The Antithesis- The Complete Pentalogy

by Terra Whiteman

  They said nothing at first, looking me over. How horrifying I was—covered in the entrails of their friends, red lights beaming viciously from the eyes of my mask. “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said the male, gun still pointed at me.

  “Then you should also know how pointless your resistance is.” I waved to my men. “Put your guns down.”

  They did so, reluctantly.

  “See?” I said. “You two can just walk right by, I promise. All I want is your card.”

  After another moment of silence, the female leaned in to her partner. “Seyestin, give him the card.”

  “I’m no traitor,” he snarled.

  “No one called you a traitor. I’ve given you a choice between life and death. You can either give me the card willingly or I’ll take it from your corpse. Don’t be a hero.”

  I could tell my men were wondering what the fuck I was doing. Yes, I’d admit that this wasn’t typical behavior of me, but a gunfight in front of the command station couldn’t happen. Raith would definitely hear it.

  Finally the angel soldier, Seyestin, reached a free hand into his coat pocket. He dropped the card on the floor and kicked it toward me. It slid across the tile, stopping in front of my boots.

  I picked it up and stepped aside, gesturing for them to pass. They inched by, Seyestin holding Cereli behind him, gun waving chaotically in our faces. When they cleared our group, they took off in a sprint down the bridge.

  “Why did you do that?” asked Lt. Geiss. “They’re going to alert the soldiers.”

  True, I could have exploded their heads once they’d been in range, but I always kept my promises, and I’d promised to let them go. A man was only as honorable as his word. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” I said, looking at the unguarded door. “We’re at the end of the road.”

  Card in hand, I moved toward the command station door. My men followed close behind, guns raised once again.

  ***

  Commander Lucifer Raith stood at the navigation desk, a digital map of Sanctum and all of its activity flashing on a screen. He had both of his hands on the desk, a fierce look in his pale, blue eyes as he watched it.

  “General Arahman, place our primary strike force out of defense. We’re resuming our attack on Eroqam.”

  Silence.

  Lucifer turned to General Arahman’s podium, finding him sprawled over it, dead. Blood trickled down the crystal surface—everything on the Ark was glass or crystal—and then his eyes rose to me, standing in the doorway.

  Before anyone else could react, I stepped inside and my men came through the door behind me, executing everyone except for Raith.

  Stunned, the Angel Commander looked over the bodies at his feet, and then back at me.

  My grin faltered for just a minute when I realized how tall he really was—easily six and a half feet. “Hi,” I said. “You didn’t want to come to me, so I thought I’d come to you. Nice place you got here. Very shiny.”

  Lucifer said nothing, staring daggers.

  I removed my mask and inhaled, thankful for some fresh air. Then I nodded to the communications panel that General Arahman was bleeding all over. “Order your troops to retreat from Sanctum.”

  Raith’s gaze slid to the panel, but he didn’t budge.

  “Really?!” I screamed, waving my gun in his face. “Do I need to show you that I’ve never been more dead-fucking-serious in my entire life?!”

  He moved to the panel and radioed for his troops. “This is your Commander. Cease all attacks on Sanctum. I repeat, cease all attacks on Sanctum and return to the Ark.” He let the radio slip from his hands. “And what do you plan to do now, Qaira? Over four thousand soldiers are about to return to the very ship that you’re on. I doubt you and your handful of enforcers could fight your way through all of us.”

  “I know how your wars work,” I said. “If your leader is killed, the war is over. Until a new one is assigned, soldiers won’t fight. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yahweh has told you much about us.”

  I smiled.

  He tilted his head. “Then why am I not dead yet?”

  Before I could respond, Lucifer’s hand shot toward the side of his desk, mashing a button. The door behind me slid shut, sealing us off from my men. An alarm shrieked, and the room lit up in flashing light, casting both of us in red iridescence.

  We were alone.

  Lucifer disappeared from view, the flashing lights making it difficult to see. I caught a blur on my right and felt his fist against the side of my face. The force of his punch sent me staggering into the wall. I dropped my gun, and it slid across the room, disappearing underneath the navigation desk. Before I could recover, he grabbed my coat and flung me headfirst into a panel of computers.

