Brigends (The Final War Series Book 1) (2 page)

The harbinger — Emil

Am I dead
?             

The need to know was meaningless as her soft lips rediscovered his lips. Her touch was profound and deliberate, like only a lover’s would to a longing soul.

Every time he reached for her, he found an emptiness where she existed. If he dared to open his eyes, there would be nothing.

Where are you
?

I am here
.

Why can’t I see you
?

Do you need your eyes to know I am with you
?

Please, let me see you
.

He worked to make his pupils perceive what his heart wanted to accept. He saw something. It was faint, but the more he strained the stronger the image became. From this profound need, he could make out only the indistinct curves of her figure, not the woman he remembered her to be.

She came to him. Her fingers feathered his lips and he reacted. She was right, for he didn’t need his vision to feel her touching his body. Her perfume was a scent he knew too well. It swathed him, comforting his wounds.

Tears formed.

None of this is real
.
She is not real
.
She is dead
.

I’m not dead
!

His bizarre lover faded, leaving him interned once more in purgatory.

He laughed a sigh. There was no place in his life for delusions.

He opened his eyes to the intense glow of the euphemistically labeled
therapy room
. A blood bead dropped from the swollen point of his nose and resounded off the polish of the sterile floor. He strained to raise his head, but he was weak from the
therapy
his captors had recently given him. His right wrist rattled the brace as he moved to wipe the tinted sweat from his bruised face.

He remembered he was still in the prison camp.

Gradually, his focus returned. He could hear the mechanical breathing of the two cyborg guards standing near the entrance. Where was the Russian officer, he wondered. Surely, he hadn’t given up so easily. Maybe he stepped out for a smoke.

This scenario was nothing new. They would drag him from the mineshaft, bring him here, rough him up, ask questions, follow with more roughing, and afterwards return him to the drudgery of prison life. It was a silly routine, but they executed it daily with precision. He counted it as just one more checkmark on his day’s schedule.

The wait for the officer’s return seemed like an eternity. Just when he gave up pondering what was happening, every light except for the ugliest one turned off. He could no longer see the guards, but he knew they were there. This was a new tactic and it aroused his interest. Whatever was about to occur, he was not going to give these
nemernici
the satisfaction of knowing they had broken him.

No way. Never.

A gentle woman disturbed the darkness. “Good afternoon, Emil.” She spoke Romanian.

He craned his head to find the source of the alluring coo. It had been a long time since he heard his name spoken out loud, let alone with words from his native language.

“Is it afternoon?” he asked. “I can’t tell.”

“I thank you for seeing me.”

Her accent was mild, but from what he could hear, it was proof she wasn’t a Romanian or a Russian for that matter.

“You’re welcome, I guess. Can we hurry this up? I want to get back to my exercises.”

“It is refreshing to see your sense of humor has not diminished. How long have you been our guest?” 

“Eleven hundred and thirty-two days, but who’s counting?”

He had been.

“It has been a long time. You have lost so many years. Years never to be replaced.”

The banter was becoming tedious. “Let’s get this over with. Come on and try your best to make me talk. I’ll say nothing like always.”

“Perhaps for me, you will.”

She emerged from the shadows. Slivers of white silk draped her long extremities, leaving most of her body exposed. A deluge of black hair cascaded over her smooth shoulders. Eyes of the earnest brown looked on him with relaxed amusement. He couldn’t help it, but the way she floated as she walked enthralled him. She didn’t hurry, yet there was a seductive purpose to her movements.

He didn’t sense her compromising his defenses until he noticed the large sapphire crystal hanging from a thin necklace around her slender neck. Emil regained control and revolted to the vile object nuzzled at the height of her demure cleavage. She enjoyed his reaction and a tiny smile formed on her dark lips.

“So, they finally called you guys in to break me.”

The predator caressed the crystal as she encircled him. “You know of this, do you not?”

He knew exactly what the crystal was, but he stayed silent out of contempt for the creature. She was a beautiful woman, but he knew she was not human, at least by his corrupted definition of the word. The creature was a Zolarian — a transhuman — a mutation — an abomination.

“You may talk with me. We are close, you and I.”

The crystal glimmered as she spoke. Her tenor soothed his fears even as he struggled to avoid her snare. She placed a hand on his shoulder. He wanted to shrug it off as she brushed away the dirt-matted hair on the base of his neck, exposing the dermo-glyth of his brigend mark.

“Do I know you?”

“It is me, Milari. Do you not remember what you and I have shared?” She ran the tips of her fingers along the length of his grimy neck. 

“What we shared?” The rush flowed over him and his barricade faltered. He desired her touch.

“You are exhausted. Your suffering has been great.” She paused. “You know of these crystals?”

Her seduction evaporated and his mind was clear again. The witch was good at toying with him.

He looked at her. “Yeah, I know of them. It’s the reason you got these nemernici digging day and night. You’re whores for those mucking things.”

“What a delightful dialect you have.” Her fingertips tickled the spot between her breasts. “You and your comrades serve a greater good. For each ora crystallum recovered is yet one more step humanity takes toward perfection.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. His reaction offended her.

She moved to the center of the room. “Your scorn pierces me, Emil.”

She was genuinely hurt, as if he had rejected her love. He felt a trace of remorse. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to reach out, hold her, and say he was sorry for ridiculing her obsession.

He caught himself falling for her trick and clenched his teeth to the extreme of drawing blood from his lip.

