Shadow of Forever (Eaters of the Light Book 2)

by J. Edward Neill

  Two days, I thought.

  Then steal my way on a train to Mercuria. Then another train to Arcadia.

  Congratulations, Joff. You’re committing suicide.

  I was nothing if not a good walker. I put down my head, gazed into the soft light filtering through the leaves, and marched on.

  At least I’ll be in good shape when I die, I thought.

  I’d never known myself to be so morbid.

  Glass Houses

  It occurred to me I had no idea what I was doing.

  I’d killed four men, fled my home, and left everything I owned in a heap of glass and metal.

  All because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.

  So much for a fresh start.

  On my fourth eve away from home, I trudged to the forest’s edge and looked down upon the city of Venya. I thought about how I must’ve looked and I shook my head. I’d bathed in a stream only a half-hour prior, but already I was sweating. My clothes were damp and smelled of soil. I was exactly the man everyone had always believed.

  An alien.

  From Earth.

  How far can I really get? I allowed myself a grim smile. If they’re looking for me, I’ll be dead in minutes.

  Indifferent, I left the forest and walked into the outskirts of beautiful Venya. Venya looked like Arcadia, only smaller. I counted just two dozen glass towers budding from the city’s heart. Its houses were closer together, its white streets narrow, and its gardens blooming with flowers I’d never seen before.

  Only twenty thousand or so people lived there, or so I guessed.

  Luckily for me, Venya had no walls, no military presence, and only twenty or so police. After all, crimes on Sumer were rare, so rare in fact only five people had died by violent means in the last decade.

  Four of them by me.

  …just a few days ago.

  With a shrug, I shouldered my belongings and walked onto the white streets. The suns were setting in the distance, and in the dying light the city’s outskirts were desolate. I heard faraway music as I walked along the impossibly clean sidewalks. The sound resonated against the glass dwellings. It was clear to me the city’s founders had built houses with acoustics in mind.

  I didn’t care for it.

  All the music meant was that no one would hear my footsteps.

  Head down, eyes tired, I walked along the streets. Between the glass houses I glimpsed the music’s source: a festival a few blocks closer to the city’s heart. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to be normal, to have a family, to be a part of something real.

  To be one of them.

  Shaking my head, I moved on.

  The deeper I carved into Venya, the more obvious my foolishness became. I was a marked man. If the governor of Arcadia wanted rid of me, there wasn’t a thing I could do that would be safe. I couldn’t take the light-rail. The trains were owned by his office, and would surely be watched. I’d been in the deep forest for days, and news of what I’d done by the little green river would be known throughout every city.

  No trains.

  No hovercabs…they’ll read my fingerprints.

  Too far to walk. Not enough food to make it.

  I stopped in the middle of a street. The suns had set, and the streetlamps glowed pale blue on my face. Little glass houses stretched to the end of my sight in every direction. No one was near. I probably could’ve shouted loud enough to shake the world and gone unheard.

  I was close, so close. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the forest towering beyond the city’s outskirts. It would’ve been easy to leave. No one would’ve ever found me.

  I kept going.

  I marched around the festival. It seemed everyone in the city had gathered to dance, flirt, and listen to the thrumming pipe music. I considered sneaking to one of the festival’s vendors to get food, but I didn’t dare. Every transaction on Sumer was verified with a fingerprint swipe, even the free ones.

  If they’re looking for me, they’ll be tracing every finger-scan.

  All the technology…Dad would’ve hated this place.

  And that’s when I saw the hovercar.

  The black and white car sat unattended at the union of three streets. The streetlamps shined on its polished roof, while its grav-pads held it a half-meter in the air. I stopped and stared. Hovercars were auto-piloted, meaning my total technological ignorance wouldn’t matter. I could simply state my destination and it would take me wherever I wanted.

  Arcadia.

  Aly’s office.

  I considered what I was about to do. No one on Sumer ever stole anything. No one needed to. No one locked their houses or cars. People’s trust was perfect.