  He was stronger than I’d anticipated. Taller and stronger. I didn’t want to use my ability. Not on him. Tearing Lucifer to pieces bare-handedly would feel much more satisfying, but he was making that ambition very difficult.

  I feigned injury and he grabbed me again. My forehead collided with his nose, and it crunched against the blow. Lucifer stumbled and I tackled him, pummeling his face as we hit the floor.

  A gun barrel gleamed in the light, just before it cracked me upside the jaw. My vision blurred and Lucifer shoved me off. I rolled behind the navigation desk as he opened fire, missing me on all accounts.

  When he ran out of bullets I sprang from the desk, a computer screen held over my head. It caught him square in the chest, wires and microchips exploding everywhere. Lucifer was down again and I lunged at him, ready to end this.

  He kicked a rolling chair into my path and I tripped, landing hard on my hands and knees. When I looked up, I caught a glimpse of his shadow fleeing through a door at the back of the room. Commander Raith was running.

  Running from me.

  Gunfire and screams erupted from the hall; the angels had found my men. I wanted to search for the button that unsealed the door, but Raith was getting away and I couldn’t even afford a second to think. The door from which he fled led into another portion of the command station, sealed off by a glass wall. My wings released and I dove through it, sliding to a stop in an explosion of crystal shards, cutting him off.

  Lucifer crashed into me and we rolled along the floor, exchanging blows. Eventually he stopped moving and I got to my feet, heavy breathed. The gunfire had intensified and I couldn’t hear my men anymore. An organic kill was no longer an option.

  My eyes narrowed; Lucifer held his head, screaming.

  I upped the severity, inch by inch. Blood trickled from his nose, ears and eyes. Pretty soon he was reduced to a shriveled, moaning mess. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  “Here we are,” I whispered, kneeling at his side. “Just how I always knew it would end. All you had to do was leave and this could have been avoided.”

  Raith looked up at me, blood streaming down his face, mouth contorted into a furious snarl. “I’ll kill you—”

  I kicked him in the stomach and he curled. “Yes, I can really see that being a possibility here.”

  A pinch on the back of my neck.

  My smile faded as I felt for the source. My fingers grazed something cold and metallic protruding from the base of my neck. I pulled it out.

  A dart.

  Chills plummeted down my spine. My body felt heavy; pinpricks bit at my arms. I turned, and then my eyes widened.

  Yahweh Telei stood with his back to the wall, a gun clutched in his trembling hand. At first I couldn’t believe my eyes, considering my vision was tunneling and I had to squint to see him properly. “…You.”

  The kid said nothing, staring up at me in terror.

  “What have you done?” I shouted, advancing on him. “Tell me what you’ve done!”

  Yahweh tried to run but I caught him and slammed him back against the wall by his neck. I found it hard to even curl my hand at this point. The room was swaying and nausea crept up my throat. All I wanted to
do was sleep.

  “I-I’m sorry…” he choked, loose tears falling from his eyes. “I’m sorry, Qaira! I can’t let you kill my father!”

  I shouldn’t have let him go. I shouldn’t have kept him alive, but when I tried to correct that mistake, nothing happened. Three times I tried to explode his head to no avail. “What was in that dart?!” I screamed. “What was in it, you fucking white?!”

  The fear on Yahweh’s face vanished. “I told you this wouldn’t end well for you. Do you remember?”

  I could barely hear him. All of my senses were shutting down. There was movement in my very limited peripherals and I spun to find Lucifer right behind me. Everything was a blur. In an instant I hit the ground, feeling his fist against my face, the coppery taste of blood invading my mouth.

  And then I felt nothing; tasted nothing.

  Everything went black.

  XXXI

  SUBJUGATION

  FRESH PAIN RIPPLED ACROSS MY FACE; light shined behind my eyelids.

