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

by Donald Stephenson III

  ​“What difference will it make?” it said, “you’re alone. You don’t have any friends. You don’t have any memories. The Vanguard just wants to use you, just like everyone else. Just like Father was going to use me. Do you think anyone you knew before would love you after what you’ve become? Look at yourself. Look at us. We are a monster. We can do whatever we want to whomever we want. Those that stand in our way, we can rip them to pieces. We can stop Father and the High Council.” It spoke with rage and authority.

  ​“I’m not a monster.”

  ​“Yes,” the creature said, “you are. That rage that you’ve kept hidden all your life? It’s giving me more power than you could ever imagine. The anger for being alone all your life. Living with parents you knew didn’t love you. You never understood why they adopted you. It all never mattered anyway; you've lived in a city that bred hatred and apathy. And fear. Fear that made you angry. You’ve given me all the rage I could ever want. Now I also have the power.” James ignored the voice, turning to go back to the fortress. He began running, and suddenly he felt his back pushed to the ground. The creature spoke again, “Now I have the mind’s eye.”

  ​“How did you push me to the ground?”

  ​The creature smiled viciously, showing the metal teeth that had now turned to fangs. His appearance was now more like a demon than of James. James tried to reach out with his mind’s eye, but couldn’t. It was blocking him.

  ​“You have a power not even you truly understand,” it said, “but I do. I understand your potential. Our potential. If you can’t see it, then I will show you.” At that moment James felt absolutely powerless and the xeno in his body shrank into the small of his back as his mind’s eye disappeared. It was taking everything from him. His body wanted to collapse; he felt the pain of his injuries from earlier that the xeno hadn’t finished healing.

  ​He started running again. He tripped and fell over a loose stone. He fell face first, his forehead hitting the hard stone floor. How can I defeat it? he asked himself as he struggled to stand again. He felt dizzy, and he put his hand on his forehead. There was a gash, although he didn’t know how bad. He was bleeding. He reached out his thoughts, and stood still for a moment. He calmed his breath. Beneath the pain, beneath the fatigue, he saw a light.

  ​He was a toddler, maybe two and a half years old. He was walking around a room, a brightly lit room. Everything was cold and hard, metal everywhere. A person in a white coat picked him up and carried him to another room. It was a child’s room with toys and a toddler’s bed, yet something felt off about it. He could use his mind’s eye, and was observing everything. The man in the white coat sat him on the bed. A woman came in to speak with the man.

  ​“So,” the woman said looking down at the child, “this is James. I can see his father in him. He’ll definitely have his mother’s height though. She was much taller, and look how tall he is as just a two-year-old.” The man nodded and pulled out a chart, motioning for the woman to look at it.

  ​“He may be tall for his age,” the man in the white coat said, “but it’s not outside the normal percentages. He’s nothing like his mother and uncle in that area. Judging from his growth and development now, he’ll develop just like a normal child. A very healthy one at that.”

  ​“Too bad about his parents,” the woman said. "Is everything set up?”

  ​“Yes, everything's taken care of. His mother checked up on him earlier, and she’ll be watching him from a distance from now on. He’ll have a normal childhood, and grow up without knowing what happened, or the identity of his parents. Most importantly, he’ll be safe. His new parents will be picking him up tomorrow. The formula his mother gave me should suppress his abilities. I’m working on the serum, and we should be able to give him a shot every week or so. We just need a few more blood tests…” the memory faded, but James recognized the face of that man with the clip board who was talking to the woman. It was Dr. Shepherd.

  ​He ignored the gash on his forehead and started running again. His body was angry with him. He could feel it. He ignored the perspiration on his face, not wanting to disturb the wound on his forehead. It was beginning to sting. He felt another attack on his mind by the xeno, and he fought it again for control.

  ​He was now thirteen years old. He was a bright student. He spent most of his time reading, but he hated going to school. He felt alone there, and different. He didn’t have any real friends, and no one had ever reached out to him. He focused his time on other things. He wanted to find a way to leave Dirge. He was tired of the dim sky, the dirty city, and the crowded streets. He was tired of being afraid of Civic Protection. He wanted to go someplace else.

  ​None of the books helped. It was almost as if all the authors wanted people to stay in the city. No books described life outside. People were afraid of even talking about it. That and the collapse. One day James asked his teacher about it during a classroom discussion. Everyone became quiet and James got sent to the principal’s office for mentioning it. There would be no discussions about it. He felt isolated from everyone and everything.

  ​He felt like this world wasn’t meant for him. He felt he was meant for...something else. Something bigger than the latest policies the mayor had implemented to crack down on the homeless. James once had a vision, a dream of himself freeing this city. Breaking through the ceiling of the twilight sky.

  ​He was now running through the fortress. He didn’t know how to stop the creature from attacking him, or his mind. He stopped for only a moment, and then he realized what he had to do. The only way he could stop the xeno from terrorizing everyone would be to stop himself.

  ​He felt lightheaded, but he continued onward. He climbed up the staircases to one of the large wall that lined the outside of the fortress. I need to reach the top.