  I hadn’t forgotten how to move without making noise. I’d perfected the skill as a little boy, gliding past my sister’s room every night, knowing if she heard me, she’d burst out and chase me. Without a sound, I sidled up to the sleek little car and bounded into its open sunroof.

  Inside, the smells of Sumerian flowers drifted up from the soft polymer seats.

  A woman’s car.

  I almost felt bad.

  “Take me to Arcadia,” I instructed. “To the offices of— Wait, no. Take me to Arcadia’s light-rail station.”

  “Miss Babar?” the computer asked me. The female voice sounded confused. It knew my language, but only barely.

  “No…um…” I stammered. “This is Mister Babar.”

  Silence consumed the car. It lasted only a second or two, but it was long enough to unnerve me. For all I knew, Miss Babar wasn’t married, and her car was programmed to deliver intruders to the nearest police tower. For half of one breath, I assumed my little adventure was over before it’d begun.

  “Certainly, Mister Babar,” she said, and all my tension uncoiled. “Driving to light-rail port zero-one-one. Estimated time of drive: four hours and twenty-two minutes.”

  Good. I sank back with a sigh. That’ll put me in Arcadia late, late, late.

  * * *

  I didn’t remember falling asleep.

  It must’ve been the sensation of riding on the dark highway between cities. It reminded me of being on the Sabre as it soared through the void of space. I’d looked out the car’s window and glimpsed the stars. It must’ve been then sleep captured me.

  My dreams consumed me.

  On a dark vessel, I glided atop an ocean of still, silent water. The water was deep, unfathomably so. I knew if I tried to find the bottom, I’d have drowned. I lay on a wooden-planked raft, drifting at a pace that would take me centuries to reach wherever I was going.

  And yet I wasn’t really going anywhere.

  Afloat beneath the stars, dressed all in white, I savored the silence of my deep water crossing. I knew I was dreaming, but I didn’t mind. No dream I’d ever fallen into had ever been so peaceful. No quiet in my life had been so profound.

  I counted the stars. It would’ve been impossible in real life, at least without a skypad, but in my dream it was easy. Ten-thousand, twenty-thousand, I collected their number in my mind. My dreaming eyes saw deeper than any living thing. Ten-million, twenty-million.

  One-hundred million.

  I should’ve known what would happen.

  I did know.

  The darkness caught fire at the horizon.

  In a black pall, it spread across the sky.

  Slow as the suns falling, a second night, deeper than the first, consumed the stars. The lights vanished a few thousand at a time, screaming as they perished. I regarded myself and saw my white raiment turning the color of midnight. As the stars died, so did my sense of peace burn away.

  And in the void I saw the Strigoi.

  I’d dreamed of them before. As the Sabre had spiraled toward the planet Ebes, I’d drowsed in hypo-sleep and watched the Strigoi gather on the horizon. I hadn’t understood then. I hadn’t comprehended how I could dream something I’d never seen before.

  In this dream, darker than the first, I understood everything. Their white eyes bl
azed hotter than the stars, four each in every one of their skulls. Their skeleton bodies and machine organs crowded out the light, clawing at the stars as if throwing a black blanket across the universe. I swore I could hear the oil pumping between their ribs. And I was certain I heard their voices, deep as the sound of many worlds breaking.

  They said awful things to me. They spoke in languages both human and cold, calculating machine. It seemed to me they were the living dead of every race, and that all the worlds beyond Sumer had already been destroyed or assimilated.

  Just as they were about to close out the last of the stars, I awoke.

  I sat up in the hovercar, sweating. My hands were cold, my stomach gnawing, and my breathing ragged and dry. I checked the sky to make sure Sumer hadn’t already died. The stars were still there, right where I’d left them.

  I felt no relief.

  * * *

  Aly had always worked nights.

  As children, I’d never seen her brilliance. I’d been consumed with the ordinary disdain every little brother in the world felt for his older sister.

