Jackson was the first to notice. I felt him tug on the twine from the end of the line. He was warning us without words. We all immediately knew what he was happening. The spider-daemon had disappeared from the ceiling and we had no idea where it had gone.
“Where is it?” I whispered to Michael.
“Just keep moving,” he said leading us closer to the dropship.
Nate turned on his light for just a second. He had pointed it just to the right of where we had been standing. The spider-daemon was there. It was watching us. Studying us. We could see it’s hundred sod fangs drip some kind of fluidic venom from it’s mouth to the floor. It darted towards us.
“I told you to keep moving,” shouted Michael who was the first to fire at the spider. It only took a few shots to kill it.
“That was easy, we should have done that when we walked in,” said Nate.
“Guys, the eggs, the eggs have hatched,” said Jackson pointing his light up in the air.
We all started running towards the dropship. We dropped the twine. It felt like we were stampeding. Running for our lives from the darkness that surrounded us to the safe small quarters that awaited us. Around us we saw hordes of small infant like daemons. They looked like humans. Human children with horns and sharp teeth. I was hesitant to fire at first. Hesitant till I saw their eyes, their claws, their jagged teeth and veiny skin. They looked like they had just been born covered in some kind of alien goo. It took three bangs against the backdoor of the dropship to finally get it to open. I could remember Michael doing that to a computer once when it wouldn’t start up. Funny how when technology doesn’t do what we want we lash out at it our first instinct to bang it against something. In this particular case it worked. Michael’s knocking had caused the dust that had settled inside the frame to give way and open. We climbed inside firing at the infant daemons as Lt. Barker and Nate made their way to the controls. Lt. Barker took the pilot seat and began firing the engines. The infant daemons were smoked as we began to lift from the ground.
We sealed the backdoor of the ship only not all of us were inside.
“Jackson is still out there, I’m going for him, take us eight feet off the ground I doubt those things can jump like the grunts and yokai can, they seem feral driven only by instinct,” said Michael.
“I can’t do that, we have to continue with the mission,” said Lt. Barker.
“I’m not asking,” screamed Michael angrily.
“I’m not going to do that, I’m sorry, Jackson is on his own,” he replied in a stern voice.
“He also has Emily. He was carrying her just as he would carry any of us with that super strength of his. I’m not a soldier, I may have been trained by the U.E.D but I’m here on my own free will. I’m not going to take your damn orders. What is the point in saving humanity if we can’t save each other,” shouted Michael as he tore open the cargo door and began firing on the small daemons that began surrounding us. Lt. Barker wasn’t listening to reason.
“This is a suicide mission, we have all made our choice to go along for this, none of us are going to get off this world alive, you should just consider him lucky, each of you are only tools, weapons of war. We trained you because you have superpowers. Powers that real soldiers should have had not you fucking misfits,” the last words of Lt. Barker. The dropship began to rise further into the air. The door to the outside world began to open ever so slightly. Twisting and breaking apart as it fell driven by commands given inside the dropship. I pointed my gun at Lt. Barker, “We’re not leaving,” I said just as Nate shot him in the center of the forehead.
“He wasn’t going to let us stay,” Nate said still holding his rifle.We all looked at him in disbelief as he went on saying how he knew how to fly the dropship and had already memorized the coordinates for the rift generator, the source of power that led the daemons invasion into our world. Nobody disagreed. We all wanted to say how there could have been a different way but none of us did. I’m sure now even Nate was regretting what he did. He had chosen Jackson and Emily over Lt. Barker… over the whole damn world just as I was about to do the same. I was about to do the same. I’m not sure if I could have done it. I was threatening him but it was an empty threat. I wanted all of us to live. I had hoped that even if we destroyed the rift generator we would find a way to survive. Maybe Nate would even come up with some brilliant scheme to get us home. This was not a part of the plan.
“Spotlights, this should help,” said Nate flipping a switch and lighting up the room. The outside world was dark, it was still night outside we needed all the light we could to see for both Jackson and Emily and the mission.
There he was. Surrounded by a horde of daemons. He had his back to two walls and had placed Emily in the corner. The small daemons were surrounding him but attacking one at a time. There were a few grunts there as well. They looked like they had lost parts of their bodies. Two had lost parts of their arms, another a piece of it’s tail. The few grunts were taking turns attacking. I watched from the dropship aiming down my rifle and sniping a few as Jackson used his own hands to tear through the chest of one. He held it’s heart in his hand for a moment. The daemons had similar anatomy to humans. Their heart, lungs, stomach, etc all in the same place. Their muscles were denser though, their skin harder. A grunt weighed a good two hundred to three hundred pounds. Jackson’s was making small work of them though he was beginning to lose his stamina. They were wearing him down. If we had left him there would have been little to no chance he would have made it out of the moon rabbit alive.