  The pain forced a cringe across my dry, blood-caked lips, which brought forth even more pain. But the pain was second to my surprise that I was awake. I was alive.

  My eyes opened like tiny slits and I saw a white room bereft of any furniture, save for a stretcher across the room. I tried to move but realized that I was bound by straps around my neck and wrists, keeping my arms twisted to a boiler pipe. I tried to break the straps by force several times, but failed. I was too weak, or they were too strong. Probably both.

  Whatever Yahweh had shot me with was still in effect. I felt drunk and tired, tingles ran up and down my spine and through my extremities.

  I couldn’t stop wondering why Raith had kept me alive.

  The door opened at the far side of the room, near the stretcher, and two guards entered first. Behind them, Lucifer and Yahweh appeared side by side, looking solemn.

  Anger filled my chest like steaming water would a mug, but all I had the strength to do was stare. Yahweh broke through the guards and approached me. Lucifer hung back, looking at me in a way that I’d never seen. One of surprise and slight regret—as if to say ‘I can’t believe you spared him.’

  Surely Yahweh had told him everything that had happened, and the thought of Lucifer knowing about my mercy for the kid brought a rush of heat to my cheeks. Shame was too weak a word. I’d been fooled by a child.

  Without a word, Yahweh knelt in front of me, syringe in hand. I knew what he meant to do and inched away futilely, deeper into the corner, shutting my eyes. He tilted back my head and injected the syringe into my neck. Gravity flattened my body then, pushing me to the floor as my eyes rolled into my head and I battled seizure.

  Yahweh watched me writhe, sadness in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Qaira,” he whispered.

  I heard the words but could barely make sense of them. I wouldn’t have responded either way.

  “Get him up,” ordered Raith, and rough hands fumbled with my restraints and forced me to my feet. My knees buckled several times on the way to the door, and the guards dropped me once, one of them muttering, “He’s heavy.”

  I was slammed into a chair at a long metal table and a guard fastened the chain around my neck to one of its legs. I leaned back and tried to focus on the ceiling, which spun violently and I had to close my eyes or else I would vomit.

  Lucifer placed a glass of water in front of me. “The sedative has dehydrated you. Part of what you’re feeling is water-loss. Drink, or you’ll die.”

  He didn’t need to tell me. I grabbed the glass with shaking hands and downed it in four gulps, gasping as the water punched my gut from the inside. Raith looked at Yahweh, who had lingered in the doorway.

  “Is it safe to be alone with him?”

  “It should be. That sedative should stay in his bloodstream for a couple of hours.”

  Raith nodded. “Thank you, Yahweh. You may leave us.”

  The door closed, and then there was silence.

  Lucifer looked over my wounds, indecisiveness behind his gaze. The water had helped my concentration a little, and I stared back, glassy-eyes filled with contempt.

  He probably looked as bad as me, maybe even worse. One of his eyes was welted shut and blood caked the side of his face, tinting his hairline pink.

  “You’re clever,” he said, sighing. “I’ll give you that much. But your intelligence ends where you thought my son would actually help you kill me and destroy his own people.”

  “What was in that dart?” I demanded, slurring.

  “A drug that reduces parietal-lobe activity, from which Yahweh theorized your ability stems. He showed me his notebook and told me that he’d been working on it in captivity.”

  That notebook. The kid had been conspiring against me the whole time. How could I have been so stupid as to not be suspicious of that notebook? All I did was hang my head.

  “And my men?” I asked, this time much more quietly.

  “Unfortunately they were killed by my men outside of the command station.”

  I was waiting for him to bring up Leid and the Court of Enigmus, but he never did. Yahweh hadn’t told him that part, which came as a surprise. And a relief.

  “The inhibitor effects aren’t permanent,” he assured me, “but necessary for us to have a civil conversation. I imagine you’d be quite belligerent otherwise.”

  “Civil conversation.” I forced a laugh. “Why haven’t you killed me?”

  “Yahweh argued for your life,” said Lucifer, reclining in his seat. “Make no mistake I was ready to shoot you in the head, but then he told me about your act of mercy after your men brutalized him.”

