by Alyx X
I was right at the edge of the city, and I didn’t want to track the chidder too far in—not without a full hunting party. I was greedy for more meat, but I wasn’t ridiculous. I never ventured too far into the city alone. None of us did.
Over my shoulder, the Glass City shone in the distance as sunlight bounced off the huge, manmade dome. It was thousands of miles away, but the beacon of that ideal could still be seen from our mountain. There were days that almost-fabled city glowed golden with reflected light, and other days when it sent up a cascade of rainbows like those people had been truly blessed in their existence.
That illusion was also a lie.
It had always been sold to me as perfection. I spat in the dust at my feet in defiance of their so-called life. Some perfection. A cloud of black dots moved above the city, like a swarm of tiny flies so small I almost couldn’t make them out as they merged with the dust and sand in the air. But they were there.
Terran ships, Father said, transporting all manner of humans off-planet—slaves, prisoners, rich people with enough money to flee—but none of them were free.
Not like I was.
I found my freedom within the confines of this hardship, and I held on.
At a movement ahead of me, I darted forward, keeping low and sticking to the shadows cast by the broken building to my left. The entire front wall of it was missing, crumbled over time, affording me a view of each destroyed floor. Twisted metal stuck out to connect with the wall that was no longer there, as it extended up into the sky. Huge chunks of the old cement littered the way in front of me, providing hiding places and shade from the scorching sun.
The chidders were good at navigating this latest environment. No one knew when they’d arrived, or when they adapted to this new type of jungle, but one wound its way through the building, five stories up, as I watched. There was another one down here on the ground with me, destined for our pot above the fire.
I must’ve stumbled on a family group to get so lucky in such a small area. I had to keep being lucky, keep proving my worth to my people.
Father wouldn’t live forever, and I had to convince all of the tribe that I was the next chief. Sure, I had some ideas they didn’t like. I didn’t want to travel forever, following the seasons as they all blurred into one swamp of ‘hot and sweaty’ while we moved everything from one desolate, sunbaked place to another. I wanted to retake the city, or at least a part of it. I wanted to try to ensure we could capitalize on a regular water supply instead of relying on nothing more than hope that nothing had changed in our next location since the previous year as we made each arduous journey.
I just had to convince everyone that the loss of life we sustained on those journeys was enough to give sticking around SanFrisco a shot. But I had years to plan my pitch. Until then, I just had to dedicate myself to this way of life.
And my people.
My tribe was the reason I’d never leave, never strive to get off-rock like those fuckers living their high lives in the Glass City. I spat on the ground again. Glass City dwellers were the lowest of our species. Everyone that remained here on Earth was finding their success the only way they could—I mean, look at me kicking ass and taking names on a daily basis—but the fear that drove Glass City dwellers to find something better led them to forget the rest of us. It led them to forget there was still life here. Fuckers indeed, and I couldn’t forgive them for their attitude.
I crept forward, moving in a low crouch. The wind had shifted in my favor and the musky scent of chidder drifted in my direction. I was close.
An arrow scraped in my quiver as I reached over my shoulder to retrieve it. I bundled the tight waves of my hair into a quick braid, giving the ends an extra twist to hold it tight as it trailed over the front of my left shoulder. Anything to ensure it wouldn’t blow across my face. It had done that once before, and I’d lost my kill.
The chidder in front of me wasn’t even being careful anymore as it pounced on something small and inconsequential in a patch of grasses. It had no idea I was even here.
Pride poured through me as I nocked my arrow and lowered the bow so I could aim. My arrows were roughly made—Father would call out my lack of care—but they were as deadly as the ones he spent his days carving to perfection.
I gazed along the top of my straight arm, sighting my prey, and my finger flexed in readiness to draw the string taut.
