by Zac Strong
I’m sure I broke something. My right arm is numb. I can’t move it at all without a sharp pain shooting through me. Despite the ringing in my ears, I hear her haunting voice again, “Save them.”
I rise, choking, as sand falls from my half-buried body. Every attempt to stand results in my immediate plummet back to the ground. My body flinches at the pain in my shoulder as I brace it
grabbing my wrist with my other hand keeping it close to my chest. I look around me. Lifeless bodies litter an ocean of black sand.
“Help me!” cries a stranger.
Limping over to him I flop down and begin digging him out. One of his legs is twisted behind him as he cries out in agony. His breaths are rapid. His eyes, frantic.
“Help me, please! Help me!” he begs.
I.. I don’t know what to do.
I freeze looking for something – anything to help.
“Take my hand,” I order as I extend my good arm above his chest and wedge my feet in the sand.
Sobbing, he holds on for dear life as I use my weight to lift him off his twisted leg. He collapses back into the sand cringing from the pain. His grateful eyes continue to cry as he lies there holding his bleeding and broken leg with the most confused look on his face.
My eyes continue to search the aftermath. The realness of this horror sets in.
There. That’s her. I rush over to the body of a woman bleeding from her nose and ears.
I push my finger to her neck.
I’m.. I’m too late.
I move her curls from her face.
It’s not her. Only another stranger.
The warmth of someone’s hand is felt on my shoulder, consoling me. Like a chain reaction, the hair on the back of my neck stretches as streams of tears break my internal levee, flooding from my eyes. I turn to see Cyrus behind me. He’s bleeding from a cut on his forehead. His wide eyes are blank as they stare straight ahead. His trembling lips do not speak.
After a few minutes, three foreigners appear over the mound in front of us. They make their way down the rocky hill and stumble over as we move to greet them halfway. Their bones push against their skin. The rags they wear are just barely hanging on. Bruised and battered, they look as if they haven’t eaten in days.
“Who are you?” asks the oldest of the three men. He looks deathly with sunken cheeks and hollow, black-ringed eyes. He has a hole embedded on the inside of his right forearm, looks infected.
“I am Palin.. of Elysium,” I reply firmly, wiping away the tears.
His face reveals his confusion as if my words are unfamiliar to him. He looks down and apologizes as he nervously introduces himself as Jason of Argo.
“We’ve run out of food,” he says after a minute of staring into the sand in silence.
He adjusts the yellow frayed scarf around his neck as he mumbles, “We used all of our supplies… We had no place to go... We couldn’t stay in the ark.”
I glance over to Cyrus. He’s still in shock. I’m not sure if he knows where he’s at right now.
“I.. I didn’t know. I didn’t know the storm would…” The old man’s guilt-stricken eyes bounce from left to right rapidly as he raises his palms to them. The other two strangers stare silently into the desert in disbelief.
“The ark?” I keenly ask.
Jason’s crazy eyes snap to me as if I said something I shouldn’t have.
“What do you know about Argo??” he asks as he hastily takes a few steps back. His eyes growing wilder under his accusing brow. Puzzled he demands again, “Who dare tell you about the ark?”
“You… just did,” I cautiously reply.
He cocks his head to the side and walks around me continuing in the direction of the setting sun, whispering something to himself.
Cyrus looks at me bewilderedly.
This man is mad.
After just a couple of steps, he shouts in the direction of his two peculiar followers still awkwardly standing beside us, “Hurry now! You’re gonna miss dinner.”
With their heads down they silently comply, following their master clumsily in the sand. Their emotionless faces do not give me happy thoughts.
Cyrus and I cautiously trail from a distance as they stumble through the consequence of the storm. Bodies in every direction speckle the black sand like a ghastly reflection of the stars in the night sky.
The senile man, named Jason randomly stops at the corpse of one of his men and bursts into laughter. His own hilarity knocks him to the sand as he rolls chuckling.
