by K. L. Lewis
“Nah, they were hogging it,” he said.
The buttery scent of hot bread swirled in his nose, and DeMarcus followed it to the pretzel maker. He stared through the glass at the pretzels baking in the heat, and a claw grabbed three unsalted pretzels and popped them out of the dispenser. Sekhmet smiled at him as she put her card back in her purse and gave him two to eat on the way to the Magna-rink. His belly full, and his head in high spirits, everything turned sour when the rink was closed for maintenance. What a loss.
Sekhmet shrugged and smiled. “We can still head to the park,” she said.
Yeah. And at least they And at least they had this moment together as they made their way over. The Pentamid Park was filled with kids and teens playing and hanging about, and DeMarcus darted around the playground with the other kids in a game of tag while his mother sat on the benches with her OmniMorph in hand. Getting hot and sweating from all the running, he went to his mother’s side to rest, panting in exhaustion. “Having fun?” she asked him.
“Yeah, just tired,” he said, looking on his mother’s OmniMorph.
Playing on its screen was an old video-message from his father that she started at the beginning. “Hey, you two, how’s it been? We’ve got some immigrants from Earth that seem to be settling in, some transferring to the other colonies. Still feels odd being an Overseer. But…enough about that. I hope you’re doing well, DeMarcus. Don’t know when I’ll see you again, but make me proud down there!”
He was doing well alright. Glancing at their vigilant Gentili watching from afar on a light post, DeMarcus noticed the drone’s head flick to one the Pentamid’s sides, alerting him to a pale human man with a limp and cane hobbling up to the park. A pretty ancient way of getting about when the man could have a leg brace instead.
A human girl skipped along with him, then went over to the slides. It all seemed so innocent, but DeMarcus kept watch as the man came near his mother, who tugged her shawl toward her eyes.
The man glanced at Sekhmet’s OmniMorph, then gave her a warm smile. “Wow, a Kairo Wintergold Mark 3, isn’t it?” He asked. “Very expensive.”
Sekhmet smiled. “It’s worth the cost. With all the work helping this city rebuild, I need the best right now.”
“Rec-work, huh? And I thought I had it rough.”
“Hey mom, I’m thirsty,” DeMarcus said. “We got anything to drink?”
Sekhmet reached into her purse and gave him her card. “You can get a soda from the vending machine.”
DeMarcus went to the vending machine behind them and bought his soda, but before he got a sip his ears rang with loud chants coming up the park’s sides. Everyone in the park froze at the crowd of humans tromping over, glaring as they came closer. DeMarcus noticed many of them holding those same sigils of the Human Defense Front from the Galleria—not them again.
The man by Sekhmet grumbled and rose on his cane, calling his daughter over as the other children ran to their parents. The crowd stopped, and a man in blue robes stood before them to begin his sermon. “I am Ergin Mann, representative of the Chapter of the Gulf, here to bring salvation! To liberate humankind from the iron clad demands imposed on us by the Iuvian devils from the stars. They seek to have us live among those born from the source that destroyed our old world hundreds of years ago, but do the shear-mouths really have a place among us? Do they—”
“This crap again?” A human woman interrupted.
A long-eared parahuman man stood with her. “Go spout your nonsense somewhere else!”
DeMarcus felt his mother tug him away, and their Gentili flapped with them as they proceeded out of the park. A peaceful moment ruined just like that. And it grew tense when protestor pointed at them. “Hey look! One of them is running away,” she said.
Sekhmet turned back with a taunting smile. “Because we can’t afford to waste our time with reactionary crybabies of the HDF,” she said, sparking a chuckle from DeMarcus.
“Or because you can’t handle the truth!” shouted another protester. “Go back to the zoos where you belong!”
The human with a limp stood up to the HDF crowd. “Why don’t you punks crawl back into your caves?”
Ergin walked in front of the man. “Traitor. You dare fight against your fellow humans?”
But the man stood his ground. “You’re a traitor to everything we’ve accomplished ages ago! Centuries of progress, decades of rebuilding. How long does it take for people like you to finally get a clue? To think our own human ancestors once went through this in the past, ages before the Great Wipe, only for their descendants to repeat it all over again—you who spit on everything they struggled to live for an era they could only dream of! You’re a disgrace to humankind!”
