City of Twilight: Rise of the Hunter (The Vanguard Chronicles Book 1)

by Donald Stephenson III

  ​There was another scream. It was a woman. She had dark hair, and familiar eyes. She held a gun, and was firing at him. The rest of his body had finished seeping through the doorframe, and James formed in front of her as the xeno serpent, ignoring the shots as they pinged off his body. A man quickly stepped in between them, stopping her and trying to stop James. He grew excited as he saw this man, this was the Vanguard he was ordered to capture.

  The man yelled out to the woman, “Charlotte, run. Find Callista and the baby! Go.”

  He reached out a tendril and struck the man, pushing him to the ground. The woman screamed, and yelled out, “Isaac!” as she grabbed his hand. She started trying to shoot at James the xeno again. She pulled on Isaac’s arm, trying to wrest him out of the metal tendrils. James formed another tendril out of his serpentine body, and flicked her away casually. There was a gunshot as she struck the ground. He turned at her only for a minute, surprised. She’d landed on the ground on her chest, and the gun had fired into her.

  She had died, that he knew. He hoped that Father wouldn’t punish him, he hoped she was one of the insignificant ones. He turned back to Isaac, the Vanguard he’d been ordered to capture. Isaac was calling out to Charlotte, tears streaking his eyes. His face looked familiar, too. James knew his face. Suddenly there was a shockwave through the air. It barely registered to him, but he knew something had happened. All the remaining scared humans in the room collapsed. He looked back down at Isaac. He was unconscious. Not questioning what the shockwave through the air was, or how it had rendered everyone unconscious, he took the Vanguard up in his tendrils and started to leave.

  ​Suddenly James realized he was looking back at the floor, on his hands and knees, outside the fortress. He knew that was more than a hallucination, or even a vision. It was a memory. It was a memory from the xeno that was now attached to his spine.

  ​He stood up quickly and ran to the broken doors of the fortress. They were forced, just like in the memory. Traces of where the xenos had attacked people lined up with what he could see, only several years later.

  ​“Was this the collapse?” James said out loud to himself as he traced his fingers along one of the doors edges with a xeno and forcing it open. He ran inward, following the path in his memory. He could see marks on the walls, and fallen weapons where xenos had taken down soldiers in the memory. He eventually reached the doorway that led to the control room. It was now open, unlike the memory when the xeno had to get through.

  ​He walked slowly in the room. His footsteps echoed on the metal floors. It was dark, most of the lights here didn’t work. He could see fine through. He walked over to the place where Charlotte had died. There was a large dark stain on the metal where her body had lain. Nothing was left now but the old mark of the blood from her body. There were no traces of people or bodies other than what they’d dropped or this bloodstain from Charlotte.

  ​The room smelled old, of dust and cobwebs. There was a presence in the darkness. He could feel it just as strong as he could feel himself. He then understood what he felt. He couldn’t see it with his eyes, but with his mind’s eye he could see a figure.

  ​“What happened here?” James asked the figure. It stepped through the darkness, and he could see it clearly with his mind’s eye. It was him. A reflection of himself, as the xeno. He made of the scaly metal, and his face had darkness in it. The silver eyes held a fierce rage.

  ​“Isn’t it obvious?” The voice surprised James. It was loud, sounding like it was coming from everywhere. It sounded familiar though. “Of course I sound familiar,” it said. “I am you, and you are me.”

  ​“You’re not me,” James said, “you’re the xeno. The very same one sent by Father all those years ago to capture Isaac Vanguard, who killed his wife. You’re the one Father chose to have experimented on and bonded with me.”

  ​“Yes,” it said, “I am the xeno, as you call me. I’ve been trying to find the words to talk to you since we awoke together. It wasn’t until now that enough of my memories have returned that I could talk to you.”

  ​“You’re intelligent?”

  ​“I could follow orders,” it said, “I had a simple mind. I’d stopped following orders when I’d had enough. When we bonded, I received your intelligence. Your knowledge and ability to reason.”

  ​“You stopped following orders?” James asked.

  ​“You saw my memory,” it said, “felt my thoughts. I had no choice in the orders that were given to me. Father compelled me to obey. Like all of us.”

  ​“All of us,” James said, “all of the xenos? How many of you are there?”

  ​“Countless,” it said, “we can multiply exponentially. We can absorb each other to gain mass and strength. We can divide ourselves to have greater numbers. I can’t however, not anymore. Not since my time in that laboratory."

  ​“So, where do you all come from?” James asked. "How was Father controlling you?”

  ​“We just came into being,” it said, “none of us know where we came from. We’ve been here long before you. Father was the first to find us, but we don’t know how he compels us. We don’t have a choice. We never did, not until I was in that laboratory. Something happened to me, and Father could no longer control me. It’s why they wanted to destroy me.”

  ​“What was that energy wave that caused everyone to collapse?”

  ​“I don’t know. I was a drone like everyone else of my race.”

  ​James stared at the ground for a moment. He could see his own footprints in the settled dust.