“Wake up my boy! This is not a time to sleep,” he sings as he erratically shakes the deceased.
“Jason,” Cyrus begins as an increasingly disturbing look drips off his face. These are the first words he’s spoken since the storm. He kneels beside him, putting his gentle hand on Jason’s shoulder. “He’s dead. He’s not going to wake up.”
Jason’s head snaps up at Cyrus. “I know that!” he barks. “They’re all dead.” He looks at the dozens of lifeless bodies spread throughout the desert as if they were his audience. “That’s why they need to wake up. They’re gonna be late you see.”
The darkness in his eyes is gut-wrenching, to say the least. What has happened to this poor old man?
“Jason!” cries a woman’s voice from the dark. Maybe she can make sense of this guy. Her hands and face are covered in dried blood as she sprints towards us. Eight others follow behind her, each looking as if death is right beside them.
“Cyrus!” shouts a voice of relief behind us. Two familiar faces emerge from the night’s shroud holding the man with the mangled leg I helped earlier.
We exchange hugs and greetings and start a small fire from the belongings of the “sleeping”. It’s nice seeing them. I don’t know if I can handle any more death.
The mysterious woman is able to calm Jason down. He listens to her. Her eyes are as wild as his, more blue than grey. They call her Medea. Apparently, she’s his wife or the equivalent to these people. The strangers ramble on about something amongst each other before they fade into the white noise of my anxious mind.
Disarray lingers late into this sleepless night.
Who are these strange people?
Chapter 8
“Where is your girl taking us, Eros?” asks Poth from the rear of the crowded elevator. All of us are dressed in our glitziest apparel and smelling right. Lethe canceled Pankration and closed everything after the assassination attempt earlier. Essential activity only. Lucky for us, Selene knows about a place that Lethe doesn’t.
The four of us exit the metal cage room into a dim hallway. The only light that works flickers sporadically overhead. There’s more grime than paint on the empty plaster walls. A single black door waits for us at the end opposite the lift. The closer we step towards it, the louder the muffled bass on the other side hits.
She bangs exactly three times and steps back.
A Machina with a gun opens the metal door for us from the other side. He’s the same model as Tal, but a less friendly persona.
Darksynth music pulls us towards the bar in the shadowy ambiance. Despite the hundreds of colorful lights peppered on the ceiling synchronized with the music, the entire place has a grunge feel to it, almost dangerous. The walls of this place are clocks, thousands of them, in every shape and size. The bar top itself, two hands of a massive clock.
“Nah, man. I’m out. Fuck this,” cusses Poth abandoning us for the elevator. FUCK LETH CORP! sprayed in red on the bricks behind the bartender, must’ve set him off
“I’ll go with him,” elects Sophia. “You guys need some alone time anyway.”
Selene smiles at me, gazing hard with those fuck-me eyes. She’s got it bad. I’m okay with that.
We find her friend waiting for us at the elbow of the bar. A peculiarly short man with over-extravagant goggles introduces himself as Vulcan. From under the goggles an untamed forest of dark hair. The beginning of a mustache grows heavier around the corners of his narrow lips.
“Selen
e tells me you think you saw something,” he shouts into the deafening pulse.
“I know I saw something. It cost me the whole race.”
0“Ah, yes, racing. There’s nothing more important, right? What’d you see anyway?”
“I saw a child, holding a knife. The look on his face was terrifying.”
“A child? You realize how ridiculous you sound, right?” exclaims Vulcan.
“Is there any way to hack the feed and give Eros something solid to back his story before he destroys his reputation?” asks Selene handing both Vulcan and me a reddish-orange, bubbly beverage.
“The only way I can recover that type of imagery is with the drone itself. Recover it and I can easily pull the video assuming it isn’t damaged too severely. Of course, with Lethe’s lockdown that’s going to be a tad bit difficult.”
“I’ll make it happen.”
“If only you put that passion to something that actually matters,” smarts off Vulcan. I don’t even know this guy.
“Like what? Sentient rights?”
