Chapter 102: Ruler of the Damned (Patreon)

As promised, here is one of the two chapters I'm putting out today. The next one will be up in under five minutes. Enjoy the read!

The Operator knelt down, placing the backpack and Mordran’s head on the floor. Its mouth was open in a silent scream, still powering the Shadow Library.

"Cat, we're leaving," the Operator yelled across the room. "Are you coming with us?"

Catherine lay flat on her belly in a far corner of the library, propped up on her elbows. “If I have to choose between going back to that place and staying here, I’m staying here. So no thanks.”

“Fine. Just don’t touch Mordran’s head or go near it. I have no clue what’s happening to him.”

"Yeah, yeah," Catherine muttered. She didn't look up, already buried in the pages.

The library was in chaos, with damaged books scattered across the floor alongside broken marble tiles and splintered dark wood. Lessa looked over at the girl, frowning. “So all of this knowledge belonged to Mordran? What is Cat reading over there that has her so focused?”

“Storybooks, novels, fantasy crap from other worlds,” the Operator said, rising to her feet. “She’ll stay locked on a single book for hours without even twitching.”

"Isn't that a waste?" Lessa asked, frowning. "She could be learning everything Mordran knew. There is so much information here."

The Operator shook her head. "I get it. Used to think the exact same way. But Cat's just a kid, and she never got to have a life. If this little world makes her happy, I'm letting her have it."

Catherine gently kicked her legs in the air with a small smile while reading, and Lessa watched her with a faint smile appearing on her face.

"Napoleon, you got any rounds left?" the Operator asked.

“I don’t have any bullets left,” Napoleon answered from her shoulder. “The last ones were in your revolver.”

"Great. Bare hands it is."

They stopped at the exit arch, which stood alone outside the library. Through the opening, you could see the entrance to the bioresearch facility, but nothing else nearby. The arch’s exit appeared to be set within a shallow cave.

"Alright, let's move," the Operator said. "I don't want to stay here long."

You don't seem very excited about owning your own private research lab.

“Right now? No clue what N’vaa handed me. Can’t trust anything he said, either. Best to keep expectations low for now.” She glanced over at Lessa and Dan. “We’re all used to world-hopping by now, right?”

Dan answered, “After seeing a giant eye floating in space and a white creature talk to us the second we arrived in that evolution zone, nothing surprises me anymore.”

"On three, then?"

Lessa and Dan took each other’s hands. “On three,” Lessa said.

Taking a deep breath, the Operator reached for a shoulder strap, forgetting the backpack was still in the library. It was a habit. She started the countdown. “Three… two… one… let’s go!”

Passing through the arch into the other realm was like brushing aside a curtain. It wasn’t intense, no physical or mental impact. The main change was the sudden silence of the shadow library shutting off. In this new world, screams erupted, voices argued loudly, and people tore into each other. Human voices.

The Operator muttered, “Wait, I blew the elevator at the research facility; why are people outside?”

“There are other lifts and routes up. Freight, employee wings, and, if I’m not wrong, five staff elevators in other sections.”

"You didn't check that on the control panel?"

“Kind of busy trying to hit the mission, Tera. I ignored things I didn’t need at that moment,” she snapped, irritated.

Staying low, the Operator kept her focus on the chaos ahead. Outside, under the crimson sky, the ground was covered with hundreds of glass containers. Inside, frozen bodies floated in stasis, though many had thawed. Awake test subjects pounded their bloody fists against the glass, screaming silently behind the thick panes. No one was there to help. Guards and scientists attached heavy weather balloons to the pod frames, lifting them up, where formless smoke-entities hovered above the dome.

Tied up in the dirt nearby, a small group of guards and scientists were screaming their lungs out, surrounded by armed facility security. "Look at what you're doing!" one of the tied guards screamed, spitting blood onto the rocks. "Those are our people in those pods! What is wrong with you?!"

An older researcher didn’t flinch. He tied a heavy line around the pod, securing it to the weather balloon’s frame without looking down at the tied-up men. “Shut your mouth. We’ve been rotting in this place for almost a year. Look at the sky! You want to stay here and die?”

Those last words shock her. A year?

Her mind snagged on the word year, refusing to accept it as real. We have been in the evolution zone world for a few hours. Half a day, maybe less. “Tera, what the fuck is he talking about?”

I can only guess: it's the seed fused to Mordran's skull now, connected straight to the Shadow Library, a pocket universe pinched off from standard spacetime. If time barely moves in there, the clock doesn't tick the same way out here. An hour for us could be ten or twelve months out there. I don't have enough to work with. We can't know for sure.

Catherine!

The Operator turned away from Lessa and the pods and sprinted back toward the cave mouth. She hit the archway at full speed, breaking through the barrier and returning to the Shadow Library. Catherine was on the floor, reading, exactly where the Operator had left her. Nothing had moved.

Sliding to a halt, she asked, “Cat… how much time has passed?”

Catherine blinked up at her. "Just a few minutes. Why?"

“Never mind.”

The archway seemed to hold time still between this dimension and the Shadow Library.

At least I know nothing will happen if this takes a few hours… But a whole fucking year gone? Months had slipped by while she wasn’t looking, leaving the facility to rot and the survivors to tear each other apart. “This damn year, they have been destroying what little remains of their civilization. Damn, idiots.”

“What are we doing? They’re packing people up like meat. We have to stop them right now.”

"Lessa, wait. Listen to them first. I need to hear who they're trading with."

Down by the pods, another scientist, tied up, yelled, straining against the ropes around his wrists. “You’re handing people over to monsters! You’re slaughtering your own kind!”