  After twenty years on Sumer, I’d learned better. Aly was just like Mom, except maybe even smarter. Unlike Mom, she preferred to work alone, never mind that her branch of Arcadian engineers was the largest on all of Sumer.

  And so, when she emerged from her office before sunrise, clutching an electronic notebook and walking briskly toward a line of silent hovercabs, I was waiting for her.

  “Aly,” I whispered as I emerged from the shadows between two hovercabs. “Aly, over here.”

  She shot me a look that might’ve killed me.

  “Joff?” She made a face. “Joff, what the hell are you doing out here?”

  I walked out of the shadows. I couldn’t fully disguise my limp. My left leg was still hurting from the fight and the four-day hike to reach Venya.

  “Hi,” I shambled up to her. “I…um…is there somewhere secret we can talk?”

  “Secret?” She looked at me like I’d gone mad. “Joff, what’s wrong with your face? Did you get hit by a hovercar? Everyone else is asleep. Why were you hiding?”

  “I take it you haven’t heard,” I said.

  She walked right up to me, slung her belongings atop a hovercab, and snared my arm. In the dim light of the nearest streetlamp, she looked me up and down.

  “You’re hurt. You need medicine. Get in the car. We’ll—”

  I shook my head and shrugged her hand off my arm.

  “Is your husband home right now?” I asked.

  “No.” She narrowed her eyes. “He’s away in the south. Some incident in the countryside. Why?”

  “I’m the incident.” I patted my chest.

  “What do you mean? What did you do?”

  “Do you have bodyguards at your house?” I ignored her questions.

  “Sometimes. Usually only when Tabir’s home. I’m not sure why he has them. It’s not as if—”

  I looked her dead in her eyes. Whatever she saw in me made her stop talking.

  “Get in the car, Aly. Take us to your house. Get us inside. There’s something I have to tell you.”

  For once in her life, she did as I asked.

  Better to be Alone

  When I finished telling my sister what had happened, she sat in her chair with her hand over her mouth.

  The suns’ light crept in through the bank of windows behind her. In her private study, all surfaces were silver and black, and yet nothing was darker than her eyes.

  “You’re sure?” she asked me.

  “I haven’t met many people in my life,” I answered. “I don’t have many faces to remember. But his…the bodyguard…I’ll never forget it.”

  She shook her head. Her raven hair swept over her pallid cheeks. She was tired, so worn out by another long night of work. As the wife of a governor, I didn’t understand why she still did it.

  Driven, maybe. Just like me.

  “Just because it was Tabir’s man doesn’t mean he ordered it,” she reasoned. “We can’t assume anything.”

  In my heart, I already knew.

  But Aly was a scientist. I wasn’t going to win without proof.

  “I’m not assuming,” I said.

  “You still haven’t taken the pills.” She pointed to the two red tablets on the desk beside me. The pills contained active nano-bots, not entirely unlike the ones inside Callista. If I swallowed them, they’d go to work stitching my wounds from the inside.

  But perhaps, like my father, I’d grown wary of technology.

  “Take them.” Aly noticed my reluctance.

  “Fine.” I popped them in my mouth.

  She stood and paced the room. Her shadow moved, stretching across everything. It had been many years since I’d felt anything resembling guilt. But the longer I sat, watching her torment, the more my stomach turned.

  “I shouldn’t have come.” I sagged. “I’m sorry. I’ve put you in danger.”

  “You did the right thing.” She gazed out a window. “If it’s true, I…I just don’t know what will happen.”

  I drew in a long breath.

  The time for politeness was over.

  I had questions I needed answered.

  “Aly.” My tone made her look me in the eyes. “What are you researching in your lab? I know your husband pours money into every science station in Arcadia. Everyone knows it. What are you up to? Are you really building a defensive net to stop the Strigoi weapons? Or is it something else you’re doing? And why would Tabir feel threatened enough to kill me?”

  “Joff, we’re really not—”

  “Don’t lie to me.” I stood up. My shadow covered hers, and she seemed smaller than before.

