Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (37 page)

I couldn’t cry. I had no more tears left. This was war and there was too much
to be done; mourning would have to come later. From the control room I
made my way to an armory. I was able to re-equip with a Drok sword and a
new rifle. I saw my naked flesh covered in blood in the mirror. I wiped away
the blood from my body using a small rag and some water. My face looked
worn, I was no longer the child of Errikus afraid and full of rage. I was no
longer motivated by my goals to kill all the Skrav. I was had become reborn
in battle. I was Sev, the inhuman, the God-killer.

For an instant I thought I could see my mothers eyes in the mirror. They were
my own. I had never realized how much I had grown to look like her. The
parts of me that I had considered my best features all inherited from her. I
wish more then anything now that I could go back and be with her again.
Relive my childhood on Errikus with Dom, Hayden, and Aira, even the
others before them that had picked on me and called me names. I just wanted
to forget all this death, fighting, and feel free one more time. Everything
seemed so simple then. The Skrav were the bad guys, the elders and humans
were good, the trinity was our salvation and Eden was the land promised to
us in our early days. How many have died now because of lies? How many
have suffered for our survival? I could feel my adrenaline as my heart rate
sped up. Out of the armory I walked into a mess hall. Several deathsquad
were sitting with tubes attached to their faces into jugs of green fluid. They
didn’t see me coming. In seconds the jugs toppled to the ground followed by
bodies. I was heading in the right direction and I was on the warpath.

Eventually I stumbled into the ruins of what was once the hangar and home
to ‘First Descent’. Along the walls were the bodies of Brecca and several
others I had fought with against the Antliods, against the Skrav, or trained
with in simulations. Their severed heads had been placed on pikes.

I screamed in a
fit of rage. All of this was done to break me down. Balkava
wasn’t just enforcing her rule with fists she was destroying us emotionally.
Through another corridor I killed several more members of her deathsquad. I
wasn’t sure why but I was heading towards her room. How many nights had
I spent there covered by sheets my flesh next to hers. I could still remember a
time when she had talked about children. Along the walls I could see the crest
of the Erebus the black paint still dripped. It was once a symbol of pride
worn by the first crew of this ship on their uniform. Back then it depicted the
bright silhouette of the Erebus and two stars behind it representing not just
the Aelita and Tritan but also the sun and new world we were destined to
discover. It had been designed by an artist under the impression the Erebus
was going to bring in a new age of deep space exploration. It had since
become twisted abstract now compared to what it was then. It was no longer
a symbol associated with pride but rather a symbol that represented power
meant to instill fear in our enemies.

It was almost completely untouched. I looked in for a moment. I could still
remember the last time Hera and I lay together in my bed. The hours we
spent talking. It was one of the few times we had said we loved each other.

Balkava’s quarters were a mess. Diagram after diagram of Lethe tech covered
her walls printed on sheets of paper. Holos overlaid most of the diagrams
showing notes and details handwritten by various people. I only caught a
glimpse of it all. The moment I walked into the room I had walked into a trap.

At the far end of the room I could see Hera lying on the
floor in a fetal
position. They had shaven the hair on the side of her head. I could see several
scars were they had done surgery cutting her open. She was barely clothed
and the clothes she had on were ripped and ragged. Black and purple marks
covered the side of her ribcage.

I ran up to Hera only to see Balkava. She had been cloaked hiding beside the
door. I was in such a rage I couldn’t see the small shimmer and wave that
would have made it obvious she was there. She hit me upside the head with
the butt of a rifle I had never seen before. It sent a shock through my entire
body rendering me unconscious.

When I woke up I was in the bunker. It was another part of the ship I had
never seen before. At first I was staring at nothing but the floor then I looked
up. The room was bright. It looked like a cathedral. I was being carried by
two of her deathsquad with my feet dragging behind me. I had been stripped
of my armor and weapons and was wearing nothing but white ragged
trousers and a black muscle shirt. I had cuffs on my hands but they weren’t
fastened to anything. They must have been earlier though because my wrist
was black as if I had been hanging. Had they tortured me just for fun while I
was unconscious?

Ahead of me I could see several steps and what looked like an altar. All
around I could see civilians and armed guard. There at the top of the altar
was a throne. It had been made from the bones of a fetal leviathan. It was by
no means small and rose off the ground ten maybe twenty feet. The bone was
still sharp. It was ancient carved from the ribcage of a monster hunted inside
the immer. I could still make out its skull and teeth at the top of the throne. A
throne made from a monster for a monster.

Behind the throne hung Hera. She was strung up on a cruci
fix behind her the
wings of a hellbeast. They were depicting her as a symbol, some kind of fallen
angel. I could see the look on the faces of the civilians around me. Families
that clung to each other with despair and fear in their eyes. Next to the
throne on their knees sat Aira, Cree, and Talon.

I could see Balkava standing there. She looked so different. She was no
longer the commanding officer and friend I had known. She was no longer
anything like the person I saw when I left the Erebus to fight the Skrav. Her
hair was short, her face covered in red paint and deep scars. She was wearing
a black dress that seemed fringed and hung down to one side. In her hand she
was holding a curved sword. It was a weapon she had found in the ruins of
the Lethe world. It was longer then my arm but not as long as a two handed
long sword. It seemed to glow with an iridescent blue light as if it was
omitting its own energy field. All around the room I could see various bits
and pieces of Lethe technology they were integrating with the ship.