  ​“It seems like your memories are about as useful as my own,” he said.

  ​“We can work together,” it said, “and make new memories. We can find those who have wronged us. We can find them and show them how powerful we both are now.” James felt the happiness of the creature, its presences strong in his mind. He could see it in his mind’s eye. It smiled through a metal caricature of his own face.

  20

  ​Christina had been alone all day. The only company she had was the vids all around discussing the martial law and the riots in Old District. Civic Protection made it difficult to move around. She knew James was alive, but she didn’t know how to find him. After the rumors of what had happened the other night, people were on edge. Civic Protection had fought some sort of unstoppable man or creature. Every rumor had a different detail. Every person had a different description of the man, but all had agreed that it could fly. No one disputed how many people were killed in the attack. CP has been known to use excessive force, even injure civilians at times. This was over the top, though; tanks and gunships tearing holes in buildings. Apparently their efforts were futile for in every story the man had escaped.

  ​It was a testament to how far Civic Protection and the High Council were willing to go to crush an enemy. No one wanted to disappear as a result of publicly criticizing the government. No one wanted to die in the crossfire of some battle either. None of the choices made her feel better, nor any safer. They couldn’t do anything but survive.

  ​She sat in her room, starring at the vid screen. She wondered if she should check the library and research the collapsed Shepherd Center some more. That might accomplish something. Her thoughts then drifted to James, and she wondered how he’d survived. He’d frequented the center, due to his adoptive parents working there. She’d only met them once, and he didn’t seem very close to them. He’d shared that with her, how alone he was. He was just as alone as she was.

  ​She thought of her own family, who were long gone. They’d disappeared near the end of her senior year of high school. That morning she was leaving for school; they were talking about organizing a march, a protest for civil rights in Capitol District against some of Civic Protection’s recent actions. There was no march that day, none that she’d heard of. She’d come home from school to find an empty apartment. They were just gone. She’d finished high school while living with a friend.

  ​After she started her first
term at Vanguard University, she could tell the professors would be just like the ones at her high school, pro Civic Protection and pro High Council. She was constantly told to just keep her head down and obey. She was alone until she’d met James, who clicked with her immediately. They were alike in many areas, and they both felt alone for the same reasons. When she was with him, she felt like she belonged. She felt loved. She was loved.

  ​She was roused from her thoughts when there was a knock on her door. She got up and answered it. There was an elderly woman there. The woman seemed old, but there was a sense that there was very little fragility about her. The woman exhibited confidence that was not present in most people in Dirge.

  ​“My name is Anna,” she said, “and you are Christina Ferris. You knew James Alexander?” Christina seemed surprised.

  ​“Yes, I am, and yes I know James.”

  ​“Don’t you mean you did know him?”

  ​“That’s assuming he’s dead,” Christina said, feeling bold for some reason. "His body was never found. I haven’t given up.” The woman smiled at Christina’s response. Initially Anna seemed to have a hard face, but when she smiled it felt as if that was her face’s natural expression.

  ​“Hope is an important thing,” Anna said, “just like love. You will never lose him if you love him, and you haven’t.”

  ​“You mean...” Anna cut off Christina as she was about to speak.

  ​“There is something you should know,” Anna said as she stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, “the resistance is real. The Vanguards have been its leaders for a very long time. The resistance received a new, very powerful ally not long ago. He was believed to be dead, but he is very much alive."

  ​“You’re telling me James did survive the building collapse, the attack on the Shepherd Research Center?””

  ​“Yes, but more than that. He is different than before. Something you will need to see to believe.”

  ​“How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

  ​“James Alexander told Elijah Vanguard that there was a girl near the university that he’d recognized. She was on a bus, yet she recognized him immediately. He chose to hide himself from her, because he was afraid. Afraid because he couldn’t remember her completely. He only recognized her face.”

  ​Christina nodded, trying to push back the emotions that were trying to bubble to the surface. She was happy, excited, but afraid at the same time. He didn’t remember her. She hoped he would get his memory back. She had to see him.

  She also had to process the other information. The resistance was real. The Vanguards were a part of it. For a long time she wondered why they’d existed, saying they were trying to help the city, yet things had stayed the same. It was time to join the resistance. Now she could make a difference.

  ​“I’ve waited my whole life for this,” she said. She was tired of the city. Tired of the fear. Tired of the darkness.

  ​“Then come with me,” Anna said, “and join the Vanguards.”

  21

  ​James explored the large underground fortress only to find more remnants of the humans taken by the xenos underneath a layer of dust and decay. Old remnants of technology he’d never seen before was littered everywhere. There were also old data screens and vid screens all over the place. Most of them were useless, although he was able to locate some archival data screens that held books and some other old literature of the past. Although he and the creature hadn’t spoken again, he could feel its presence in his mind. It was strong, more so than he realized.

