by J. N. Chaney
“Talk later,” John said, already heading quickly for his predator. “We have to move now!”
As if a spell was lifted from us, we all jumped immediately into action. I went for my predator with Tong and Sulk, while Stacy, Lou, and John jumped in their vehicle.
“Here they come!” Stacy shouted.
The sound of her weapon firing lit up the air. The Blood Shot rang out loud and clear as it peppered the first wave of infected humans.
There weren’t only infected humans I found as I got a good look at them. Mechanically enhanced Rung bolstered their numbers as well. In fact, there now seemed to be more Rung than humans, which made sense as we’d been killing off the infected humans and hadn’t really encountered the Rung on this level yet.
I only got a glimpse of them, but from what I could see, they were the stuff of nightmares. Half alien, half mechanically enhanced, and totally consumed with the Legion virus, they swarmed us. Black matter oozed from ebony eyes. The dark liquid came out of the holes in the sides of their heads they called ears.
“Ahhhh!” I heard Tong roar over the sound of his Blood Shot as I urged our predator away from the mob.
8
Tong’s uncharacteristic roar was one I understood well. It wasn’t one of fear, but a rally cry. He needed to do something to harness his own fleeting courage. It was something common in men and woman preparing for a fight to psych themselves up. The roar was primal, something even animals understood.
Right now, I didn’t blame him. The amount of infected sprinting at us from the forest was an intimidating sight. I had never seen so many in one place.
Legion had been busy this last month, turning hundreds, maybe thousands of the Rung. No wonder Sulk had been sent to us. It was a last-ditch effort on the Rung’s part to avoid being completely wiped out.
Weapons fire from the infected hammered across the predator. I ducked, surprised. Last I checked, infected were hungry, mindless beings controlled by Legion. A few of them carried the occasional blunt object, but none of them had wielded a weapon like a blaster.
“Are they shooting at us!?” Stacy yelled over the sounds of her own Blood Shot ripping across the lines of infected.
Another spattering of rounds hit my predator as I fought to gain control of it, trying to hold the steering wheel steady.
“They’re shooting at us,” I yelled back. “They’re definitely shooting at us!”
“Since when did Legion learn how to fire weapons?” John asked, echoing my previous thoughts.
Driving full out, we were just about leaving the infected behind when I chanced a look in my rear-view mirror. Sure enough, Legion was chasing after us, but without vehicles, the infected had no chance.
“Does our new ally care to weigh in on the fact that Legion can fire weapons now?” I asked Tong while staring daggers at Sulk. He couldn’t tell since I was wearing my helmet, but I think he understood he was in trouble by the sound of my voice.
The echoes of weapons fire died behind us as we sped forward over the dry dirt terrain.
Tong and Stacy eased off their vehicle when the infected were far enough behind us. The former exchanged a quick conversation with Sulk in their native language.
“He says he doesn’t know when Legion became smart enough to have those he controls use weapons,” Tong explained. “A week, maybe two weeks ago, it started.”
“Tell our mechanical friend here that any other information like this would be greatly appreciated,” Stacy said, sarcasm dripping from her voice. “What happened to our eye in the sky, Tong?”
“I didn’t think Legion would be able to catch up to us so quickly,” Tong said. “I’m sorry, no excuses. I will monitor the satellite feed more regularly. Before I went down for my sleep, we were clear for miles in every direction.”
“We couldn’t know he had turned so many or that they could move so quickly,” Lou said, trying to calm everyone in the charged moment. “We do now. We won’t make the same mistake.”
“Keep the feed from the satellite live in our helmets,” Stacy instructed, losing the bite in her words without sacrificing their strength. “If Legion gets within ten miles of us, I want to know.”
“I understand fully,” Tong said, contritely. “I’m sorry.”
We moved on in silence for the next hour, following Sulk’s instructions as he led us to the foot of where two of the mountains met. True to his word, there was a small canyon cutting through the mountain range.