The parahumans and humans behind the man murmured in agreement. In a fit of rage, Ergin pushed the crippled human onto the ground. “You’re a disgrace!”
DeMarcus found his hand curling into a fist as the man towered over the crippled human and his daughter protecting him. DeMarcus made a step toward Ergin until his mother held him back, bolted across the field, and punched Ergin off his feet, sending him flying back into the crowd behind him. There was a hidden celebration in his head as he stood by and watched, her tail swishing about as she stood between Ergin and the elder, her arms crossed as she looked down on the HDF leader. “My how low you people sunk,” she said.
Ergin met her eyes with rage. “What monster are you, bitch?” he said.
DeMarcus gasped as his mother took off her shawl, revealing the scar on her face as she snarled back. “Excuse me? I’m the ‘bitch’ who kept you from killing all of us during the Solar War. Maybe you’ve heard of me?”
DeMarcus jumped at the chatter of the crowd behind his mother, murmurs of the Iuvian war hero standing among them. Dang it, so much for avoiding attention!
But it was a small price to pay as he watched Ergin scuttle to his feet and back away with the rest of his following while his mother stomped toward them with fangs bared. “Oh, you scared? Yeah, I remember when we took you Fronties seriously during the war—those days where bombs and bullets scarred my face and killed many of my friends. And here I am taking time out of my damn life to help rebuild your homes and fight to keep you safe, and you thank me by mocking my race?” She cracked her knuckles. “How about I do the other militants a favor then?”
The Fronties screamed and scattered away from Sekhmet, a sight DeMarcus couldn’t resist laughing at. But with a crowd building around his mother, he wanted to get out fast! He plowed his way to her and tugged her arm. “Mom, I think we need to go.”
With help from his daughter, the crippled human rose to his feet, his glassy eyes glued on Sekhmet. “You’re really Sekhmet Leona?” he asked.
DeMarcus wished she didn’t answer. “I am,” she said. “Sorry for keeping that secret.”
The Gentili glided down to the crowd, circling overhead as everyone took pictures of Sekhmet and DeMarcus. The crippled human pleaded the crowd to stop, smiling with tears down his cheek as he turned to Sekhmet. “I…I don’t believe it! All this time, I never expected to meet you in person! It’s a real honor!”
“The pleasure’s all mine,” Sekhmet said with a nod.
The man turned to DeMarcus. “You are very lucky to have a mother like her.” DeMarcus chuckled and hid behind his mother. “A shy one, isn’t he?” the man said.
Sekhmet brought DeMarcus back in front of the crowd. “He is. He’s barely had time to make friends, and unfortunately we’ll be leaving to the Great Lake Region.”
The Gentili cawed and made a swoop down. It was time to leave, and Sekhmet held DeMarcus close as the crowd made a path as they left. To think that his mother broke their one rule—here’s hoping they stay quiet on the Terranet.
Arriving home, it was time for DeMarcus’s studies, starting with mathematics, which he absorbed with little effort that his eyes began wandering at the window. Advanced formulas aren’t so difficult when the program teaches you everything.
/> His mother called his attention. “DeMarcus?”
DeMarcus snapped to attention. “Huh?”
“I was moving onto history,” Sekhmet answered. It was the topic most taught, mainly over the treatment of Parahumans in the Era of Hell that was widespread in the old United Costal Republics before the Fracture. Out of the three countries that divided the UCR, one of them, a country mocked as the “American Empire” in the text, enacted oppressive laws and heinous crimes toward parahumans and the regular humans that stood with them. And those people fought back. Hard.
Everyone was aware of the Convergence Movement, said the be the first of the modern-day militants on Earth. They were the first enemies of the Human Defense Front, and a terror that razed much the American Empire before the war. Afterwards, they fell apart, and their symbols were often sprayed in parts of the ruins despite having never been active for decades.
