Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (39 page)

Her crying became louder and louder. He could tell that the girl was near. In his
heart he knew he was never a hero, he was never anything, he was nothing to
anybody, he had lived his life being fake to those he was with and never cared
about... but this crying girl, somewhere in his heart he knew, he knew that he
cared about her. His eyes adjusted to the light as he broke forth from his chains,
the adrenaline filled his body. Rage, anger, hatred, and all those things that
filled his heart he felt whither away as he crawled forward towards the crying
girl. The jabberwocky attacked biting his arm, ripping his flesh, he could feel
his bone break under his skin.

Weakened, beaten, bruised, sore he kept going... Nothing was going to stop him,
not even that of the most evil. He finally reached the girl. He felt her soft skin.
He could feel the tension that ran through her body, the fear, and the pain. He
felt he was too blame... but he knew like himself the girl had fallen into the
jabberwocky’s pit just as he had. It was then that he knew the only way they
would get out was together.

In that moment... the boy felt just as every bit as evil as the jabberwocky itself
and he realized this fight in the darkness was his own. He stumbled to catch his
grip, he tripped and fell, he could hear the girl crying, and the girl he knew in
his heart that he loved, his first, and his forever....

She was gone. There was little we could do. Hera’s mind had been
warped by the nexus and her life, the person she was before had been erased.
In the days after she woke up she closed herself off to all of us, throwing fits
the moment someone entered her quiet dark room. It was Aira’s Zeesk that
became her first friend. It had been following Aira hiding in the shadows ever
since we left the bridge. It drank blood but it was sweet at the same time and
unafraid of us. Of course I would almost expect anything that drank blood
the way it did to be unafraid. Somehow it seemed to know there was
something special and or perhaps that there was something very wrong with
Hera. It was the first living thing that she saw that brought her happiness.
From the hallway and through holos we watched her slowly progress from
staring at the animal with curiosity to holding it. Soon enough the two were
actually cuddling and sleeping in the same bed together. The Zeesk protected
her and watched over her. When any of us tried to visit her or even bring her
food Hera would scream even forcing us to at times leave the food on the
floor. We would watch as she ate like a feral animal throwing utensils to the
side. After a few weeks she began come back to us. Least in some ways.
Slowly she began to think of us as a friends viewing us with the same
contempt and curiosity she had when she saw the Zeesk.

She never said my name nor formed words but the fear she had felt
slowly faded as her skin returned to its normal tone. She even started to use a
spoon again. Neither Aira nor I ever left her side. Talon on the other hand
had gathered the remaining members of the resistance and led them to the
wreckage of the Erebus. It was in the ruins that we formed a new colony and
put several of the Cypher leaders on trial. It became obvious that the Cyphers
were full of regret. There was nothing they could do that would make up for
the slaughter and crimes they had committed not just under Balkava but also
as the secret police that forced the law of the elders in the shadows. They
were the inquisition and so many had reason to hate them. Many were exiled
given food and a weapon and sent into the wilds of Eden-3. They were told to
use their talents for killing against the Skrav and to protect the human race
from afar. Many of the Cyphers including the leader that I had first given
orders to took solace in their new mission and walked away from the ruins of
the Erebus with their head held high proud to serve. A few that had been
absent from the slaughter were allowed to stay and rebuild with the rest of
the community the only punishment was they were stripped of their weapons
though for many the dissent they felt inside was their actual punishment.

Eventually weeks turned into months. The Erebus had somewhat a nice
place. Several of us continued to live inside the walls of the ship. Others
began building in the surrounding area using the wrecked ships that couldn’t
fly and even pieces of hull from the Erebus that had broken off to create
housing and even a few small shops here and there. Aira and I managed the
medical center. It was my way of staying close to Hera. I couldn’t help but
think Aira did it to stay close to me. The Cyphers that weren’t in exile buried
the bodies of the dead that had been hooked to the ship, the hive mind, the
secret that had finally been exposed to all. In the end though there were less
than a few thousand of us left and a few hundred Drok when the winter
finally ended and summer began. The snow melted and with it we began
exploring more of our new home. The New Dawn, the dropship of First
Descent was rebuilt and given to Aira and myself by Talon.