The two deathsquad brought me in front of her. I wanted to scream at her. I
wanted to remind her of the things she had said to me when we first met
about the Skrav, how could she do this after everything she had gone through
in this war how could she do this to her own kind? I didn’t have the strength
for any of it instead I simply muttered, “Why?” She answered without words.
Instead she took the Lethe sword and shoved it into my side. I could feel her
twisting it as I looked up at Hera on the cross. I was a sacrifice. It began to
make sense. I could see the wires extruding from Hera and the white in her
eyes. I had seen that look before - she was having a vision. “Genetically
altered, subject-77 you will be our seer, our oracle with your death we begin a
new era, a new future. You like the other will be integrated into the ship, your
body will be a vessel, hope for our future, your death will bring about our
destiny,” Balkava spoke the words loud enough everyone could hear them.
She ripped the sword out of my side and I grabbed the wound. The body can
lose 1 pint of blood before any harmful effects occur, at 2 pints shock would
occur. I had lost at least 3. Suddenly maybe because I was so close to death
everything seemed to stop were it was stuck between eternity and an instant
it all began to make sense.

I had already
figured out so much on my own. Users, genetically engineered,
never once did I suffer the side effects other users had. Never once did I lose
my mind or control of my body. Never once did I get sick the way Joseph
Everett had. Aira, Cree, Hera, all of us were just the same. We were humans
that had been altered so we could use the nexus constantly; each alteration
better then the last. Even in death our bodies would be hooked into the ship
and used as tools plugged into the matrix just like Narville had been. I was
number 77 more or less just another cog in the machine.

I looked up at Hera one more time before I closed my eyes. I could feel the
shards of nexus inside me rip open as if I was falling backwards into a pool of
water. I expected to die outside my body. I expected to become one with the
machine playing vision after vision as my mind ran around itself over and
over trapped inside a prison muttering futures like I was high on drugs.

Instead of the darkness I saw light. The body of a little girl hiding inside an
air vent. I am covering my ears but I can still hear the screaming all around
me mixed with the sound of gunfire and what can only be the loud screech
made by Skrav weaponry. She wants to shut her eyes but she doesn’t. She is
too afraid. Afraid of the darkness will overtake her and she will never be able
to open her eyes again. She stares as her family and friends die around her
until finally she begins to crawl away as fast as she can as fast as her limbs
can carry her…

Hours pass and the screaming halts. She crawls and crawls into the
underbelly of the Erebus. Into parts of the ship she doesn’t recognize until
finally she finds an opening. She emerges into a prison. All around her she
sees the monsters that use to be men remade into chimeras and horrors.
Horrors that if I had not seen with my own eyes I wouldn’t be able to
comprehend. It becomes too much for the little girl. She runs screaming. A
group of scientists wearing lab coats see her and call for help via a small
intercom they have attached to their suits. What more can they do? This is no
place for a little girl. She wants to run up to one of them and beg for help but
in her mind she knows they aren’t really human either. They are just as
monstrous as the creatures they create…

She continues to run through the ship terri
fied and alone. From the driveshaft
she stumbles into the core. All around her the bodies of the Erebus stare at
the child until she reaches Narville. She stops staring at the body of the man
she recognizes from her history books. In her mind she feels like a monster is
chasing her. She can hear its two massive legs beat against the ground as its
long tail swings back and forth and its skeletal arms reaching forward with
claws ready to tear her apart. She gives up hope closes her eyes and falls to
her knees. Behind her she can feel the breath of the monster, she imagines its
reptile like neck and face with sharp jagged teeth. She can feel the gaze of its
murderous eyes upon her flesh. She feels it wrap its arms around her. She
feels its body fall upon and there is silence.

She wakes up from the rattle of chains. The entire room is dark except for a
small light in front of her from a large white crystal that rises from the ground
like the bud of a rose. She hears a voice in her head, “I am the voice of Crius,
primordial God of chaos. I have embodied your kind, as have my brothers
and sisters throughout the passage of time. I am Lethe, I am demon, I am
destruction. Millions have been sacrificed for my return to the ‘real’ and
millions more will die as I reshape your world.” She begs the voice to stop to
let her go and then another whisper another voice cries out in the back of her
skull screaming in tongues, the same voice though kinder speaks to her like a
father, “I am here to save you soon you will be free.”

She sits in front of the body of Ren, the body of the prophet Narville. She sits
covered in the blood of a Skrav. Several elders surround her surprised staring
at the little girl and the dead alien corpse in front of her…

Nothing is more real then our instinct to survive. They were waiting watching
wondering what the Skrav was going to do. They saw it chasing the girl and
rather then kill it on the spot they let it go. She had wandered into a part of
the ship that was off limits by everyone except the elders. They were ready to
let her die before finishing off the Skrav. Their curiosity was their downfall
they had given birth to a new demon.

I could see her standing there surrounded by the elders. She was interrogated
and she told them everything she saw. The demon that chased after her and
the voice she had heard. No one could say for sure whether it real or if it was
something she had made up in her mind, perhaps it was a type of natural
defense to block out the events that occurred scarring her for life. It didn’t
matter anyway. When they realized she had no recollection of what she had
truly seen she was allowed back into the general population. They had no
idea she would grow up and kill them all. She wanted vengeance. The elders
had destroyed her life with their curiosity. They watched as a little girl was
hunted by a Skrav and did nothing. The world Balkava sees is so wrong and
corrupt that it can’t be saved. That moment had changed her life and because
of it she believes that she has to destroy every part of the old world. She can’t
even see that she is no different - blinded by her own hate and lust for power.
Balkava has always been alone… And this is why she was killing me.

I never believed in destiny. Even though I saw the future I knew it
wasn’t set in stone. My gift as a ‘user’ as a ‘seer’. If fate had been a living
breathing being I would have been her worst enemy. I saw her world
thousands of years into the future. Balkava ruled as an empress over the
imperium, the human empire. Users were bred, sacrificed daily rigged to
machines that stabbed at them with shards of nexus until they saw whatever
it was she wanted them to see. Shards taken from my blood. She captured
and slaved various species in the universe using their bodies to power her