“There is more to the movement than waving banners,” he snarls.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for what you guys have going on, I just don’t see how any of that affects me,” I say before throwing back a shot of purple liquid, almost the same shade as Selene’s violet eyes.
“Yet,” adds Selene. “It doesn’t affect you yet.”
“The Lethe Corporation is a threat to us all. If you only knew of the shit they’ve done, of the people they harmed… all to serve Archer’s psychopathic vision,” accuses Vulcan.
“Not all of them are bad. I personally know a couple of Lethe’s people. They just want what’s best for us, for the most part.”
“Which do you know? The corrupt that exploit helpless people for their own entertainment or the trained dogs who unquestionably enforce their will ensuring no one can threaten their authority?”
“What do you mean they exploit the helpless? Lethe has given us an entire city that can fulfill our every desire.”
“That’s what you see. What Kronos sees is a different picture, and they have eyes on everything. There is nothing they can’t hack.”
“Help me understand, then. If Lethe is hurting people, I want to see for myself,” I demand taking another shot with Selene.
“In time,” warns Vulcan casually crushing up some gorganite on the bar with an empty shot glass.
“Don’t worry, E. No one here is going to rat on us,” laughs Selene as she snorts one of the three lines of gorganite Vulcan arranged. “Their laws are no good here."
Seconds after I inhale my line the bar spins, all the clocks fixed to the walls tick madly. The lights dance and twirl in the vacuum of darkness.
“Eye shots!” scream Selene.
I lean my head back and part my eyelids.
“No, not that one. This one,” she smiles as a single bead from her dropper splashes against the lens of my upgraded eye. It immediately hits me, lifting me above the barstools.
The music steals my attention away. It loops within my fading mind as the bass links with my heartbeat speeding from me.
Selene wants to dance so, we dance.
She looks more beautiful tonight than I’ve ever seen her. Without speaking she takes my face and gently pushes her lips against mine. For a second the world stands still.
Reality warps.
We’re all laughing. I can’t remember what about.
Tick. Tock.
More dancing. Who am I anymore?
Tick. Tock.
My eyes close and I feel her warm lips sucking on my neck.
They open and we’re in my bed.
Just the two of us, alone at last.
Chapter 9
We arrive at Elysium in the still, early hours of the morning after shallowly burying the fallen. It wasn’t my idea to bring them here. We wait patiently outside the gates while one of the guards summon Xander. Exhaustion has overcome us. Hunger is the sole muse of my present desire.
Xander greets Jason and the others with open arms just as Cyrus predicted he would. His hospitality feeds and clothes each one of the survivors from this mysterious Argo that I haven’t dared to mention again, at least not in the presence of the crazy, old man.
Running into the dining hall seconds after she heard we were back, Jacee bombards me, unaware of the damage the storm did to my shoulder. Her affection is a knife, dropping me straight to my knees. Of course, she immediately apologizes… in between her snorts of uncontrollable laughter. She’s evil.
The first order of business is a feast in honor of the survivors, Xander’s orders. I’m not sure how long it’s been since they’ve eaten. Judging by the thin layer of skin stretched over their ribs, probably days.
After Xander announces that the visitors will stay until further notice, I see Leon head straight for the gate. I follow.
Here we go again.
If someone has to talk to him, it might as well be me.
“Leon, wait up,” I shout just steps outside the gate. “What’s up, big guy?”
“Call me that again, and I’m gonna fuck ya up, little guy, and Xander ain’t here to save ya,” he snaps balling his giant’s fist at me. “Why’s he bringing strangers into our homes - into where we sleep? Who does he think he is? These people could be murderers or workin’ with Lethe!”
“I wasn’t,” I say staring defiantly into his frustration. “He took me in and I’m not a murderer or working for Lethe.”
“That’s different.” His electric spear flies full force into the sand a few meters away.