Talon made a great leader for the colony and was one of the few smart,
caring, and tactful enough to lead it. Below him was the council, a group
elected made up of heroes and soldiers that helped break ground both after
Balkava’s defeat and when we first landed. Talon was the first to design and
build a well that tapped into the groundwater below the settlement and when
food became scarce he led a group into the wild and came back with herds of
animals that could be bred and milked. We even found a stasis chamber
inside the Erebus full of preserved seeds. Plants from Earth and the Drok
home world hundreds of years old ready to be planted in the fertile soil that
surrounded us. I even found my guitar hidden still in one piece though
slightly out of tune inside a storage compartment in Hera’s room. I tried once
to play it for her hoping that it would somehow bring her back to me. She
stared at me as I sang and played but there was nothing. No matter what
song I sang it was all as if she was hearing it for the first time.
Everyone pulled their own weight, those that couldn’t work were taken care
of by others whether in shifts or by full time guardians, mostly veterans that
seemed to find a new purpose in life taking care of those less fortunate. Many
of the other resistance fighters that were injured became pilots or technicians;
some even found their calling in art and writing. For the first time in
hundreds of years humanity had begun to think creatively again; thinking
outside the box and ignoring the laws the elders had been instilled inside all
of us. The dark era had finally come to an end.

Hera’s eyes were so full of life. Everything was new to her as if she had the
mind of a child. I would sometimes lay awake wondering if somewhere inside
she was still there; the other part of her holding her own hand in the back of
her mind. Hera had always talked about starting over, being reborn. I could
still remember the day she told me that she believed in reincarnation. That
somehow that was what linked all of us through the nexus. We are all one
being living an endless stream of lives neither bound by time or place.

By the time six months had passed I could no longer remain at her side. I
would visit her often but the more I stayed around her the harder it all
became for both of us. I felt like I was no longer looking at the woman that I
loved but rather a whole new person. A child born into an adult body at the
end of a war. There were times I wanted to scream at her to remember all of
the things that she had forgotten. Hera represented the innocence our kind.
In many ways her affliction had become a gift.

The Zeesk had grown to be half the size of a grown man no longer small and
light. It was Hera’s guardian and keeper now more then ever. Most nights I
would wake up screaming. I constantly had nightmares about the Olethro,
about Hayden, Hera, and the Skrav. I could never stop blaming myself.
Night after night I suffered until finally it felt like there was nothing left. One
night even Hera and the Zeesk snuck into my room and she laid beside me.
She in my arms and the Zeesk against my feet. It would be the last time I held
her. There was no place for me in this new world and I was no longer any use
to anyone.
It was Aira that found me inside one of the storage lockers in the bowels of
the Erebus. I had the tip of an M44 in my mouth holding it in the nub were
the fingers I lost use to be. I could taste the metal against my tongue and feel
the two cold triggers brush lightly against my palm. One was an energy blast
that would disintegrate my face in an instant and the other a projectile that
would rip my flesh apart. I couldn’t hear her when she walked in I was too
surrounded by my own thoughts voices in my head screaming at me. She
pulled the gun away and slapped me. She didn’t say a word she just looked at
me sternly and then out of nowhere she smiled and laughed like she did when
we were children. She took my hand and led me to the New Dawn. That
night we left the colony to see the ruins of the Aelita. She told me there was
one more thing I needed to see, then if I really had to, if this world was that
dark and cold she wouldn’t stop me the next time I decided I wanted to
meditate with a rifle against my lips.

Talon sent a patrol alongside us not long after we took off. The ruins of the
Aelita were twisted in a mountain of metal. You could barely tell it was once a
starship it had become so warped. Still several parts of it remained intact.
Perhaps even enough for a second smaller city. I followed behind Aira as she
crawled through several tunnels that had been slam packed together.
Through the dust and remains of we crawled down upward into the
driveshaft. It was nothing like the driveshaft of the Erebus, though at one
point it had probably been much worst. When Aira had taken over the Aelita
against her father the first thing she did was remove the horrors and monsters
that had been created. When we entered the core I was terrified of what I
was going to see. She could remove the monsters but the Aelita still flew side
by side with the Erebus for years so it had to have a cadaver pilot otherwise it
would have become immobile.

