the digital surgery he himself had created. The Perish that I grew up with was a short-tempered man, who didn’t let Silas get away with being a tyrannical asshole. He stood up to Silas, and stood up for what he believed in, and when he saw that Silas was acting like an idiot or a monster, he said it to him straight. Hell, I remember as a child Perish telling Silas that he wasn’t ready to raise children, and that he would be burying us since he’d decided to create us before he knew how to make mortals into immortals.

  Unfortunately for Perish, Silas didn’t allow people to be real to him, or tell him things he didn’t want to hear. Nor did Silas allow any attempts to dominate him, which happened one fateful night in Alegria.

  I remember that day. I remember it because I had come to Silas’s defense when Perish was using the same mind-destroying mental abilities that Silas had. An ability Silas had thought he’d disabled. Perish had ended up paying dearly for that outburst. Silas had destroyed his mind to the point where he was a loyal slave of the king. No longer with a bad attitude or a twisted tongue just waiting to deliver you a guileful sarcastic quip, he now only had loyal eyes for Silas.

  And I had been no different.

  Interesting though, Silas had told me on one occasion that the Perish I’d grown up with, was not the man that Silas had originally met all those years ago. Perish had had another surgery on his head, and apparently that surgery had changed him mentally. I knew better than to pry, if there was one thing I’d learned with being around Silas, it was that he told you as much as he felt comfortable with telling you… and if you dare ask for more, he will cut you down like a combine running over a family of ducks.

  But what had happened with Perish was also just another way that Julian’s theory was correct. Going against Silas never ended well for anyone, and Perish wasn’t even the best example of this… the dead world surrounding us was.

  “It’s just fine with me too,” I decided to say, my own smile, fake obviously, on my face. Perish then continued eating, and my attention switched back to mulling over formulas, and pouring over strips of genetic code.

  “It has to be something we do to the brain,” I said an hour later. “You two resurrect from the brain… and your radiation, your mental abilities… all of it is in your brain.”

  Perish nodded. He got up and stood behind me. I was looking at a di
agram of the human brain, and as I studied it, Perish’s finger came into view and he pointed below the cerebellum. “There,” he said. “That is where it originates from. It’s very important to us…” He pulled up a chair and sat down. “Do you remember me teaching you about the O.L.S’s?”

  I nodded. “Occipital Lobe Storage. Sky had a piece of his brain matter stored in that device, and when Silas creates a clone… he’s going to implant that device into his head.”

  Perish smiled. “And now I test you… Where would it be implanted?”

  Well, I thought that was easy. “The cerebellum of course. Where the memories are implanted. I’m to assume Sky’s O.L.S has a piece of his cerebellum in it, right?” But as I said this, and Perish’s smile was joined with a raised eyebrow, like I was answering this wrong. I realized something then. “The occipital lobes hold sight however…”

  Perish nodded yes. “That’s right. Since our abilities seem focused near the cerebellum, we cannot have the device implanted there. I remember, just faintly but I remember, Sky destroying several devices trying to implant them directly in the cerebellum. So we shifted them up a bit, the occipital lobes were able to hold the device, close enough to the cerebellum, but not close enough for it to become destroyed or tampered.” He pointed to the picture of the brain again. “So when we eventually implant the Sky clone… don’t do it in the cerebellum, you’ll destroy or alter the O.L.S and Silas will be extremely mad. You implant it in the occipital lobes where it can be safe.”

  “Now this is the kind of teaching I like to hear,” Silas’s voice suddenly sounded behind us.

  I turned and saw Silas standing in the doorway. He was dressed in his kingly clothing, which he most often did when we were visiting the laboratory, or some place of importance: a silk, dark red shirt over a black vest, black trousers belted in the middle, and black leather shoes that shone brightly under the lighting. This was completed with the addition of a black cape with red trim. I recognized that cape, it had the Skyfall flag’s emblem, a F3 carracat complete with its scorpion tail, standing on all six of its legs.

  I rose and Perish did as well. We both bowed to King Silas and he walked in with Nero, Ceph, and Nero’s boyfriend Vinski following behind him. That was odd for those two to be down here, so I assumed that this wasn’t a social call.

  “Hard at work, are we?” Silas said, his voice was light and cheerful which I was happy about. Even though I was no longer his mental slave, I still knew that if Silas was happy, the family was happy. “I fill with so much pride whenever I see my golden boy hard at work in the Skytech labs.” He glided to me as if his content mood was creating its own pocket of air, and kissed my cheek. “I have some wonderful news for you.”

  “Oh?” I said inquisitively.

  Silas beamed. “The legionary deployed to Irontowers to search for your kidnappers was successful. Nero was leading the unit and they found the sewers they’d been hiding my poor lovely in, they followed the signs of activity and had a shootout with a group of ten greywasters.”

  I hid the shock on my face and put a mental hand over my pulse to keep it from spiking.

  They’d… found other greywasters living in Irontowers? We’d always theorized there were greywasters there but, well, obviously they had nothing to do with my imaginary kidnapping.

  But I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to back up my lie.

  “Ten?” I said surprised. “They must’ve had a base outside of the cisterns then.” I shook my head, then made my eyes narrow. “I’m glad they’re dead. Thank you, Nero.”

  Nero was grinning from ear to ear, but Vinski, who had a quiet, rather impassive personality, only gave me a slight nod of recognition. “It was fucking unbelievable!” Nero exclaimed. “They had some pretty nice fucking guns too, a few stolen legion guns as well.”