I froze as a growl came from my right, and before I could react, a huge weight barreled into me, knocking me to the ground. A second chidder stood almost on top of me, its breath warm and rotten in my face, and I slashed my bow in a wide arc, trying to keep those sharp teeth away from any part of me they could damage. It reared back a little, and I tried to scramble from underneath it. A droplet of drool landed on my chin, and I jerked away. That wasn’t the way today was going to go down.
I certainly hadn’t planned to be a meal for a chidder, although if I came out victorious, I didn’t know if I could drag three of the animals home. My plans to return with two had already been ambitious, given the state of my sled.
I bucked off the ground, trying to shake the animal loose, but it dug in harder, pressing its claws out to their full length and slashing a gash down my arm with one claw. That claw was blunted by constant contact with the concrete of the creature’s wild-urban home.
I hissed in pain and glanced at the jagged wound splitting my skin. Then I grabbed the knife at my waist, my fingers curling around the ornate hilt.
“Now that wasn’t very nice,” I chided as I narrowed my eyes in concentration, trying not to think about how dirty my wound could be, or how I’d need to use precious water reserves from our hidden well because of my carelessness.
I’d be okay. I had to be—and I’d always been okay in the past. Pushing thoughts of medical care from my head, I redirected my attention back to the chidder on my chest.
I probably only had one chance at this.
It reared up as if responding to my words or tone, revealing the fluffy white fur at its throat. I jerked my arm upwards and plunged my knife as deep as I could before pulling it to the side. Blood, hot and bright red surged from the gaping wound, and I rolled out of the way as the first drops splattered against my skin.
Then I cursed. I needed to preserve as much of the blood as I could, but I didn’t have time to arrange the corpse in the way I wanted before the low rumble of a growl sounded in front of me. I sat up, finding myself less than ten feet away from the original chidder I’d been tracking. The one that had pounced on me must have alerted it to my position, and I was lucky it hadn’t chosen to attack me at the same time as its friend.
Shit. Father always said my pride would be my ruin, but I hadn’t planned for him to be right today. My bow was too far away and too slow to be of any use, and my knife was slippery with blood, making it tricky to grip.
I scrambled backward, trying to gain some distance as I suddenly found myself hunted rather than the hunter. The chidder slunk toward me. He moved slowly and made no further noise as his eyes narrowed until he focused solely on me. I envied him that ability to tune out the rest of the world.
I wrapped my hand around my upper arm as it started to throb, and I tried to ignore the blood oozing between my fingers, vibrant red against my brown skin. I shuffled backward, my leather pants scraping over the rough concrete with every push of my feet. Maybe it was my pants he objected to. I couldn’t guarantee they weren’t made from one of his family members. The thought brought a grin to my mouth.
The chidder took more quiet steps, padding toward me, closing the distance between us, and I heaved in a quick breath as I examined my options. We were all hungry out here. We lived to hunt and hunted to live, but it’d be a cold day in the desert before I just sacrificed myself up as lunch. My arm throbbed again, but I didn’t dare turn my attention from the big cat as it crept ever closer. It could be on top of me in one lunge, and one slip on my part would seal my fate.
I’d left my spear at our
camp. Maybe that was my first mistake, but my bow and arrows were less cumbersome when I planned to return with food.
As I surveyed the chidder and the smaller gap between his body and mine, it suddenly pricked its ears then looked to the sky. The next thing I saw was its ass as it ran, tail held high, into the shadows of the deep city.
I didn’t even have time to ask why. I didn’t need to. The familiar but rare high-pitched whine of a spaceship in flight reached my ears.
But what the hell was that pilot even thinking? There were laws still in place about coming in low over cities—even ruined ones like SanFrisco. And now this fuckwit had probably scared all of the animals I could hunt farther into the city, and they likely wouldn’t venture back to the outer parts for days.
“Bastard!” I shook my fist in the direction of the ship.
He wouldn’t hear me, but it needed to be said, and the distorted echo of my voice bounced from the buildings and crashed around me. I breathed out another curse, still not satisfied I’d insulted the pilot as fully as he deserved.