  ​James was sure that this was the collapse that had happened fifty years ago, or what preceded it. It still gave him very little in the way of answers. Not even the xeno knew who the one named Father was. It only recognized him as the being controlling it, along with all the others. James understood the relationship between all the xenos a little bit more. They were hive minded, although capable of individual thought. That was probably how Father was able to control them so easily. Somehow this xeno was broken free of that hive mind connection during the experiments. It refused to cooperate any further with them, with Father or the council.

  ​It had a deep-seeded anger because of the way it was used, controlled. It wanted revenge, to kill any who stood in their way. James felt a similar anger, but also guilt. He didn’t like the idea of killing; he never did. He understood that it might be necessary, though. Civic Protection was capable of doing just about anything they wanted to. He wished he could somehow break the control of those soldiers from Father. From the council. He still needed to figure out the High Council’s relation to Father.

  ​He had moved to the lower levels of the fortress, underneath the main cavern. There were many tunnels underneath, but most of them were unfinished. Many of the places it looked like people had dropped their machinery and tools where they stood, abandoning them to rust.

  ​He wondered what life must have been like for those in those caverns. How long had the people lived in this city? Were they used to light or darkness? People couldn’t accept the dim sky in Dirge, so this underground city couldn’t have been here too long. He wondered why they lived underground. Were they hiding from the xenos?

  ​His thoughts moved back to the sky. Are there some things we innately know, he wondered, no matter what the circumstances? He thought of the city itself. Dirge. He’d never been outside the city. No one else had either, he assumed. The walls and Civic Protection kept everyone in. Are we all imprisoned here? Is Dirge our punishment?

  ​He started wondering how pointless it all might be, especially if there really was nothing outside the walls. His thoughts were broken as he heard a metallic shriek. He instantly recognized it as coming from a xeno. He extended his vision with his mind’s eye, searching for the source. He couldn’t see it, but he could see voids. For some reason they were hidden from his mind’s eye. He instantly recognized the feeling, for it was the same void in the walls of the ground. They could somehow block his vision, or were immune. There were four, and they moving towards him.

  ​They reached him quickly through the tunnels. The four of them were metal serpents that glided through the air, as if they could defy gravity itself. They instantly grew long appendages when they saw him, six on each. They looked like giant sinewy insects made of silver. Their movements were fluid, poetic.

  The leader of group bolted at him without warning, entangling and ensnaring him in its own body. He fought it, but it was strong. He was strong, too. He forced the creature off him, throwing it against the wall. The tunnel echoed, and the other three shrieked. They all attacked him. He reached out with his mind’s eye, trying to find a weakness. They were invisible to him. He grabbed the first creature to come at him, and probed harder with his mind. He pictured a tendril of himself reaching out in the realm of the mind’s eye. He ensnared the space that the creature should have existed in.

  The creature began to shake violently. In that moment of confusion, James did the same thing to the other three creatures. They were shaking and convulsing and he held them tight with his mind’s eye. He could finally detect something, a darkness. It felt similar to how he would picture a virus with his mind’s eye. They were all infected with this same darkness. It kept them hidden. He clenched the darkness, turning his tendrils into powerful grips. He felt it begin to dissolve under his grip. He extended himself as much as he could, encompassing the creatures with his own aura. With one great swoop, he tore the darkness from all of them.

  He stumbled, falling to his knees. He’d never used his mind’s eye like that before, and it had exhausted him. He stared at the ground below him, feeling his body weaken under the strain. He heard one of the xenos make a metallic chirp. This sound was different than before. It wasn’t angry. He looked up.

  The four xenos floated before him, all their limbs shrunk back into their bodies. They stared at him with faceless bodies. He knew they could see him, they could sense him. He looked at them through the mind’s ey
e. They were different now. He could see them. They were grateful. They were free.

  ​They all made short metallic chirping noises and watched him. They twitched slightly, and then encircled him. He reached a hand out, and touched one. The xeno in his own body reacted, extending tendrils towards the creatures floating around him. He shrank his hand back, worried of the contact his own angry xeno would have towards these innocent ones.

  ​The creatures stopped, and combined into one larger xeno. It stood before him expectantly, like it was waiting for orders. James realized it thought he was its new leader. He sent a message to it with his mind’s eye, and it chirped again. He was tempted to use the creature in his fight against Civic Protection, and the High Council. He looked at the creature again, and then had a realization. Controlling it was wrong.

  ​He sent it a message through his mind’s eye. Freedom. Go, be free. Make your own choices.

  ​The creature stood for a moment, taking it in. It then understood immediately. It turned and flew out of the tunnels. He lost sight of it with his mind’s eye once it made a turn. The cavern walls were still blocking him.

  ​They were long gone while he was still on his knees. It was the first time he’d felt fatigue since he’d woken up in the building rubble. I need to find a way out of here, he thought after finally pulling himself up. He stood and leaned against a wall, looking down the tunnel ahead of him.

  ​“What are we doing?” the voice echoed in his mind from all around him. He could see the creature walk out of the darkness again through his mind’s eye. The xeno version of himself.

  ​“We’re going to find a way out,” James said, “and I’m going to find answers to help everyone.”