Knowing this, DeMarcus always wondered why his mother left the safety of the Iuvian colonies to visit Earth back then. He sensed when the records and text got personal whenever she made soft growls at her OmniMorph. “They called parahumans the Post-Wipe Sin. It’s amazing how stupid people can be after the Anno Domini era.”
“What does that have to do with the American Empire and their attacks on parahumans?” DeMarcus asked. “Maybe they were scared of change?”
Going by the stern look his mother gave him, maybe he shouldn’t have said that. “Your father used to believe that too,” she said, “until he realized they used that as an excuse. Hatred is often learned, yet most people tend to know better. Or I’d like to think they do. We never saw the UCR splitting apart, or the Solar War. And we especially never saw the Crow Storm Uprising. Then again, Iuvia once had this problem too.”
She switched to the History of Iuvia, the most of which DeMarcus knew about through their activities on Earth in the Reconstruction after their victory in the Solar War. Massive, tube-shaped space colonies projected over the table, around the fractured moon Luna that circled the Earth. Zooming in to the colonies, they floated under an image of a red-headed human woman—the leader of Iuvia, and DeMarcus’s grandmother, Imperatrix Gaia.
Before Iuvia, it was much the same as the UCR—the rich, ruling humans took advantage of and divided the people until they split among each other. But the victors—the parahumans and the humans banded with them—forced a military dictatorship to never again suffer under the faults of democracy. Ironic that such similar histories could have different outcomes. Videos of parahuman and human soldiers walking side by side, storming buildings and arresting the former rulers that waged war to cling onto their lavish lives and power. An obvious purge, the text didn’t sugarcoat it, and one that started Gaia’s reign. And now the Iuvians lived peaceful lives around blue lakes, green grasslands, and shining buildings curving along the colonies’ inner walls.
“It’s a lovely place up there,” Sekhmet said. “Such a shame some of those old humans left it to live in the UCR. They’d have lived much better lives.”
“Really?” DeMarcus asked.
“Given who won the Solar War, yes.” Sekhmet flipped through the other lessons, then turned off her OmniMorph. “Let’s stop here.”
DeMarcus stretched and gazed out the window at the fractured moon Luna floating in the sky. The city lights lit with a serene blue and yellow glow, erupting into a bright fiery light and a thunderous pound that shook him under his feet. The apartment lights flickered out, and sirens blared outside. A dark pillar of smoke rose from the city, and Sekhmet took him behind the couch away from the window. “What was that?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. Her OmniMorph buzzed on her wrist before she answered it. “I saw the blast. You need me there?” She made a brief pause, then continued. “Right. On my way.” Sekhmet hung up and went into her room.
DeMarcus expected the usual given the police airships, ambulances, and fire apparatuses outside flying toward the smoke. With his mother clipping on a white and grey, full body exo-suit and a vest strapped around her chest, he knew his suspicions were true. “More militants, huh?” he asked.
“Yeah, armed to the teeth,” she said. “Sorry for leaving you.”
“It’s okay, I’ll stay here,” he assured her.
Sekhmet smiled. “I know you will.” She put on her hood and mask on her way out. “Hopefully, I won’t be long.”
CHAPTER 3 – LEARN AND ADAPT
Several injured humans and parahumans rolled on the streets where dark smoke fumed from the blast. Others ran and ducking for cover from bright yellow flashes flickered from the guns around. Five HDF militants blasted at a human on a rooftop, the unarmed HDF supporters dropped their picket signs and backed away as a poly-pet, an old PK9, darted out of an alley and burst into a wide ball of flame. Dozens of militants and supporters flew off their feet from the shockwave scorching the ground and nearby buildings, and the dark hums of the Terraport alarms surged through the city.
It happened so fast and so close that DeMarcus saw the smoke rising between the buildings beyond his window. His head edged out into the open, then he fell to the floor at the slap of wind from a squadron of Gentilis and Blue Havocs jetting past his window. On the rooftops, he saw his mother jumping along the buildings, leading three Iuvian and NAF soldiers toward the disaster. Two grey combat androids followed them, along with three dog-like Shephound drones, and a gray NAF spider-tank the size of an aerocar, and that’s before the other drones from various news organizations rushed toward the disaster like bees on honey.