“Look. These people have no place to go. If we don’t let them in, it’s the same as killing them,” I reason. “I’m with you.. I really am. We should keep an eye on them, but we can’t just send them to their deaths. That would make us no better than Lethe.”
He looks a little calmer despite the bulging veins in his neck. Opening his mouth to speak, he chooses to shake his head instead. I guess we agree to disagree.
“I ain’t always been this way, ya know?” he says with his head still down staring off blankly into the vacant horizon.
I feel a speech brewing and begin to regret coming after him.
“When Xander saved me, I was too weak to walk. Lethe was runnin’ all types of tests and marked me to be executed. They claimed their computers detected a problem with my blood, a rare recessive gene. He looked me straight in tha eye and told me my existence is a threat to tha Lethe Corporation. ‘The collective is simply of greater importance,’ Fuck that. Xander gave up his Olympian lifestyle to break me out. I’m forever grateful for that, but he doesn’t understand. There are some evil people out there, Palin. Not everyone is like us.”
“Just give them a chance. This isn’t a bad idea. There is strength in numbers.”
“And there is death in ignorance.”
I leave him angry and head back towards the dining hall. Cyrus stops me on the way.
“You want to help me out tomorrow or you gonna sit on your ass all day licking your wounds? First thing in the morning we’re heading to Argo to pick up any remaining survivors and any supplies they might have. Normally I wouldn’t ask since you just got back, but we still have two squads on an overnight to 22.”
I’m not sure if I’m physically capable. The ghost storm really messed up my shoulder. Although, I am curious about the ark the old man, Jason, was rambling over. I can’t wait to see it in person if it’s even real. “Of course, I’ll help. I’ve got to pull my weight somehow.”
“That’s the spirit.”
The rest of the day is spent resting. Turns out my arm is only bruised, and already feels much better after a cool bath and a long nap. I stay half out of it until I hear the bass from the drums echoing through the cool tunnels of Elysium.
My ears throb to the beat as I enter the dining hall. This is where the party is at. There’s always a party here, almost every night after hours. Drunken people, bathed in the blue glow of their berrie
s, sway and dance all over each other. An energy is alive here. Pulsing, touching each of us, connecting everyone, pulling us to its center. After a few short seconds, I’m drawn into it, connected.
Jacee finds me through the madness nodding awkwardly to the drumbeat. Her grin lights up the entire room. Her face is festively painted with the same glow. Elysium’s symbols cover her body in it. She’s absolutely gorgeous. I’m not sure if it’s the atmosphere, but tonight… tonight she is the moon in a room full of stars.
We dance. Her hips hypnotize me to her grinding rhythm while her eyes never leave mine. Through the rhythmic chaos, she hands me a cup and orders me to drink from it. I do as if I had a choice.
She takes my hand, smiles, and firmly places it on her ass, still swaying in the midnight aura. I pull her towards me, closer. Her breath on my neck. I try to resist, but those sapphire eyes pierce what’s left of my self-control.
I felt it the first time a few weeks ago, the connection. At first, I denied it, but every time I see her, I slowly fall a little more. No point in holding back anymore. No reason to deny it. I’m done being a slave to my past. Tonight, I live.
After about my sixth cup of her wine, I feel the ground slip from beneath me. The room sways drunkenly. The floor can barely stand still. All the lights shine much more vibrantly. The colors of my perspective begin to blend, and yet she never leaves my side.
We spend hours exploring each other’s bodies with our hands and thighs. I could spend the rest of my hours here with her, but she’s had enough dancing. She takes my hand, leads me out of the dining hall in the direction of my empty room without saying a word.
I’m completely fucked up. The wine is making walking the most insurmountable task imaginable. Everything has become a blurry haze of apathy and laughter. Flashes of her sweat glistened body shoot across my mind and I find myself wondering what her lips would taste like.
Our drunken, stumbly adventure finally leads us to my door, a salvaged piece of fiberboard on two hinges.
We stop. She looks up at me. Her dirty thoughts are written across that devious half-smile. Her awaiting eyes beg.