  ​“James,” it said to him as he felt its presences shadowing him, “why do you want to go to the top of the wall? Are you going to jump off? After all you’ve done, after all we’ve accomplished, are you going to kill yourself?” Its voice became angry. "Do you really want to waste your life? Waste the sacrifice all those people made to save you?”

  ​He reached a ladder, and started climbing up, ignoring the xeno in his mind. Ignoring the voice. He reached a hatch and he pushed upwards, opening it. He winced when the light of the ceiling in the cavern shone over him. He blocked the light with one arm as he climbed out the rest of the way. He stood over the ledge, looking down into the plaza below. It was a good fifty foot drop to the floor.

  ​“You will not waste your life,” the creature said as it appeared before him, “I won’t allow it.” The xeno’s face and body now looked like a contorted, twisted version of James’s. The fangs were longer, and the hands permanently clawed. James knew if he let the demon take over, that’s how he would look. He looked into the eyes of the creature.

  ​“I’ll die before I let you control me,” James said. "I’ll die before I become a monster.”

  ​James stepped towards the edge of the tower. He looked at the vision of the creature standing before him, and he smiled. He fell backwards off the ledge.

  ​“No!” it shouted. It tried once again to wrestle control of him. James fought it off and closed his eyes as he anticipated hitting the ground, letting his arms and legs spread out in the air as the trench coat flapped furiously in the air. His mind’s eye returned and he felt a presence. The same presence he had recognized earlier that had disappeared. His mind’s eye was stronger this time, and he could recognize it for what it really was.

  ​It was a ghostly aura. An imprint of someone dead, left behind in the realm of the mind’s eye. It reached out to him, and touched his mind.

  ​James was sitting at a desk in the library. It was his first year of college at Vanguard University. He was writing on a paper some ideas he had for a story.

  ​“Excuse me,” a voice said to him, “you go to Vanguard University, don’t you?” James looked up and saw a strikingly beautiful girl
. She looked to be his age. For a moment he didn’t know what to say, but he quickly collected himself.

  ​“Yes, I’m a student there.”

  ​“I thought I recognized you.” She smiled and sat down next to him. “I’m Christina. I’ve been coming here for the last few weeks and I’ve noticed you here just about every time I’m here. You’re always here before I arrive, and you leave well after I do.” James smiled at her, blushing a little bit at being noticed.

  ​“It’s not very quiet where I live,” James said, “and I’m not crazy about the university’s library. It’s just peaceful here. I feel like I can collect my thoughts more easily.” He paused, looking at her and said, "You're that girl in my history class. The only one that agreed with me.”

  ​“About the collapse? Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that. You seem to know a lot more about this stuff than most other people I’ve talked to.” James nodded.

  ​“It’s a hobby of mine,” he said.

  ​“The way you confronted Professor Arbos, you had passion. He continually avoided the issue too. You’re the only one not afraid to speak out about it.” James smiled again.

  ​“Yeah,” James paused for a moment, and then continued, “do you want to hang out some time?” He instantly felt foolish about what he’d said. She’ll probably say no, he thought. She didn’t even know him that well.

  ​“I’d love to.” She smiled flirtingly at him. He felt his face turn red. “How about Friday,” she said.

  ​“Saturday would be better. I have a doctor’s appointment. My parents have me taking an allergy shot, although I’m not sure why. I don’t think I have any allergies. They’re really weird about that stuff.” She was still smiling at him coyly.

  ​“Saturday it is.” She smiled at him, and her face was imprinted in his mind.

  ​It was her face that he always came back to. Her face that brought him back, and held him here. Her face that gave him hope. Hope that he could live. The ground slowly approached, but his wall was destroyed. That aura that had touched him, had also aided him. It had broken the wall to his memories. His past. He remembered himself, his identity.

  ​With the strength of his own mind he pushed the xeno’s personality into the dark recesses of his head. He pushed it away and imprisoned it. He felt in complete control of himself and the xeno on his back again.

  He landed on the ground, crouching his knees with his right arm absorbing the most of the impact. The ground below him had cracked, but he was unharmed. He visualized the creature in his mind being chained up, in an invisible dark room. He heard its voice again, one last time, “I can wait, you’ll need me.” The presence faded from his mind. James smiled with a sense of relief.

  ​He stood there for a moment, then felt the ghostly aura again. It was familiar, but he wasn’t sure who it was. Whomever it was, they were long dead. He watched it with his mind’s eye as it moved inside the fortress. He started following it. They moved and twisted several times through the fortress, and finally stopped at what seemed to be a dead end.

  ​The aura moved through the wall, disappearing in it. James inspected the wall with his mind’s eye, and found he could see nothing beyond it, not even the aura. He recognized the same void sensation of nothingness. He gripped it with his mind’s eye, like he had before with the xenos. Once it became visible, he could sense a large pocket of the mineral that was present throughout all the caverns, but this one was concentrated. It was hidden by another power, unlike the virus-like darkness that controlled the xenos. This power was strong, but different. It seemed to recognize him, and it dissipated as it did.

  ​He could see through the wall, see the unique mineral pocket blocking him. It was similar to the xenos in composition, but it wasn’t alive like they were. He put his hand on it, and he could control it the same way he could control the xeno on his back. He felt himself instinctively absorb the metal into the xeno in his body, making it even stronger and more solid. The metal poured into his hand through tendrils until there was nothing more than a hole in the wall.

