Episode 3 - Plowshares

  Chapter 22 - Operation: Material Obligation (3)

  I cough up a mouthful of bile, not breaking eye contact with Cain.

  “I’m not really in the mood for this,” I say, hoping my shield of bravado will be enough.

  “Well too bad, cob,” replies Cain, “I’ll say though, I was not expecting the infamous Aquila to turn up armed to the bloody teeth, but there is always a weak link. That’s some impressive mobile tech you got there given one of you spotted and subdued my symbiont.”

  “What do you want?” I bark, wiping my mouth with one hand. I look at the back of my hand to see a streak of faintly yellow saliva across it. My skin is as pale as death, a clammy sweat beading down my wrists.

  “Given you look sick, I’ll do you a favor. I want you to do nothing, and let me sneak out of here with these clock watchers while your comrades are off trying not to kill those free-men.”

  “Conrada needs back up,” whispers Adrian in my ear but not to me.

  “Already on my way,” returns Everett’s steady rumble.

  Noah surprisingly separates himself from the pack, his blanket slipping from his bare shoulders. “And your Sales Rep thought I was overreacting when I contracted Aquila! Who are you working for? Magna-Tech? Drake and Petrov’s?”

  “Sit down old man!” Cain removes the barrel of his gun from my head for barely a second and an explosion rocks the floors beneath us. Several members of our captive audience scream, Noah stumbles and falls over. I crash forward onto my hands and knees, my wrists giving out as I faceplant into the floor. Cain stumbles but keeps on his feet and swings the gun back to my head again, planting a boot on my face. “Ah, that one is yours then,” he sneers.

  “Fuck off,” I spit through the stink of his rubber soles. The side of my face stings as he pushes me against the carpet and the friction burns my skin.

  “Whatever that is, the sooner it’s out of the picture the better. Sorry little girl, and I like the feisty ones too-”

  My heart stops at the sound of the gunshot. The world flashes white. Pinpricks of warmth land across the skin of my face.

  Then I open my eyes.

  Cain collapses, one eye and a full third of his face jutting outwards and twisted unrecognizable by red gore and displaced teeth. He falls to his knees and then topples sideways like a weighted sack, his boot scraping my face as his torso falls next to me. As my eyes lift I can see Everett in the doorway and those steady arms holding his handgun perfectly still in front of him, a tiny wisp of white rising from the end of the barrel. His chest is gently heaving, sweat dripping from one brow down the side of his face, cobalt blue eyes locked on the air above my head where Cain stood.

  I barely have a moment to collect my thoughts when the ground between us erupts upwards in a fountain of shrapnel and twisting carpet squares. Cain’s body explodes against the ceiling propelled by a flare of dense, black smoke. What is best described as ‘parts’ rains on the floor around us and into our audience. As the smoke dissipates, Pooka stands straddled over the cavity through the floor, back hairs bristling, lips twisted into a crazed snarl and eyes of fire burning so bright I feel like everyone else must be able to see the light.

  “Get out!” commands Everett, lowering his gun and gesturing towards himself and the door for the crowd of watchers, the steady urgency in his voice cutting through the horror of the past few seconds. “On your feet. Now!”

  A few of them don’t need encouragement, gathering their peers or scooping up the two girls who are screaming at the top of their lungs again. They untangle hands twisted into blankets or clawed around each other, and steady faces streaming with tears or spotted with unthinkable red flecks.

  With a wet pop as it unsticks, the majority of what remains of Cain drops from the ceiling in one red mass, streamers of clothing trailing behind, and Pooka steps back to let it fall through the hole beneath him to the lower levels, following it with his eyes. Then he lowers his lip, shuts his jaw, and looks at me cocking his head to one side as he whimpers. It almost sounds like regret in his voice.

  “Status report Rhett?”

  “Cain and the intruders are neutralized. Assume APS involvement in whatever is going on here. I’m bringing the targets downstairs. The structural stability of this building is compromised.”

  “We’re maintaining a zone of control. Try to keep the targets off the ground floor so they don’t see anything too unsavory.”

  There is a pause. “Yeah, that ship’s sailed tonight. We need to clear a path to move to another building. Conrada is also not in a state to keep an eye on the tech. I’ll check in once I’ve got everything under control but we need a plan to leave, and quickly.”

  “Rishi, put something together for us.”

  "On it."

  “I can do my job,” I cough, lifting my torso on shaky hands. I don’t even know if Everett can hear me over the sounds of shuffling bodies, urgent whispers, and the dripping ceiling.

  Everett grabs one of the men who is helping him keep everyone moving by the shoulder and whispers instructions in his ears, then finally he skirts around the hole in the floor to come and kneel next to me, placing his handgun on the floor.

  Firm hands help me sit upright. He tucks a wrist into his sleeve and attempts to wipe my face with it, eyelids hooded over his eyes that won’t quite meet mine. I flinch when he rubs the carpet burn with the coarse edge of his sleeve and bat his hand away.

  “Don’t tou-” the words aren’t fully out of my mouth before my stomach rolls and I gag a mouthful of clear bile onto the floor with an undignified lurch of my diaphragm that ends in a coughing fit. “Fuck!” I bark at the end of it, the corners of my eyes growing wet and blurring my vision.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Hey, hey,” he coaxes, keeping one hand on my shoulder and one cupped, held moments away from my cheek as if ready to steady me at any moment. “I’m not touching you.”

  “You are,” I sniff, wiping my mouth with my sleeve.

  “I’m not. I promised, remember,” he slowly releases me. “When are you not a mess?”

  “Go watch the clock,” I swear.

  “Just saying it as I see it,” he grunts. “Can you get up?”

  I rock forward onto both hands, waiting for the world to stop spinning and my ears to stop ringing. “I feel like dregs.”