Still, he’d also bought me time and a chance to get back to camp. I stood and grabbed the tail of the chidder with the slashed throat, using my good arm to drag it behind me as I side-stepped my way toward my sled. I was nursing my gashed arm, shielding it and holding it against my body, and I glanced down at the congealing blood. It would hurt for a while. Maybe the same number of days before the animals returned to where I could hunt them again.
I dragged it alongside the first chidder then half-hefted and half-rolled them into position on my sled. As I dragged it away, their long tails brushed the dirt and sand behind us. The journey back to our camp was downhill, but that presented its own challenges with a fully laden sled.
And I supposed I did it a disservice by calling it a camp. It was a habit borne of Father’s constant travels. Here, in SanFrisco, we had a veritable fortress. A defensible, stone-built building full of lockable rooms with tiny windows and thick, solid walls. According to more of Father’s stories, it used to be in the middle of an ocean, in a bay, but none of us had any experience of that far back, and I didn’t trust what I couldn’t see, so maybe it was just something Father said to see the children’s eyes light up. I laughed every time I heard him try to explain the concept of a bay, anyway.
“It’s me—open up!” I yelled through the heavy wooden door. “I’ve brought food, and we are going to eat well tonight!” A wave of pleasure flowed through me as I surveyed my kills again, but I cut the emotion off before it reached pride as the memory of the chidder sitting on my chest returned.
It had been a close call—not that I’d ever tell anyone that. Not when they relied on me to provide for them like this. While there was still blood left in my body, not one of my people would go hungry.
2
Lyx
I ran through my plan again. Out loud. I told myself it was to hear my voice, the only voice I often heard for months at a time. And I needed to use my voice… Man, I needed to use it. When I forgot and went for those months without talking, I sounded like some aquatic thing when I spoke again. Croak, croak, croak.
But this time, I needed to speak out loud to drown out the fucking doubts and regret that crowded into my thoughts as soon as I remembered what I was going to do.
Take a human, they said. It will be easy, they said. Well, after a life of scavenging scrap to sell, it wasn’t fucking easy to think about cheapening someone’s life to that degree. Any life.
Not even someone from Earth, and until recently, I hadn’t even heard of that planet since… shit. I tried to remember. School maybe? I tried to cast my mind back, but my mind was as old and creaky as the rust bucket I flew through space these days.
The giant rust bucket I’d rattled around in ever since my parents left. Ten of us. It could have held ten of us easily and often had. I couldn’t help the smile as I remembered the times the ship had been full as we ferried both scrap metal and other scavenged valuables from planet to docking station to outpost. We’d picked up our fair share of nomads over the years, like a wandering hitch-hiker’s awareness program. Life had been good then. Better than good. It had been great.
And now just fucking look at me.
I sighed as I leaned over the control panel and fine-tuned some settings, entering the coordinates of Earth into my device after the chance meeting with that Gurg. He’d definitely caught me at a particularly low point, understanding just how desperate my situation had been, despite having never met me before. I couldn’t work out if I regretted that meeting or gave thanks for it.
On the one hand, the meeting had gotten me this job. The only job I’d gotten in months, providing me with food and coin, giving me a small measure of hope that I’d survive. On the other hand, it had sent me here. I watched as the planet came into view, double checking that I was in the right spot. I was happy to have reached it in a relatively short amount of time, considering how bleak things had been looking for me. I mean, hell…I’d had to sell things I thought I never would—scavenging parts from my own fucking ship.
I’d come a long way since that meeting with the drunken Gurg. Not just physically either. I mean, here I was, hovering above the atmosphere of Earth, the planet that shouldn’t have still existed. I breathed out a low whistle as I used my scope to look around. Well, holy fuck. It was a wasteland. This place really shouldn’t have existed. It was a hard, dried up rock, sunbaked within an inch of its life. No wonder the Terran Project was so successful at its transport program. Humans must have been begging to leave, queueing up in droves to find something better. I just needed to find myself one of those. Maybe the human I selected wouldn’t even be opposed to me taking them off of this gods-forsaken rock. Maybe.
