Chapter 101: A Husband's Screams (Patreon)

And here's chapter 2. I'll have another one for you on Tuesday.

“We need to sleep,” the Operator said, looking between Dan and Lessa. “Cat and I… we’ve basically been resting in the Shadow Library for years. But you two? You haven’t stopped moving. Get a few hours on an actual bed, get some energy back, and then we figure out the rest.”

"No," Lessa said, cutting in before the Operator could finish. "We can't."

The Operator frowned. "Lessa…”

“I can’t sleep, Operator. I close my eyes, and I see everything. Everyone. My whole world. Billions of people, wiped out. Gone. And I’m supposed to lie down in a warm room and pretend that didn’t happen? If there’s even one person alive down there in that facility, I need to know. It’s the only thing keeping me sane.”

Dan stepped over, pulling her close to his shoulder. He kept his arm around her for a moment, letting her breathe, before looking up at the Operator.

“She’s right,” he said. “Between the adrenaline and the escape from our planet, we won’t be able to rest. We’d just spend the night staring at the ceiling.”

Cat walked past the chairs and stood beside them, holding onto Lessa's arm.

Operator. We just need to check whether the people are alive from a control panel. Besides, that place is a gold mine for you as an engineer; we just need to take a look.

She let out a slow breath. "We eat first. I'm not dragging us back into that place on an empty stomach. We haven't had a sip of water or seen a bathroom in hours."

Lessa gave a quick nod, and Dan dropped his arm from her shoulder. They headed straight to the kitchen. Elmuran hadn’t cooked a hot meal, but the pantry was well-stocked. Dan opened tins of salted beef with his combat knife, passing the food to others, while Cat brought out containers of dried fruit. The Operator leaned over the sink and drank straight from the tap until she had enough.

They ate while standing, quickly clearing the counter, then scattered to the different bathrooms around the apartment. When they regrouped in the living room, Dan and Lessa stood waiting near the fireplace.

“Listen to me,” the Operator said, leaning against the wooden table. “Here’s how this goes. We are not going back down there to fight or play hero. We barely saw maybe five percent of that whole place, and right now, none of us are strong enough to clear whatever is down there. We go in, check the control monitors to see if your people are still alive, and we get out. That’s it. In and out. No wandering off, no hero bullshit. Are we clear?”

"Agreed," Dan said.

Lessa nodded. "Yes."

The Operator looked at Cat. “You staying here or coming?”

“What would I do here by myself? I’m coming. Besides, I’m safer with you.”

The Operator nodded once. "Fair enough."

She pulled the seed from her pocket and tossed it in her hand. “N’vaa told me this thing opens a way back, straight to the dimension where your world ended up. I guess we just plant it and see what happens. It should let us cross over.”

Lessa looked from the seed to the polished floorboards. “You’re going to plant that here, in this room?”

“Not here,” the Operator said, closing her hand around it. “Nowhere in this city is safe. If the factions running this planet find out what this thing does, they’ll take it before it even sprouts. But I know a place no one can touch.”

She rested her hand on the metal cage at her hip, where Mordran’s severed head hung. “We’re going to the place where Cat and I stayed all those years, and I’m thinking of trying to plant it there. I don’t have the slightest clue if it’ll work, but none of what’s happening makes any sense to me anyway. I’m just trying things out because I can’t think of anything else. But as I said, we’ll stay a short while and head right back. I already spent years in that place… I want to see the real world.”

Cat looked annoyed by the way the Operator talked about the Shadow Library. And the Operator knew that face right away. To Cat, the library wasn't just some random spot. It was her first home.

"Ready?" the Operator asked.

Napoleon sat quietly on the Operator’s shoulder. Dan and Lessa stepped closer, standing beside her, but neither said a word.

“You’re both awfully quiet. I thought you’d be a bit more excited about this.”

Lessa looked down for a moment. “I’m just scared of being disappointed. What if we get there and… there’s nothing left?”

"Then at least you'll know," the Operator said. She held out her left arm. "Grab on. It won't be like the jump on the ship, but don't let go."