The soldiers arrested the HDF militants and took in the injured, delivering them to the medics. Then Sekhmet and her soldiers split among the rooftops, all of them disappearing behind the buildings after the other culprits while the police cleared the crowds.
Here we go again, another interruption by militants. The whole scene had DeMarcus’s blood pumping as he jumped to the couch and sat at the edge of his seat, tuning to the local news with a drone’s view of his mother. She bounded across the buildings toward a trio of armed insurgents, a parahuman and two humans clad in black combat gear. One of them sped through the streets on a hoverbike, shooting at the drones in the air while the others made their escape on the rooftops. A Gentili dove after them as the spider-tank kept pace, leaping on and over the smaller buildings as they both caught up to Sekhmet and intercepted the insurgents on the roof.
DeMarcus’s jaw tightened as hard as his grip on the couch, his heart beating out of his chest at his mother taking cover from the insurgents’ spray of bullets before returning fire. It had been a while since he saw her in action. And when the Havocs flew by, their guns spooking the insurgent out of cover, Sekhmet nailed one of the humans in the side. The human limped away until the Shephound bolted after her, locking its jaws on her arm and holding her for the arriving androids to arrest.
A Gentili tailed after the parahuman on the hoverbike, its beak-mounted gun spitting at the bike with electric bullets. Bright surges of electricity flickered around the bike as it dropped and skidded on the ground, tossing the insurgent off. Sekhmet rushed from the rooftops and tackled him to the ground, knocking their gun away as an NAF soldier came and cuffed him.
A Havoc and Gentili shot after the last insurgent, strafing bullets at the ground near the human’s feet. A hit in the wing sent the Gentili falling, and the human leapt to the rooftops and blanketed the area with small can that released a black, sparkling cloud. Sekhmet arrived and ordered the surrounding troops to fire into the smoke, but when it cleared no one was there.
“She’s gone!” said the newscast.
“What!” DeMarcus shouted, jumping to his feet as his mother fanned her troops around the area.
Maybe this was a good thing. The hard thumping in DeMarcus’s chest began to settle knowing that his mother was still alive, but watching the whole experience still wore him out. He fought the urge to sleep as he continued watching the news, his eyes growing heavier by the minute until he fell on the couch pillows. When the
sun rose the next day, the smell of breakfast in the kitchen shot him back up. The caretaker android was preparing his plate as usual, but his mother was still absent. Probably still dealing with the attack yesterday. She didn’t answer her OmniMorph when he called.
The news was still on, and DeMarcus just shrugged at the reveal of the HDF support rally being targeted in the attack and the armed Fronties in custody. The only people DeMarcus felt sorry for were the anti-HDF groups and bystanders caught in the crossfire.
There on the scene was his mother, still clad in her exo-suit as she helped the injured. And to DeMarcus’s surprise the surviving HDF supporters thanked her for saving them despite her being a parahuman. “I thought they were just freaks, people causing trouble,” said one of them. “But I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for her.”
A smile grew on DeMarcus’s face as he finished his breakfast. Maybe there was hope for these people after all? After eating his breakfast, he dressed up and went for a walk outside, where police and soldiers directed traffic away from the devastation. On the other end were people gathered around the newscast on the public screens, murmuring over the reveal of the other insurgents to be supporters of the Amalgam Concord.
But that’s all they were, just mere supporters—the actual Amalgam members were much sneakier and coordinated, and targeted high ranking Fronties and strongholds. They wouldn’t blast half a city block with people just to attack a group of HDF supporters unless they were full-fledged HDF militants.
Crossing the street and the ascending the steps to Pentamid Park, DeMarcus overheard the other kids chatting about yesterday. A few humans kept away from the other humans playing together with parahumans. It earned them snide remarks from the mixed group as a human boy on his hoverboard shouted “Fight for All” at them. Not the kind of thing DeMarcus expected.
Venturing to pods in the jungle gym, DeMarcus saw Teo, that human boy he met in the Galleria yesterday. “Hey,” DeMarcus greeted. “Never thought I’d see you again.”