  There was a lever on the inside. He extended a tendril from the wall that hooked over the lever, pulling it. The wall moved slowly to reveal a secret passage. There was another door past it, and embedded into the wall next to it was a data screen. James could no longer sense the familiar ghost aura, and he felt it had served its purpose.

  ​He walked slowly towards the door. He tapped the data screen for a moment. It activated, and letters appeared on the screen. Letters and words of a language he’d never seen before, yet he understood it. He could read it and he couldn’t explain why. He followed the commands on the data screen, entering in keywords and answers to the security questions. The last question asked in the strange language surprised him. It asked him what his birthday was. He entered the date into the system, and it flashed green. Some machinery activated somewhere above him in the walls, moving downward. The door opened up, revealing an elevator. Whoever programmed that computer intended it for him. He shook his head as he stepped into the elevator, as a grin slowly appeared on his face.

  ​It’s time for me to find out who I really am, he thought, and what I was meant for.

  22

  ​Christina sat on the end of a tan couch, her arm resting over the side lazily. The other hand gripped a leather folder nervously. The room she sat in had clean, gray walls. It was a flat paint that seemed to absorb more light than it reflected. The sound of fingers tapping on a data screen softly could be heard, coming from a woman at the far end of the room. The woman was older, quietly typing at a desk. She’d been working for nearly half an hour while Christina waited on that couch. The room smelled of her perfume, a strong scent that was a bit overbearing.

  ​There was a small buzz. The woman stopped what she was doing and tapped an icon on the data screen embedded into the surface of her desk. Another woman’s voice came from the box. “Nora, you can let Miss Ferris in now.” Nora looked up at Christina and nodded to her. Christina got up and moved towards the metal door next to Nora’s desk.

  ​A woman sat in a desk in the center of a modest office with data screens lining a shelf behind her. The woman was elderly, with glasses hanging around her neck by a beaded cord. Brownish gray hair sat in a bun on the back of her head, and she seemed focused on a data screen in her hands.

  ​Christina stood there for a moment before walking up to the desk. As she stopped, the woman promptly lowered the data screen and looked at her discerningly. “Miss Christina Ferris?”

  ​“Yes ma’am.”

  ​“Your resume says that you just graduated from Vanguard University. Your major was political science with a minor in history. What do you hope to gain by working in a secretarial position?"

  ​“I want to learn everything I can from the mayor and his staff. I’ve always wanted to be in politics, and to be honest I was hoping this would open a door one day for me in a position where I can do real good for our city.” The woman cocked an eyebrow at Christina skeptically.

  ​“Do you mean to say that you consider this to be a temporary position?”

  ​“Well, I don’t plan on doing this for the rest of my life, if that’s what you’re asking. I will do this job to the best of my ability and I do plan to stay for a while.” The woman nodded her head slightly in approval.

  ​“I see. I have a few more questions for you, but they concern some skills your resume states you have.” The rest of the interview lasted about ten more minutes, with the woman asking her about her typing skills and other various requirements needed for the job. When it ended the woman simply said they would call her if she got the job.

  ​Christina walked slowly out of the office, and the rest of the way out of the capital. It had been a strange few weeks. The weather was cool outside, surprising for the beginning of summer. Everything seemed to sit still in the air. It was early afternoon, and the dim sky was as lit as it was going to get. Most people in the streets had blank faces. No one wanted t
o be noticed by Civic Protection. Even though it was busy, the streets didn’t feel overcrowded. Unlike the other districts, Capital District never slept.

  ​Martial law had been dropped a week ago, due to an overwhelming quietness in the city. Everything had seemed to go back to normal, although that didn’t feel like a good thing.

  ​She stopped at the bus stop ahead and waited with the other people on the concrete pavement. There still was more Civic Protection out than there used to be. Looking around from where she stood, she could spot soldiers stationed everywhere. People at the stop seemed nervous. Actually, everyone seemed nervous. People didn’t trust Civic Protection and never would. There were too many reasons to not to. She tried hard to avoid eye contact with the all of the soldiers that passed by her.

  ​Everyone else did the same. Most people avoided eye contact. Their faces and demeanors matched the gray streets they stood on. People see the corruption, she thought, and yet they stand by and do nothing. She thought about that for a moment. I guess I may not be alive too much longer.

  ​She thought about all the events that had occurred in the last few weeks. It’s probably nothing compared to what’s happened to James. James had disappeared after that event two weeks ago, when Civic Protection wrecked part of Capital District. She was worried about his safety, about his health. She hoped he was all right.

  ​Christina remembered what Elijah Vanguard had told her about him. The story he’d told her was amazing in itself, although she knew there were things he’d left out. He had a genetically engineered creature that had attached itself to his spine. Everyone’s afraid of what he’s capable of. She was concerned about him.

  ​Elijah Vanguard paced as he tried to come up with the right words to her. His hands were in his pockets of a brown vest over a red plaid shirt. His daughter sat on the kitchen countertop nearby, her legs dangling off. Anna stood leaning on the counter next to the little girl.