I’d read up on Earth as I traveled here, and learned there was only one city that had any water. Just one, and they’d covered it over with a great glass dome to prevent that water drying up. That was right—only one city had any access to water on a regular basis, and they kept it all for themselves. Fucking unbelievable. Considering the harsh living conditions that were apparent for anyone not living in the domed city, perhaps my chosen human wouldn’t be so sad to leave after all. My heart thumped once with a tiny spark of hope that I wouldn’t be as much of a villain as my conscience said I was. However, I was staying well away from that domed city—it was where TerraLink based its operations, so was definitely Lyx Program unfriendly. I laughed; the sound hollow.
Tryon, my planet, had been beautiful and lush, even as it died. The deep green forests that spread over the whole planet had maybe been the cruelest illusions of all because they allowed us to believe we weren’t in any danger. The waterfalls still cascaded to deep pools below, and the azure sky had still darkened to a beautiful, soft purple at night. The warmest of skies, like it could wrap the entire planet up, ready for sleep. Life went on. Our sun still rose and set. Babies were still born. So, we clearly weren’t in danger. Until we were, and then we’d all scrambled off the planet as fast as we could, sad to say our goodbyes to a home we’d never see again.
Here on this parched rock, though… Here, people were clinging to a life they could see slipping away. If stories were correct, people lived unimaginably far out into the deserts, surviving on who knows what. I glanced out across the planet to where it curved away from my view. The place was all shades of beige and sun-bleached brown. Beige rock, beige sand. Even the air carried the tiny beige grains. Surely nothing could survive here. Somehow though, the humans had survived. I respected them for that. At least they hadn’t resorted to stealing other species within the galaxy, selling them for their own gain. At least they only sold themselves. I shook my head, how was that any better?
In the distance, I caught sight of the gleam of the sun’s rays reflecting off of something. The Glass City. That domed place they kept for the most special people left on Earth. I was surprised that I was able to make it out so clearly from here in space. It was every bit as beautiful as my research suggested
, and although instinct almost made me fly toward it to be near the one place of beauty that the people had preserved, I turned away and activated my ship’s stealth mode—for what it was worth. I couldn’t even be sure that it worked anymore.
I wasted fuel for at least an hour, zig-zigging over bare rock and desert, using my scope to watch the ground beneath me for the nomadic people I’d heard travelled in tribes across this devastated land. I spotted a few of them, wandering around, clearly working or hunting, but none of them struck me as the one. The one I needed to fulfill Satyan’s contract and ensure my survival.
I glanced at my locator screen, at the basic map of the landscape it had built as I flew, trying to use it to figure out where other bands of travelers might find their temporary home.
Then I saw it. Right on the edge of my screen. A collection of rocks or… I made the image bigger, manipulating it with my fingers on the screen. Ruins. Some sort of constructions that had been broken by years of neglect. Left to rot like the rest of this hopeless planet.
This had to be a good place to look for what my instinct told me I needed. For some reason, I just knew that this was where I needed to be. I allowed my ship to drift closer, the engines low so as not to alert anyone to my presence. Stealth mode would only take me so far.
I pulled away from my scope, then pressed my eye back to it with a start, blowing out a long, slow breath. There she was. A magnificent human specimen, her skin dust-covered but still gleaming where the sun caught it. She appeared to be taking on some sort of spotted creature that looked like it could use her limbs as toothpicks.
I watched, unable to look away from their battle. Knowledge burned in my gut—she was exactly what Satyan wanted. Something about her said warrior. Fierce, but I assumed the sheer nature of femininity made her moldable. Maybe I could provide human females to fulfill orders, after all. A fierce one, a genteel one, a meek one… all manner of basic personalities. A strange kind of excitement twisted through me at the possibilities. I wasn’t sure what it was about finally being able to see one of the humans that had my mind racing with hope.