The walls that should have held the dead were polished and clean. When we
walked through the door into the heart there was only one body in the center.
I couldn’t believe my eyes; I felt my heart skip a beat and lost my breath as I
began to cry. Dom stood before me fully aged just as old as I was. He was
lying in a tank that looked like a bath wires down fromhis head, spine, and
arms into a thick white liquid that preserved his corpse all across his flesh. He
opened his eyes looked at me and smiled. Aira began to explain how after he
“died” his body was found and brought aboard the Aelita. Using Lethe tech
on Errikus the Eek had kept his mind alive something they had been
instructed to do for any humans that died during our short stay on that
planet. After being brought onboard the Aelita and rigged to the wall
something triggered and his heart began to beat again. He wasn’t alive and he
wasn’t dead, Dom was a living cadaver. Perhaps it was a glitch or maybe
perhaps there was something special about him but his mind was enough to
pilot the ship.

Aira soon showed me how to hook up and speak to Dom through virtual
reality. It took several hours for the two of us to boot the program up and fix
the machines. Once inside the two of us stood on the banks of Errikus. It felt
so real, even the air felt fresh just like it did then. Everything was vivid and
full of life. Sitting with his feet in the water was the avatar of Dom. I hugged
him and began to cry.

“It’s been a long time,” I felt like I barely recognized his voice. It was deeper,
more refined but I guess mine had become that way too. We spent the next
several hours catching up. I spilled my heart out. Most of it he already knew,
Aira had been visiting him constantly almost as much as I saw Hera and he
had been able to monitor most of the events that happened on Eden-3 via
what was left of the Aelita. Before I became too weary to stay inside the
simulation anymore he told me one last thing, “We are not alone, during the
voyage of the trinity there were thousands of humans that left, scattered
among the stars, not just those we called remnants or deserts or exots and
runners. There are entire human cultures among the stars waiting searching
for a world they can call home. Even Errikus now nothing more then ruins of
an old world still harbors thousands of human lives.” It was hard to take in at
first, the idea that we weren’t the last of our kind, the exposure of another lie
the elders had taught us. I felt like deep down in every one of us we knew
that though. During our journey we had been running so long and so fast
those that couldn’t keep up had no choice but to go into hiding.

It took several weeks but we soon moved Dom’s body and consciousness to
the ruins of the Erebus. Unlike Narville who’s mind was never fully copied to
the Erebus Dom’s consciousness could be transferred by his will alone from
ship to ship or even from a ship to a drone. It would have made the move a lot
simpler but Dom insisted we take his still aging body with us. He explained
the process though it was still hard to fathom how they copied his mind,
memories, everything he was into the ship. He told us how he truly believed
the Dom we knew was actually dead and he was nothing more then a copy. It
was hard but Aira and I had spent years mourning the death of our friend.
The new Dom was more then a copy to both of us. Even he mourned the
death of what he called Dom Prime and thanked him for if not for his death
he never would have been given life. Keeping his original body was the
ultimate reminder of his humanity and a place he felt he could store himself
that felt like home. Bodies were used to process data and control the ship and
it was also the most effective and sentimental way to move him from the ruins
to his new home. With his body and the biomass still growing in the Erebus
he alone could pilot a new ship. Even when Dom’s body decayed and rotted
away becoming nothing more then soil inside a metal hull Dom’s mind could
live forever. He was immortal. That wasn’t his wish; he felt symbiotic to
Dom’s body and wanted to make sure that when the time came his
consciousness withered inside whether that was fifty to a hundred years. He
said his worst fear was slipping away that he would become something else.
Even in the years he has been alive he has felt his way of thinking transform
in a way that he felt he was becoming more machine then human.