Dan grasped her arm as Lessa clung to him and Cat seized the Operator’s belt. The Operator used her free hand to brush aside the greasy hair obscuring Mordran’s forehead and forced open the third eye. In that moment, the room vanished, replaced by a void of icy darkness that erased the light, the fire, the cedar scent, and the floor. Dan’s grip tightened instinctively to brace, and Lessa remained perfectly still beside him.

“Operator? What happened to the floor?” Dan asked.

"Keep holding on," the Operator said. "Wait."

A thin yellow light emerged from the dead eye, slicing into the darkness and branching outward. As the glow spread, the emptiness quickly took shape. Large wooden bookcases rose from the shadows, reaching toward the black ceiling. Small oil lamps along the brass railings flickered to life, casting a warm glow. Beneath their steps, a broad red carpet stretched across the dark floor, bordered by carved columns and study tables.

Then the sound came, an endless rustle as thousands of books settled into place, filling the shelves, level by level, all the way to the highest balconies. The light settled, and the library stood complete around them.

Lessa stepped out onto the red carpet, her voice barely a whisper in the long hall. “What… what is this place?”

A loud scream broke the silence before anyone could answer. Cat bolted past them, her boots pounding the floor. "No, no, no! Where are my notes?! Everything I wrote… my drawings, my notes, noooo!" She rushed down the aisles, checking the sections where she had left them.

Napoleon jumped off the Operator’s shoulder and landed on the floor. He ran around, his little head turning in every direction, searching for all the webs he had built throughout the library over the years. Finding nothing, he stopped and slowly lowered his head, looking completely sad.

"Cat, you got all of it in your head anyway. Come on.”

"It had sentimental value, damn it!" Cat shouted back from down the hall.

“I told you that was going to happen,” the Operator said. She turned back to Dan and Lessa. “Well, this is where we spent all those years. All of this belonged to Mordran. He left it to me like alimony, which is why it’s hard for me to completely hate him.”

Lessa let out a small laugh, shaking her head. "You keep talking about Mordran as if you two were actually married."

Dan let out a chuckle beside her.

The Operator looked at them, completely serious. “Well, according to him, we were. We did some bonding thing, so we couldn’t lie to each other. So when I called him my ex-husband, I wasn’t joking.”

Dan and Lessa stared at her, caught off guard. Dan leaned in slightly toward Lessa, keeping his voice low. “…She’s married to a Winged One?”

“Anyway,” the Operator said, moving on. “As I said, we get in and we get out. Let’s activate the seed and see what happens.”

Aren't you going to scan it? Don't you want to know what it's made of?

“I’m not risking it, Tera. Not with the seed, not with this place. The Great Realm Portal already scrubbed off whatever tracking garbage N’vaa put on it.”

“Wait!” Cat shouted from deep between the shelves, still miserable. “If you plant it, isn’t it just going to vanish once we leave?!”

The Operator rolled the seed between her fingers, looking down at it. "Well, let's figure out how to activate it."

A high, sharp screech cut through the air. It came straight from her hand. The words were in a dark, twisted tongue none of them should have known, yet she understood every single word:

"Activate. Activate. Activate seed," the seed repeated.

Tiny, needle-thin spider legs tore through the seed’s pale skin, twitching violently.

“Shit!” the Operator yelled, jerking her hand back. She dropped it. The thing hit the floor with a hard click, then took off, running in frantic circles.

"Activate. Activate seed.”

It darted toward the library’s edge, where the wooden planks ended and the black void began. Its tiny legs scratched furiously at the open dark, trying to dig into nothing. But there was no dirt. Just empty space.

"Cat, get over here right now!" the Operator snapped.

Catherine bolted back and got behind the Operator, grabbing the straps of her backpack with both hands. She didn't take her eyes off the white thing running on the floor. Napoleon dropped to the ground, pulling his front legs back, ready to jump.

"Hold, Napoleon! Don't touch it!" the Operator warned.

Dan and Lessa drew their swords quickly, moving to either side of the Operator. The Operator reached for the gun at her belt, but there was nothing there. She froze. Eron had thrown it into the dark during their fight.

"Damn it, Eron, I forgot."

The white thing stopped moving. It looked like it noticed them, with swords drawn and everyone ready to attack. “No harm… No harm. No harm,” the seed cried, sounding scared.