Michael, Cassandra, and I began firing at the daemons and clearing a path for Jackson to grab Emily and jump onboard the ship. He did exactly as we thought. We worked in unison like a real team. We laid Emily down on the floor. Jackson was pretty hurt but nothing Cassandra couldn’t quickly fix. When we flew out of the hangar of the moon rabbit we could see just how much damage the ship had taken. It looked nothing like it had before. Parts of it had become mangled under the ground while others shot up like bent skyscrapers tearing into the sky and thinning out like crooked arrows. The sun was starting to rise and we could still see the forests burning. The higher we flew the more ruins we saw. The paradise this place must have been. Nate began to fly us higher towards mountains that we saw in the distance.
“Past the mountains there is a valley, the city of the dead, one of the Ema capitols and where the created the first daemon husks. It’s also the place were they built the rift generator. From what I can tell the temperature drops dramatically in that area. Probably caused by a series of anomalies so we are going to have to salvage this ship for some more gear, hopefully some winter survival gear if they have it stored in the storage containers under the floor. Shouldn’t be too hard once we get inside. The grunts can’t stand the cold and they never expected humans to make it this far,” Nate spoke giving us a breakdown of what was to come as we flew over the green plains and ravines below us. Before we reached the mountains we landed in an isolated spot and ate what was left of the protein bars we had on us.
We landed near a waterfall to rest. It looked beautiful. I thought about that time the two of us had gone hiking about an hour and a half away from where we lived. We spent the whole day out in the woods. Somehow being out there in the sun close to nature had made both of us feel at peace. I can remember climbing the slippery slops and the small cave we found behind the falls. We stood there sticking our faces under the cold water as it fell around us. We tasted the river and kissed as our faces dried in the cool breeze that blew around us. That was one of the happiest days of my life. See your eyes squint as you smiled and stared at me. The way your chin was slightly crooked and you had that one hair that was always out of place. The small scar below your eye. That was the moment I knew I wanted to spend my life with you.
Michael, Cassandra and I took off our clothes and went swimming. For a moment I thought I saw the two of them kissing under the falls but then again it was probably my mind playin
g tricks on me. There was something going on between the two. I didn’t say a word. I had always hoped Michael would find love, a love like the two of us shared. He had been in several serious relationships even married but nothing lasted. Sometimes it made me afraid that the same would happen to us. You and your brother were so much alike that I felt afraid one day our world, our dream would end or that the two of us would become disunite. I also worried that by worrying I would cause the friction myself. I spoke to you about it so many times and you always reassured me. That was the best part of us. Not only did we share our love for life, art, interests, family, etc but you were my best friend.
I was reminded of Earth. I felt for a moment like I was back home waiting for you to arrive. I could see small animals, not daemons from the corner of my eye and for the first time since we came to this world I noticed small birds in the sky. They looked like a cross between a bat, a sparrow, and a cardinal. They were flying in a wave that made them look like a small school of fish in the sky. I could see small furry animals in the woods. Like fluffy rabbits only they had several extra limbs big blue eyes and fox like tails. This planet had an environment like Earth that was separate from the daemons - much the same way our environment is separated from humans. We were in the wild. These animals were alive and thriving even with the chaos that made up their world and the creatures that had been created on the surface. How much of this world had the daemons lost back to nature. I was beginning to believe that the only thing they cared about was using their technology to infect our minds. They were so high off our fear that any advancements of their own had been halted. The daemons were lost in their sins and blind to the beauty around them.
I went back inside the ship giving the two of them alone time. I laid down under a small sleeping bag underneath the benches that lined the sides of the dropship. I was alone. The first time since I woke up. The first time I wanted - the first time I needed to be alone since all of this began. I pulled out a picture I had of the two of us. It was something I hardly ever looked at. It felt impossible to look at. As the memories flooded my mind all I could think about was how badly I missed your smile. The taste of your lips. The glimmer in your eye. I missed you shouting at shows, stumbling over words as you read. Even your many flaws. Each flaw only seemed to make you that much more perfect.The photo was something I kept hidden away tucked deep in the depths of my jacket buried under armor and gear. It was faded, nearly ruined wrinkled on all sides. I had it printed years ago. At one time before the dreaming I had been collecting small things here and there. Movie tickets, photos, bookmarks, take-out menus. I had planned to make a scrapbook. A small gift to surprise you. The photo now looked like it had been chewed and peed on. I must have stared at it for hours before I finally fell asleep.
We had all the time in the world. Since years here were mere minutes on the other side we took this time to live in the present. We needed to rest if we were to be prepared both mentally and physically for the fight that was about to come. Five years. Tomorrow you would wake up. Hopefully anyway. With the bridge between our world and theirs destroyed surely the Perseverance would make quick work of whatever was left on the other side. I would die here but you would live. They would tell you we died on the other side of the rift if they ever figure that part out. No most likely they would tell you we died in battle protecting the world. They would have no idea what happened here. No idea that we had been at war with another reality. They would only know that we have won. It only made sense. We were misfits and we were not ever going home and just as Lt. Barker had said this was a suicide mission. I gathered up a new set of combat armor that had been stored inside the dropship. I was lucky it was just my size. There was a soft blue and purple tint to the grey texture especially when the right kind of light hit it. I couldn’t help but feel that you would have loved it.