"Slaughtering?" a guard spat, kicking dirt straight into the man's mouth. "Tell that to our people! We dragged three more corpses out of the facility yesterday. People are slitting their wrists just to stop looking at that eye. Half the staff went crazy because of it.”

“Those creatures promised us a way out,” said a man who looked like the senior scientist. “They want biological material. We give them the cryo-units, and they take us to a living world. That’s the deal.”

“Stop calling them biological material. Do you actually believe them?! They destroyed our world! They’re monsters! They’re not taking us anywhere! You’re butchering our own species to save your pathetic lives!”

The lead researcher snorted. "Our species? Since when do you care? You were right there experimenting on them too. When we were mutilating them, none of us gave a damn. You called it a necessary sacrifice."

Dan says, “I don’t think they will say anything else, Operator; it’s better to act before they send the next body.”

Yes, let's put an end to this.

The Operator stepped out of the shallow cave. Dan and Lessa stayed half a step behind her. On her shoulder, Napoleon adjusted his metal legs, his optical sensors scanning the area and tracking everyone.

Down by the pod lines, the noise died instantly. The researchers and guards, frozen beside the weather balloons, turned toward the cave mouth and locked their eyes on them. A bald researcher dropped a coil of cable into the gravel. He recognized her instantly from the elevators. “It’s them, the ones from the elevators. Where were they hiding?!”

She ignored him and looked up. High above, the dark smoke creatures hovering outside the dome paused. The second she locked eyes with them, the smoke fell apart and vanished. The weather balloons remained empty and floating under the red sky, their tether lines dangling toward the cryo-pods on the ground, where a technician stood frozen, remote control unit in hand.

The guards panicked and responded by drawing their guns and opening fire.

Gunshots cracked through the air. Bullets slammed into the Operator’s chest, while stray rounds hit Dan and Lessa. The slugs flattened against their reinforced skin and dropped uselessly into the dirt. Dan didn’t flinch. Neither did Lessa, keeping her footing as the rounds ricocheted off them. Napoleon clicked his metal joints, extending small blades from his limbs as his optical sensors locked onto the shooters.

The senior scientist dropped to his knees and waved his arms. “Ceasefire! Stop shooting, you idiots!” He crawled through the dust and looked up at the Operator. “Listen! We just want to survive! The world out there is gone! Those people in the pods were going to die anyway! We’re only using them to get passage out of here! You have to understand!”

The Operator stared down at him without a word. She had no interest in talking to him and turned back to Dan and Lessa. “This is your world; I’ll do whatever you want. Want me to kill them? Or do you want to kill them yourselves? It’s your call.”

Lessa looked at the kneeling scientists. She slowly lowered her blade until its tip touched the ground. “If we kill them now, when barely any of us remain, we’re no better than they are.”

The air grew extremely cold. Suddenly, breathing became harder, and a fear began to invade the place. The fear was visible on Dan and Lessa’s faces as they looked around for the source of that feeling.

"I genuinely believed you weren't coming back," a raspy voice said.

She turned toward the arch at the sound of the voice. Napoleon kept his blades pointed toward the voice. Dan and Lessa raised their swords, ready to strike. 

N’vaa stood right beside the stone archway, wearing that torn red cloak. The dark void beneath the hood faced her. "It's been a long time since I saw you... and strangely, you look exactly the same as when you left... as if only a few minutes had passed... Strange."

N’vaa drifted toward the Operator. “By the way, what you did to my seed is quite annoying. It looks like you have powerful friends. The sad part is that I can’t reach the world where you live now… We really wanted to see it.” A faint laugh escaped from the shadows of his face.

She pointed at the pods and the balloons. “Do you have anything to do with what’s happening here?”

“I have nothing to do with this,” N’vaa said, lifting its pale hands. “This dome belongs to you. If anyone is to blame, it’s you for leaving it behind. My pets ran away the second they sensed the owner’s return.”

"Then why are you here?"

“Just checking on my seed, which, unfortunately, no longer belongs to me. I was also waiting for you to show you something interesting about this place you own.”

The guards and scientists backed away, terrified, staring at the tall creature.

N’vaa stepped forward. Its cold fingers clamped around the Operator’s right hand, curling her fingers into a fist until only her index finger pointed straight at one of the guards by the pods.

Dan stepped forward, but the Operator raised her other hand to halt him. Please don't move. You can't fight this thing.

"You have dominion over this place, Operator," N'vaa whispered, leaning close to her ear. "Dominion means whatever is here exists because you allow it. Point at him and say the word. Say Krozzul."

The word felt unpleasant on her tongue, especially when she thought about it and started to shape it in her mouth.

Why am I giving in so easily? shit. This thing is like a snake; I can’t control the word that wants to come out of my mouth.

“Do it,” N’vaa pressed, her finger locked onto the man.

She planted her boots, took a breath, and said it. “Krozzul.”

When those words left her mouth, she felt every inch of that small, shattered piece of the planet as if it were her own. Every living thing, including the creatures still breathing inside the bioresearch facility. For just a single second, she could feel all of it. The guard, however, no longer belonged to it. He no longer belonged there. An invisible force hurled him into the sky, moving at a speed barely visible to the eye as he was ripped away from that broken world.

As he exited the dome into space, a massive shadow shifted. From that distance, it was impossible to make out the details… The only noticeable aspect was the shadow heading toward him, likely to consume him.

The Operator looked at her finger. Her skin felt numb. With just one word, she had ejected a man from this place. I just killed a guy like he was nothing.

N’vaa looked down at the trembling scientists on the ground. “My pets out there love giving hope to pathetic people like you. None of you are leaving this place unless she says so.”