It paced back and forth along the floor’s edge, panic in every jerky step. “Looking for source… Source… No dirt. No growth. No door. No purpose.”

Then suddenly, everything became motionless. It rotated its small body to face the rest of the room. Its front legs lifted from the wood surface. It aimed directly at the Operator’s hip and Mordran’s severed head. Although it lacked eyes, she felt sure it was staring at him. Panic overwhelmed her immediately.

"Napoleon, kill it!" she screamed.

Napoleon sprang forward, but the seed moved even faster.

“No harm! No harm!” it shrieked.

It shot across the floor, too quick for a blade to track. It struck Mordran’s face and pushed itself directly into his left nostril, disappearing inside before anyone could react.

“Shit, shit, shit!” the Operator yelled, grabbing the metal cage at her hip. “No! We’re leaving now!”

She slammed her thumb against Mordran’s third eye, pushing with all her weight to force the lid shut and seal the dimension. The eyelid didn’t budge. The skin was hard as stone, locked tight.

“Damn it!” She ripped the cage from her belt and threw it away from her.

The metal frame hit the floorboards with a heavy clang. Inside, Mordran’s mouth suddenly gaped wide, the jaw joints clicking as if he were trying to let out a massive scream. But nothing came out. Not a breath, not a rasp. Just a silent, gaping jaw. The dead gray tone of his face turned chalk white. Black veins pushed up under the skin, spreading across his cheeks, his nose, his eyelids, becoming thick, crooked lines.

Everything shook. The wooden floor shook under their boots with a loud, grinding rumble. Tall shelves tipped forward and crashed around them. Books rained down from the top shelves, slamming into the wood and shattering the shelves into pieces.

"Watch out!" Cat screamed, ducking and covering her neck.

Dan pulled Lessa against his chest, holding his sword upright to block falling books.

Mordran’s two human eyes snapped wide, blood-red. The third eye in the middle of his forehead turned an ugly, rotten green. The room filled with the stench of meat spoiling in the heat. The green eye swelled, pushing out of his forehead until the skin stretched thin. The eye burst with a loud pop.

"AAAAAAAH! AAAAAAH!"

His mouth gaped wide open. Dan dropped his sword with a loud clang and quickly covered his ears. He stumbled back, eyes filled with terror. Everyone else also covered their ears, frozen in place.

The Operator stumbled backward, her hand striking the nearest shelf. “Is he… is he alive?!”

Dan kept his blade raised, his knuckles white, his eyes fixed on the severed neck inside the cage. "How the hell is that thing making noise?!"

The scream snapped shut. The floor shuddered violently one last time, nearly dropping Cat to her knees as she clutched the Operator’s backpack. From the ruined socket where the third eye had torn open, a yellow fluid bubbled up and hardened. In seconds, it stitched itself together into an entirely new eye, a bright yellow orb with a black iris cut by thin lines of gold.

Everything stopped. The shaking died down. The broken wood settled. The only sound left was their heavy breathing amid the ruins of the shelves. A bright red beam shot straight out from the new yellow eye.

A beam of light pierced the darkness outside the library, splitting the black void. Massive stone blocks emerged from the darkness, assembling into a towering arch over thirty feet high. Dark roots crept up the stones, adorned with strange symbols that she couldn’t understand.

Through the arch, the other side lay wide open. Gray ash drifted across a ruined horizon. Smashed concrete, twisted metal, and the dead, quiet wasteland of Dan and Lessa’s planet lay under the red sky. Just ten paces beyond the stone frame stood the reinforced steel doors of the bio-research facility.

Lessa lowered her hands from her ears and stepped toward the arch, looking through the stone frame into the gray light. Far off, broken mountains rose, half-crumbled and missing huge chunks of rock.

“It’s… It’s the mountains,” Lessa said, pointing into the light. “Way out there. That’s where Sector Four should be.”

Dan stepped beside her, his face pale. "The whole ridge is gone. Look at the guard towers. They really burned it all down."

The Operator didn’t look through the gate. Her gaze was fixed on Mordran’s head lying on the floor. In the Shadow Library, it had been only a lifeless face, devoid of expression or presence. Now, his skin was bleached white, with black veins crisscrossing every part. His eyes were wide open, and his mouth was locked open as if in agony.