Angels fall first
Emily woke up. She was near a hundred percent. We spent a little over fourteen hours at the falls before gearing up and taking off again. When we set off we looked down at the falls below us. It was amazing how peaceful parts of this world looked. Within a few hours we could see the daemon structures in front of us. We flew through two towering mountains that had been carved with daemon features and the world seemed to change. We were flying in during dusk. There were more clouds in the sky so we took cover in them. Below us we could see daemon creatures flying with their wings spread out wide. They were looking towards the ground.
“Probably feral, scouting the border below us,” said Nate.
“How far are we from the rift?” I asked.
“This world is pretty much surrounded by it, charged particles in their atmosphere create the rift that allows them to cross between their world and ours, in a way it is their only means to escape this hellhole as the technology they used to create it has trapped them on this planet, if they had other worlds out there they won’t be visiting them anytime soon,” said Nate.
“Once we destroy it what is to stop them from building it again?” asked Cassandra as she sat cleaning her rifle.
“They lack the resources now, they are so addicted to our fear that they also lack the necessary skill set to build it again. From what we can tell they may have been an advanced species at one time but they are little more then creatures now acting on pure instinct and greed,” said Nate grabbing a small brush and handing it over to Cassandra.
“We’re also going to blow so much of it to hell they won’t be able to rebuild,” said Jackson.
“About that, do we have a plan?” I asked.
“This ship has a nuclear reactor, did you forget that? Our intel from the moon rabbit suggests that the main generator is buried somewhere underground but they have several barriers in the way. The whole reason we are all going is so that we will have to take out the barriers on foot. Nate and I have been discussing it and we think that is why they failed, either way we should know exactly what we are up against pretty soon,” said Jackson.
He could not have said it fast enough. By the time we passed the towering mountains we could see a large beam of red energy shooting up from the ground below. It looked like waterfall of molten lava that flowed straight up into the sky and dispersed itself into the atmosphere. The rift generator was somewhere below it. We could see thousands of daemons now. Each were sitting scattered throughout the ruins of some ancient Ema city. The city looked like a cross between a medieval castle, an old Japanese town and a buddhist temple. It looked like they were deep inside some kind of mediation. We monitored their presence from the dropship. They hardly moved even as we began dropping out of the clouds.
“Psychic energy, right now they are projecting themselves into the rift feeding off our reality,” said Nate.
“That’s a guess right? What happens if we start shooting at them?” asked Michael.
“We would disrupt the flow of energy between their minds and the minds of those on the other side of the rift in our world, sleepers might start to wake up, or die, or nothing might happen at all. Who knows how many we would have to kill to make a difference, we wouldn’t even know if we were making a difference,” said Nate.
“So not worth the risk,” said Emily.
“How many are down there?” I asked staring at the screen and what looked like thousands of red dots below us.
“Hundreds of thousands, this is their feeding ground,” said Nate.
We were high above the ground when we opened the cargo bay doors. We peered out at the daemon landscape. This part of the world was not the paradise we had seen before. This part of the world was decayed, tattered, loose. I felt like I was on some distant planet. When you imagine hell this is the place you see. The darkness that surrounded us, the red light from the rift that made everything look like it was lit by fire. We could smell the sulfur in the stale air and feel the heat from the ground below us. We were already sweating. Their were dozens of new types of daemons too. Some looked like ogres or imps while others were giants. So
me even looked like cyclops with one red eye and sharp crooked teeth. Others looked starved like humans with tails, horns, and fangs with bird like feet. Like lab experiments gone horribly wrong. Some of the daemons with wings sat upon small pedestals looking outwards at the crowd below. On occasion we saw one or two snatch a smaller imp up in the air and rip it apart reaching it’s jagged jaw down and grabbing at it while mid air.
“Their bodies allow them to live forever without food or water but some must still enjoy killing and eating flesh, some things never change. Cannibals feeding off the weak so that the strong can enjoy more of the psychic high, less to go around I guess,” said Emily passing the controls off to Nate.
We floated for a moment mid-air. As Nate turned the ship towards the beam of red light we could see the massive crater that housed it. It was surrounded by metallic grey support structures that rose up around it in small half arches strapped with beams that looked like they had been welded together to create some kind of shield. The outside was also protected by several large canons that looked like they belonged several hundred years in the future. Michael picked up a small drone and tablet. He motioned for the drone to fly outwards and it did. He was amazed for a moment that there was nothing interfering with the signal between the two electronic items. The drone had been cheap. It was small. Not military but rather the kind a fancy real estate agent would use to take aerial shots of properties overhead. Every few seconds an image would appear on the tablet load and disappear. The drone was transmitting fine until it came above the crater. It was pitch black inside with the exception of the light from the rift itself. Why they had buried it so deep was a mystery to us but I imagined it went halfway down to the core of this world but there was no way to know. The crater itself was well defended surrounded by automatic turrets and canons. The small drone was disintegrated by a blue energy beam from the far left. The last shot we received was what looked like a power generator on left hand side of the crater from where we were hovering.
Sleepers (Convergence Book 1) Page 14