“Woman, do you know how many of your kind I’ve killed? Release me and I’ll be happy to tell you about it.”

She smiled.

“You are a strong man, but even with your impressive resolve, you will not resist me for long. Why are you here, General Pavel?”

The question confused him. Was he not a prisoner of the Alliance? He searched for the answer, but drew a blank. “I don’t know.”

“Would you like for me to help you remember?” she offered.

The harder he tried to recall, the worse his amnesia became. He remembered the war. Images of street riots after the armistice played in his mind like a day old memory. He recalled frantically searching the Romanian refugee camps for his mother and his sister. The memory of learning they had perished in the nuclear fire was again so heartbreaking, he wanted to crawl on the cold floor and stay there until he died.

His saving grace from that humiliation was a shrouded embrace by loving arms. It eased his torment. As if in a passing dream, he couldn’t identify his savior. He knew her. Every ounce of his mortality assured him, he knew her.

She kissed him. The therapy room was an illusion. He was in obscurity, yet he was not alone. She was with him. Her body and his were of one tangible strand. It was no delusion brought on by a weary mind; he loved this angel and she loved him in return. He strained to pierce the veil hiding her face. He wanted to condemn heaven for keeping her from him.

“Let me see you,” he pleaded. 

Light surrounded them and when he focused his vision, it was Milari’s smile greeting him. A voice not hers whispered, “You are a father.”

A gasp from the real Milari broke her psychic grip. He was again in the therapy room, and not some far off place of his lurid fantasy. He was weak from the trance, but he could see her hand hovering near his forehead with fingers extended and penetrating. The crystal pendent between her breasts blazed with a star’s intensity, but died out when she lowered her arm.

“A child?” she shouted.

Emil Pavel lacked the energy to keep his head upright. He stared down at the cold floor, not aware of his tears as they fell from his cheeks.

They broke me, he sobbed. To his tormentor, he whispered, “Please, stop.”

Milari allowed him to cry in peace.

“The child will jeopardize everything,” she said. “I cannot allow this to happen. My master must be told.”

She motioned for the guards. As they moved to obey her orders, the door exploded. A chunk of shrapnel sliced through the one closest to the entrance. It was dead before hitting the floor. The second guard reached for a weapon. Several bullets tore through its armor and the human parts of the torso, killing it before it could get off a single round.

A klaxon wailed throughout the facility.

The shockwave from the breach disturbed Emil’s equilibrium. His slumped body hung to the chair by the restraints on his wrists. The last thing he saw in the mental haze was Milari crawling like a frightened rat.

She turned and screamed, “How dare you bring violence here!”

Blood and brain tissue exploded from her head as a bullet ripped through her skull. Emil lost consciousness.

He awoke on the floor with a small hand tapping his face. The alarm returned to rap his eardrums. His eyes focused on the smile of Adi Vasile. The last time he saw her, she looked like a schoolgirl, and not the hardened officer now hovering over him. Her cheeks were stark and her complexion sullen. She had become an old woman at twenty-eight.

“Haiduc, are you okay?’ she asked in Romanian. “It’s me Adi.”

Haiduc. He never liked that infernal name.

“Yeah, I’m okay. How — how did you find me?”

“Nice to see you again, sir. Can you stand?” 

“I don’t know. Let’s find out.” 

Adi helped him to his feet with a tug, supporting his posture as he tried to stand straight. He noticed Vladu, another member of his crew, guarding the doorway. The pudgy lad jerked with ramped tension. Both he and Adi wore survival gear consisting of silicone thermal suits and thick coats of tough burlap. Protective air masks hung below their necklines.

“Where in hell are we?”

“Bottom of the Mississippi River rift, not far from St. Louis. I’m sorry, but we’re in a bit of a hurry. Save the questions for later.”

This was the first time in over three years he knew where he was. He should have known by the amount of dust in the air and the lingering stench of decay.

Adi produced a small bag from under her coat and handed it to him. Inside was his gear. “Here, you’ll need this, sir. Funny thing, I remember you being a lot fatter, so the suit probably won’t fit right. But, it should work.”

As she helped him strip off the prison clothes and don the survival suit, she couldn’t help but stare in disbelief at his gaunt flesh. She was dressing a corpse, not a man.

Somewhere in the distance, synchronized explosions drowned out the siren’s blare. Smart girl, Emil thought. She showed up with an exit strategy. He had a weakness for smart women.

Vladu helped him walk with some dignity as they left the room. The facility staff, preoccupied with keeping order amid the chaos in the camp, left the first leg of the escape route thankfully unguarded.

Emil got a gut reaction; there might be collateral damage among the brigend population. In times of war, casualties were expected. But, dying like a caged animal was no way for a warrior to meet his end. These veterans were just dispirited souls the world had discarded. Their only true crime was being on the losing side. Their unjust reward was a sentence to die in this pit, forgotten by the same people they once defended.

The notion sickened him. He was not angry with Adi. Instead his anger was with the Alliance and their Zolarian masters for putting these unfortunate veterans in this appalling situation. It’s one more sin he would make the Alliance pay for.

Adi ran point through the maze of corridors and compartments. Although he had been to the therapy room on dozens of occasions, in his current condition, he was not of much use. Yet, judging from the indecisive pattern they were traveling in, he could tell Adi wasn’t leading them out. 

“Do you know where you’re going, Commander?”

“Yes, this way.”

“That’s not how we got here,” Vladu snapped.