Sheer rock walls reached high into the sky on either side of us. The canyon was wide enough that we could move side by side if we chose, but only just barely.
We pulled level with one another, examining the passage. I looked over to John, who was driving the other predator. He glanced at me, shaking his head.
I know, I don’t like it either, I thought to myself. This has ambush written all over it.
The mountain range was all dirt and dark rocks stretching right to left as far as the eye could see. Here and there, small lizard-like animals scurried, trying to find food or shelter—maybe both.
The suns had nearly set behind the mountains. Legion didn’t make mistakes. He had flushed us out for a reason. That much I was sure of.
“We only have two options,” Stacy said, thinking out loud. “We go through or we scout another way around. Looking at the live feed, I don’t think there’s a clear way through like this, for who knows how long. It would take us days to go around.”
“We don’t have days,” Lou said as if he were talking to himself. “The way is narrow and the path is steep.”
“That some kind of ancient proverb or something?” John asked.
“Something like that,” Lou said with a slight smile. “For what it’s worth, I say we go forward. Now that we all have the live feed, any move from Legion and we’ll see him coming miles away. But it’s not my decision and I can respect that.”
I looked over to Stacy, who stood in the back of her predator with the Blood Shot. At the moment, her arms were crossed over her chest as if she were deep in thought.
There was no real choice here. I knew that and so did she. We had to go through, though I respected her for taking the time to consider any and all other options before voicing her thoughts.
“This is the only way,” Stacy finally said. “Eyes open. Legion has something up his sleeve, but the faster we get to the Rung, the faster we end this.”
“Let’s go,” I said, turning my predator forward. We entered the canyon at a crawl that turned into a steady pace a few seconds later. With the light dying overhead, I turned my high beams on. They illuminated the dark, but we still couldn’t make much sense of what was ahead of us.
The predators’ giant wheels slowly crunched over the dry terrain. My head was on a swivel. Everyone was right. There was something going on here we couldn’t see. My sixth sense told me this was all kinds of wrong.
An eerie silence descended on our group like a thick blanket on a hot night. I watched the overhead satellite’s view inside my visor of the satellite expecting to see signs of Legion, but it stayed quiet.
Sulk clicked something hard.
Tong clicked back.
The two exchanged a brief but intense conversation.
“Want to fill me in here?” I asked. “Not all of us speak clicky S language.”
“He sees something,” Tong said, leaning forward from his position as if he were trying to see into the distance. “A man.”
I looked forward again. Thus far, the canyon had been nothing more than a few rocks and boulders I had to navigate over or around. I craned my neck forward, trying to get a glimpse of anything.
There shouldn’t be anyone human around here. If there were, we could be almost certain it was an infected.
“There, on the feed,” Stacy pointed out, tension and anxiety evident in her voice. “It came out of nowhere. It wasn’t there a second ago, I swear.”
I looked down at the small bleep on my feed. While the satellite
was zoomed out, the figures appeared as tiny dots. When it was zoomed in, we could make out distinct images of the individuals. Right now, it was zoomed out, showing us as a pair of tiny dots going through the canyon and whatever it was in front of us as a stationary dot.
Stacy was right, it was as if the interloper had appeared out of thin air.
I slowed the predator to a crawl as the headlights pierced the darkness, picking up the figure of a human man as we drew closer. He was tall with grey hair and a grizzled face. Unlike the other infected, he was clean, as if he had just taken a bath and gathered new clothes. The only thing at all that set him apart from a normal man was those black eyes. They were piercing and scary, feral-looking and lacking humanity.
I stopped the predator, allowing John to pull up beside me. Something about the man was off besides the fact that he was immaculately clean and infected by an alien entity. I knew him.
“Captain Harold,” John breathed. “It’s him.”
Realization struck a moment later. Captain Ezra Harold had been sent with a second expeditionary force when I left with mine toward the prison section of the Orion.