  Ugh.

  “He also told me that you are worth more alive than dead, and after some thought, I agree.”

  “Well, you might as well kill me,” I said. “I’m not negotiating with you.”

  Lucifer smiled, showing me a row of blood-stained teeth. “I don’t expect you to. Not you, anyway.”

  The guards had re-emerged through the door and he nodded to them. “Take him to the communications bridge. I’ll be there shortly.”

  ***

  I was slammed into another chair—this one with some padding, at least.

  That didn’t stop the hot white pain that shot from my tailbone as the guards threw me down without any regard. But I was too drugged to care.

  Screens flickered in front of me, foreign in appearance from the ones at Eroqam, made of flat, almost fluid-looking surfaces framed by blue crystal. The screens flashed, casting a glow across my face and I squinted. Its light burned my eyes.

  There were other angels in the room. Analysts. I could feel their condemning stares on my back. I ignored them, squinting at the screen.

  The weight of the chair shifted, and in my peripherals two hands rested on either side of me. Large hands; long, strong fingers, white skin.

  “Connect to Eroqam,” said the owner of those hands. Lucifer Raith.

  “Sir,” said a voice far away, “who do you wish to speak to?”

  “Ah, right. Normally I would ask for Qaira, but I suppose now I’ll seek his next in charge.” Raith paused, looking down at me. His eyes shined with antipathy. “That would be your brother, yes? What’s his name again—Ara?”

  No.

  No, he couldn’t see me like this.

  I clenched my jaw, saying nothing.

  That had been confirmation enough. “Request the audience of Commandant Ara Eltruan over the televised line.”

  A moment of silence.

  “We’re on standby while they locate him, sir.”

  “Thank you.” Those hands tapped their fingers on the chair-back, goading me to break them. “You could save yourself the humiliation and surrender now, you know.”

  “Get fucked, you Archaean piece of shit.”

  “… Very well.”

  The screen flashed and a light below it blinked green. The image of my brother melded into view. At first Ara looked angry, but then he saw me, and the anger faded into surprise. Then
, dread.

  “I have bad news, Commandant,” announced Lucifer. “Although you can see that for yourself.”

  Ara said nothing, staring at me. I couldn’t bear his look and cast my eyes down. He looked worried and scared, two things that my brother should have never felt. Not for me.

  Somewhere in the communications room, Leid was watching, too. This I knew, and it only made the shame even worse.

  “Here are the terms,” said Raith, delving right in. “I’m willing to hand over the Regent in exchange for your surrender.” Ara opened his mouth, but Raith interjected, “We don’t want Sanctum. You can keep it. All I want is for you to command your army to lay down their weapons and allow the Ark into The Atrium.”

  Ara hesitated, shifting his gaze between Lucifer and I. The fear in his eyes waned—indecisiveness, conflict.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “If you reject my terms, Qaira will stay with us. Indefinitely. I’m sure more than a few angels here would like to meet him.”

  Ara looked at me again. Fear, desperation.

  “Commandant, as your Regent, I order you not to surrender,” I said, but it was more a plea than a command.

  “Qaira, I can’t let you—”

  “Don’t surrender!”

  Ara glanced off screen, looking at someone.

  Looking at her.

  “I’m a patient man, Commandant,” pressed Raith. “But lately my patience has worn thin. What will it be?”

  Ara kept looking off-screen. He shook his head, communicating.

  No. No, don’t look at her. Don’t let them know she’s there.

  But Commander Raith had already picked up on the unseen presence. “Who else is in that room with you, Commandant?”

  Ara darted off-screen, whispering, “No!”

  Arguing. Muffled, incoherent, but it was clear that the other person was female.

  Again, Ara. “No, you can’t! Stop!”

  And then, Leid. Center screen, violet eyes ablaze with enmity. She stared at Raith like one might a maggot, a chagrined smile painted across her lips.

  No.

  No, no, no…

  “No!” I screamed, unable to hold in that thought anymore. “What are you doing?!”