  “Hmm. That happens. You gonna hurl again?”

  I grimace. “Nah. I’d’ve done it already if I was.” I take a breath and steady myself, then lean back on my knees as Everett backs off. I turn to try and grab my sensors but he shakes his head.

  “Leave ‘em. We got plenty.”

  Despite his suggestion, I grab the main unit and yank the cables of the rest free with my fist to leave them behind. Everett lifts me by my forearm to get me on my feet, pushing me in front of him and out the door. A few members of management are waiting in the stairwell and he barks at them, “Down. Keep moving.”

  Pooka trots behind us, the gore I remember on our… his body fell off him when he dissipated and changed shape. His thoughts are tentative, hesitant, his blood lust mellow.

  “Alright, team. I’ve identified a warehouse as a defensible position to move to. Leave the APC for now, Blake’s symbiont will keep the civilians clear of it. There is a large mechanic's warehouse two buildings north, with an elevated office space and catwalks above the ground floor. We can move the targets there and remain on guard to the morning. I recommend the back door that they tried coming in through as your exit. Waiting your command, Aster?” explains Rishi in my ear as we race down the stairs after the herd of tired and scared people.

  “Bullock, give ‘em a scare and follow. I’m meeting up with Rhett and Conrad.”

  “Keep moving, over here! Down this way, out the back,” calls Aster’s voice aloud somewhere down the stairs on the next level. Everett keeps his hand wrapped around my forearm, pushing me forward behind our targets.

  As we reach the ground floor he passes me to Aster. “I’m going to go ahead and confirm our path. Take care of this one.”

  Aster draws in his breath between his teeth and clucks his tongue as he breaks character at the sight of me. Safely out of earshot of our gaggle of targets he tucks his rifle behind one arm and gives me a pat on each shoulder as if to reassure himself I’m all in one piece.

  “This blood yours?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Good, right. Onwards.” He lifts his voice to yell more instructions around me, “Wait at that back door for me please, I’ll tell you when we can keep moving. Someone carry those girls, they’ll cut their feet up on the street.”

  “All clear,” confirms Everett.

  Aster gives me a raised eyebrow look that says ‘follow me’ and bustles past to begin coordinating the members of management who have kept their heads through most of this, oddly giving them brisk instructions to form a chain of humans holding hands with each other. “We’re moving out, Blake, cover us.”

  “Copy Commander.”

  Aster’s symbiont dances on his bald head, slowly bobbing from side to side in place upon all four of its thoracic legs. Like a pale dancer in the half-moonlight.

  “Alright. Don’t look at yourself, don’t look at each other. Look ahead and follow me,” commands Aster. He takes the hand of one of the men at the end of the human chain then extends his second to me, fingers wide and reaching in invitation.

  I place my hand within his, and he grips me back, entwining his fingers with my own and tugging me close to him protectively. Then his symbiont stops moving, straining its forearms before itself as if raising them in prayer.

  A shiver of light travels down the line of connected bodies, then my eyes ache as I watch our outlines shrink into the fissure between its edges. The straight lines of the shelves and walls behind us bend as light is distorted around our forms creating an imperfect camouflage within a warped space of the world where light is refracted around us. I look at my hand, and feel my stomach roll as the curved shapes of the world immediately sends my brain screaming all manner of objections to the mismatch between what my eyes and my inner ear feel. It’s particularly sickening where it folds around my moving fingers.

  “Don’t look at it!” commands Aster again, “Shut your eyes if you have to. Follow the hand that pulls in front of you and don’t let go.”

  I take a breath and do as I’m told for once.

  “The civilians were armed, but not with anything that would suggest APS equipped them,” says Blake.

  “Probably used them. Tipped them off where the Execs were and hoped their own desperation would do their hard work for them,” muses Aster.

  “This doesn’t change much, we already knew they were likely compromised. What it does make difficult is our chances of meeting Intertrain at the station,” replies Rishi, “Mia is currently in contact with their Upper Management trying to see if we can get them to make a stop for us to load by the dome lock or one of the ancient silos. If we can swing it, you’ll need to get everyone packed up pretty quick for us to have a chance of making it across the fields in time.”

  “It’s bumpy terrain, it’ll be slow progress?” adds Blake.

  “Yeah, Adrian’s kept me up to date on the visual feed. My symbiont is running the simulations with it taken into account. I’ll be in contact when I have your new operational plan.”

  “There’s a garage door the APC might fit through, can you bring it Blake?” adds Everett.

  The discussion turns to the logistics of getting the armored bus relocated to the maintenance garage we are hunkered down in and I lose track of the voices in my ear. Adrian can see what the Vespa see then. I guess like how I can see through Pooka’s eyes.

  What a mess he must live in. What a confusing tumble of images and voices to be subjected to. I could barely keep my head screwed on with just two bodies. How much do they all really share with their symbionts, are they like me? Or am I really the only one who can't keep us straight?

  My eyelids feel heavy and I blink at the memories that thought surfaces, flashing images of blood and flesh and the moist gleam of eyes in the dark when they catch the light. Pooka watches me, his chin on his paws and eyes burning. This is normally where he would pipe in, remind me we ‘overlap’, that we are different or something.

  His thoughts are as quiet as empty hallways.

  head over and do so. I'm mostly here for vibes lol, I didn't think AQUILA was good enough, so I have no advanced chapters or cool benefits to offer you, I'm not organized like that - hence the free membership thing. But there is a Spotify playlist for all the opening and closing songs (including future episodes through to the end of book 1 and I'm just starting to add ones for book 2, they may change order or contents as I feel out those episodes). Feel free to speculate on plot or where I'm up to based on the playlist lol!