We came after his party later. The only sign of them we’d found were dead bodies, courtesy of the Rung. It wasn’t difficult to imagine Legion had snagged one of the survivors as they fled from the Rung.
“I’ve come to talk,” Legion said, speaking through Captain Harold’s body. He turned in a full circle. “You can see I have no weapons. I’m not here to try and kill you.”
“Not this time,” Stacy countered. “What about that little ambush you just tried to catch us with?”
“Well, you can’t fault me for trying,” Legion said with a shrug that was meant to emphasize his capitulation. “I knew you’d be tired after your long drive. Come on. All I want to do is talk, I promise. I’m alone.”
“Do you trust him?” I asked Stacy.
“Not for a second,” Stacy answered immediately. “Dean, with me. Lou, get on the Blood Shot. If anything happens, you and Tong light him up.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Lou said, trading spots with her.
“Careful,” Tong warned us. “He’ll try and get into your head. That’s what he was created to do, spread and infect.”
I exited the vehicle, making sure to unholster my Judge handgun, which sat securely on my hip. Courtesy of Jezra and her Cerberus Installation, the weapon was one I had grown accustomed to and relied on to keep me and my crew safe. I wasn’t the best shot in the world, but it would be hard to miss, as close as we were to Legion.
Stacy and I walked forward side by side. The combined headlights of the vehicles were more than enough to give us a clear view of Captain Harold. Or what used to be Captain Harold.
I’d never liked the man very much, but I respected him. We hadn’t always seen eye to eye, but that didn’t mean that his heart wasn’t in the right place, having the interests of those he protected at the forefront of his mind. We both wanted a home for our people and a safe one at that. We’d just gone about it differently.
“I have all of his memories, you know,” Legion said, tapping the side of his head. “I have all of their memories. Not just that, I’m better at coordinating their movements, both together and individually.”
“We noticed,” Stacy said. “You shot at us, remember?”
“Oh right.” Legion smiled. “Still not very accurate apparently.”
“What do you want?” I asked, suddenly struck by the obvious. “I mean, besides being lonely and wanting to talk. It must get pretty boring only having yourself to hang out with.”
Legion looked at me with a snarl that he quickly controlled and turned into a smile.
“You’re not wrong, Dean ‘Steel Hands’ Slade.” Legion shook his head. “It does get rather lonely turning beings, only for them to become pieces of myself. Perhaps this is why I am here. I’m feeling a bit generous and nostalgic today, so I’m going to give you a way out. I won’t kill you.”
“How benevolent,” Stacy said sarcastically, clenching the grip on her Judge tighter. “What is it that you want besides a friend to talk with?”
“My very purpose, the very reason I was created by the Rung, was to spread myself throughout this world and convert the rest,” Legion said, shaking his head. “I understand it all now, after infecting a dozen or more Rung scientists. I was created to kill the Remboshi. Then I became self-aware and tried to kill both Remboshi and the Rung. This is my history, brought back to me now from eyes that are now my own.”
Legion paused as if he was choosing his next words carefully. “Granted, I do understand the flaw in that logic. If I kill or infect everyone, eventually I will be the only living entity on Genesis, and what kind of existence is that?” Legion thought out loud. “It happened to me once before when the Rung and Remboshi went into hiding. I can only live off animals for so long. I crave intelligent life. You have no idea what it’s like to be alone for so long. The only way I was able to survive at all was to hibernate in the pollen of a very special plant. I—”
“Listen,” I said, interrupting Legion’s speech. “This is all very sad and endearing, but my trigger finger is getting itchy. To tell you the truth, I’m not that great of a shot, but Stacy is. How about you just tell me what you want? Or can we just end you right here and be done with this conversation.”
“Like I said, it’s nice to have someone to talk to.” Legion cleared his throat. “What I’m offering you here is a partnership. I’ll let you and your colonists live, even release those I now possess, including that Eternal of yours who fights me so vehemently.”
“And?” Stacy asked. “There’s always an and when it comes to dealing with someone like you.”