  “I got to watch!” Ceph said in the same excited tone. The boy was eleven years old now, muscular and tall like Nero was at his age. Brute chimeras age weirdly, even as children they look like miniature strongmen, and Ceph was no exception. He was five-foot-seven and a hundred and fifty pounds with reddy-brown hair, cheerful eyes, and a smile that made him look like a golden retriever that had just been called a good boy. In a year or so, he’d hit adolescence and his height would skyrocket to near mine and Nero’s, his voice would drop and he’d be chasing down any man he could outrun… which would unfortunately be most of them. I know Silas wasn’t looking forward to having to beat another brute chimera off of him at night with a stick.

  “From the safety of the plane, I hope,” Silas said with a narrowed look directed at Nero. Ceph was shadowing Nero now and the boy followed him everywhere. He’d become deathly attached to Nero and idolized the man like no other.

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t let the little shithead die,” Nero said, rubbing Ceph’s head. “We really wanted to keep one as a prisoner, but those fucks were just relentless. Look at this.” He lifted up his shirt and we all saw a red welt surrounded by bruised purple skin. “I’m glad legion armour is so bullet proof, I got hit right between the fucking ribs. Got one pinged off of my helmet too.”

  Silas’s face fell, and like Nero’s words were physically pulling a stopper from a sink, the happiness drained from his features and dissolved onto the floor. He walked to Nero, his hand outstretched, and gently touched the raised welts on Nero’s chest.

  “That… could’ve killed you…” he whispered. The room had become silent, Silas’s mood seemingly controlling the very temperature and atmosphere. All of us, Ceph included, knew to be on-guard when Silas’s mental state shifted. “Bellua…”

  Nero scoffed and smiled down at his king. “No one can kill me, Kingles. I’m careful, I know you’re all paranoid about it ‘cause we’re getting older but don’t worry… I’m invincible.”

  But Silas only shook his head, his hand brushing Nero’s abs. There were small welts on three of them, making it appear to be some half-finished game of Bingo. “You… you’ll be staying in Skyfall for now… until… until Elish finds a way to… to…”

  My attention shot to Nero, and alarm bells rang inside of me when I saw Nero’s face drop and his pulse began to race. In the mere seconds it took for this information to sink in, I knew from Nero’s expression that he was about to go nuclear on Silas. Nero’s heart was in the Legion, and the thought that he had to wait for me to crack the puzzle of mortality… this wasn’t going to end well.

  And it was now my responsibility to be that voice of reason, for both of them.

  “Silas,” I said calmly. I adopted a smile and walked to him, then rested a hand over his. “You know Nero is careful when he’s out on field missions.”

  Silas continued to stare at Nero’s bruised stomach. I directed his hand away and eventually managed to turn Silas from my brother. “It’s too dangerous,” Silas said, his tone rising several octaves. “I already almost lost you… Why am I putting him in needless danger?”

  I stroked his hand. “Because Nero is still learning to become a proper Imperial Commander,” I said gently. “If you put us all into protective plastic bubbles, my king, we’d grow up spoiled and unappreciative, wouldn’t we? Yes, there is always a risk, Master, but the risk is so low… and the rewards so great. And before you know it…” My smile widened when Silas looked up at me with miserable eyes. “Your chimeras will be immortal and you’ll never have to worry about our safety again.”

  The uneasy silence that had befallen the room sunk in further as we all watched Silas to see which direction this tilting king would fall. Even the youngest of us knew the varying moods of Silas, and our toes walked gingerly on sugar glass whenever we knew he was on the fringes of one of his mood swings.

  But luck was my friend today, Silas squeezed my hand and nodded, more to himself than me I suspected. “You’re right, love,” he said, making the eyebrows of Nero and Perish rise. “When he has Ceph with him especially… he’s always careful.” The tense mood was vanquished from the room by Silas’s smile once again app
earing, he looked at me with a newly sunned expression and said to me, “We have too much good happening right now anyway. The scum who hurt my golden boy have been brought to justice, and their families will weep for them tonight.” Silas walked past me towards the set up of computer monitors and laptops. And with his back turned, I saw Perish, Nero, and even Ceph let out small relieved breaths before following Silas deeper into Perish’s laboratory.

  “Any new theories, love?” Silas asked. He looked at the three wide screen monitors that were set up, one in front of the other, on a cluttered metal desk. There were grids on the far-left screen, and the middle and right were filled with the lines of code that Perish had been taking a closer look at on his laptop. I was thankful then that I had closed the game of solitaire I’d been playing, that would’ve started a fight and the last thing I wanted was for my work on his mood to go to waste.

  “My theory is still that it has to be something we inject into the head,” I said. I clicked away on the keyboard in front of the screens and pulled up my typed notes on the project. “We’ve tried to inject blood, we’ve tried to inject a concentrated dose of your brain matter, we’ve tried both. Right now, I’m concentrating on radiation having something to do with it. I was thinking that with my next test subject, I may ask you to deliver a pulse of radiation into the subject’s brain upon injection of the newest serum I’m working on.” Silas nodded approvingly, his eyes still scanning the code. “Since your radiation seems to have preservation effects, it would be foolish to not test out the theory that the radiation you can create, and are immune to, could have a correlation to your born immortal immortality.”

  Silas paused. He righted himself and seemed for a second lost in thought. I assumed he was going to add something to the conversation, but in the end, he only nodded a second time and said quietly, “Whatever you need me for, love, just tell me. Any other theories? Do you believe you’re getting closer?”