  “I’m not.” Her face turned red. “There’s nothing underhanded going on. I promise.”

  “Then what is going on?” I countered.

  She sat on her desk, full of angst. In the light, she cut a striking figure. I recalled my mother standing in our kitchen on Earth, making breakfast as our lonely sun shined through our one window. The two were the same, only I’d never seen Mom as tortured as Aly.

  “We’re working on a cure.” A tear streamed down her cheek.

  “A cure? For what?”

  “It’s our fault, Joff.” She shivered. “Yours and mine. We brought the disease back here. We didn’t know, but still… It doesn’t kill, not exactly. It affects the mind. Makes people think and do things they never would’ve thought of.”

  What is she talking about? I thought.

  “I’m not sick, Aly,” I said. “I don’t have a disease.”

  “I know.” More tears trembled in her eyes. “You’re immune somehow. But you’re still a carrier. We don’t fully understand it. We’ve been working on it for years.”

  It was my turn to pace the room. I rubbed my cheeks, which still hurt from all the tiny cuts. Whatever I’d expected to hear in coming to Arcadia, it wasn’t this.

  “So you’re sick?” I asked. “With something we brought from Earth?”

  She shook her head. Her tears were drying up. Her eyes were dark with fear.

  “Not from Earth. From Ebes. From the Strigoi.”

  I should’ve known.

  On Ebes, I’d fought and killed four of the skeletal Strigoi horrors, and each time I’d felt their presence draining me. If not for Callista entering my body and rebooting my cells, I’d have died a slow and terrible death.

  Or maybe I’d have become one of them.

  The answer came to me.

  “They gave it to me when I killed them.” I stopped pacing. “And then you caught it when I found you stranded on your ship. We’re both carriers. And now—”

  “Almost everyone on Sumer has it,” she finished my thought.

  A long quiet descended. We stood there, each of us lost.

  She’s telling the truth.

  She should’ve told me sooner.

  “I know what’s happening,” I declared.

  “No one knows what’s happening, J
off.” She closed her eyes.

  “I do. This is how the Strigoi reproduce. This planet and everyone on it...you’ll become them.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I can’t prove it,” I said. “But I know it.”

  She opened her eyes. All sounds in the room died. She knew some part of what I’d said was true. And if it was true, it made no sense to argue, to talk, or to make guesses at how we’d all die.

  “I’m going to talk to my husband.” Her voice cracked. “He’ll be returning to his office this morning. You’ll be safe here until later this afternoon. There’s food in the therm-pantry. Get some rest. You’ll—”

  “Don’t go to him.” I wanted to shake some sense into her. “If he knows we’ve talked, he might – I don’t know – hurt you.

  “I’ll be fine.” She couldn’t look at me. “Tabir is intense, I know. But he loves me. And he needs me for our work.”

  “For your work?” I scoffed. “Aly, your husband tried to have me murdered.”

  “Unproven.” She sniffled. I wanted to hug her. I didn’t know how.

  “If you leave this room, you know you’ll never see me again,” I said.

  “Don’t say that. You don’t know—”

  “I’m leaving,” I interrupted. “If you can’t help me, I’m on my own.”

  “Where will you go?” She looked heartbroken.

  I said nothing.

  I stared at her, and she gazed back. I was the wounded one, and yet her injuries were far more serious. I hated myself for coming to her.

  If her husband were here, I’d…

  “I’m going now.” She broke the silence.

  “Don’t.”

  “I have to.” She tried to stand tall. “I have to ask him. If he’s lying, I’ll know it. When I’m gone, type where you’re going in my computer. It’s right there on the desk. Tabir doesn’t come in here. It’s secure. Just do it, ok?”

  I couldn’t talk. I just stood there, exhaling my hope.

  She came to me, touched my shoulder, and then retreated to the door. “I’ll lock it,” she said. “The code is twelve, ten, seventy-six. It works on almost all the doors. And remember: type where you’re going in the computer. I can tell by your look you haven’t decided. Please, Joff. Please do it.”