“Perceptive as you are beautiful,” Legion said, licking his lips. “No wonder the body I possess held you in such high regard. And, in return for letting your people go, I will content myself with taking over the Rung and Remboshi. By the time I take possession of all their scientists, I’m sure I can form a cure for this never-ending urge I have to spread and infect.”
“You want us to just look the other way while you infect every living thing on Genesis that isn’t human?” I asked incredulously. “Do you really think we’re that stupid, you virulent narcissist?”
“I think you care about your own people enough, especially that Eternal, to see the logic in my thinking.” Legion shrugged, ignoring my insult, or perhaps enjoying it as flattery. “Sooner or later, I will possess her fully. It would be a shame to order her to take her own life by slitting her throat or walking into the sea.”
“You’re a monster, in every sense of the word,” Stacy said through gritted teeth. “I should shoot you right here.”
“Go ahead. There are so many other bodies for me to control these days. The minds of the living seem never-ending.” Legion smiled. “Oh, but you won’t because you’re holding on to the insane hope that you will be able to defeat me. That you’ll get everyone I infected back and you’ll find a way off this planet. Dreams and wishes, nothing more, I assure you.”
“You know, a sick little part of me almost felt sorry for you when you were talking about how alone you are,” Stacy said, taking a step forward. “You almost had me. Then I remembered what you really are at your core. You’re a selfish virus that only wants to consume others, leeching onto them like an insidious parasite. We’re coming for you now. Your days are numbered.”
I was proud of Stacy for giving it to Legion like she was. Motion in the lower right-hand corner of my HUD caught my eye.
Tong had the satellite set to give us a wide aerial view of the landscape around us. True to his word not to get taken by surprise again, he had the view set out to ten miles in every direction. Tiny dots began to form like some kind of disease on the screen.
The canyon we were in served as the center of the map in a long narrow line. On either side of the canyon, just emerging from the sides of the map, these tiny figures moved at tremendous speed.
“Sta
cy, Dean, are you seeing this?” Tong asked through our earpieces. “Legion’s running at us. They still have a way to go on foot, but they’ll reach either side of the canyon in an hour, maybe longer.”
“I see it,” Stacy said out loud.
“You see the glory of the power I bring,” Legion said. “There is no hope. The body I possess now, this Captain Ezra Harold, knows a fitting line for what is about to happen. ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here,’ I think is appropriate.”
“We’re done here,” Stacy said, looking over to me with despair evident in her expression. “All this ever was, was a stall for time.”
I took a step forward, removing my helmet so I could look Legion in his dark, feral eyes.
“I’m going to be the one to kill you,” I told him. For as much as he was trying to get into our heads, it was my turn to do the same to him. It was a tactic I’d used in the gladiator circuit. “I’m going to watch you burn.”
Just like that, Legion’s smile vanished. His dark eyes began to ooze with ebony liquid like dark tears. He snarled at me, and spittle flew from his lips.
“Why wait?” he asked with a sneer.
“Dean,” Stacy said to me. She reached out and put a hand on my shoulder—whether to stop me or support, I wasn’t sure.
“Because we know now that we can kill you and free our people from your hold,” I told him. “I’m not going to kill you because that would be killing Ezra Harold.” That realization made me think of the many that we had killed in self-preservation, and I found myself becoming even angrier at this virus, a blight on the planet that needed to be eradicated, the sooner the better.
“We need to go,” Stacy said as she removed her hand from my shoulder. “This is what he wants. He wants to stall us for as long as he can to surround us.”
I walked backward slowly and purposefully, never taking my eyes from Legion.
“I’m going to take everything you care about, everything you love, Dean Slade,” Legion yelled after me. “Your dog, your friends, Stacy.”
I turned and jogged back to the predators with Stacy. Legion’s threats were white noise to me at this point. I knew he was only trying to evoke an emotional reaction from me now and I refused to give him what he wanted.
