Chapter 103 : The Last Survivors (Patreon)

Here's the second of the two chapters I'm dropping today! Hope you guys like it. I'm already writing the next ones so I can get them to you as soon as possible.

Enjoy the read

The researchers and guards remained on their knees, staring at the ground. The sheer terror of N’vaa’s voice and the casual display of authority had crushed whatever hope remained in them.

“That is all I wanted to show you,” N’vaa said. He leaned down, the dark void beneath his hood coming inches from her ear. His voice dropped to a cold, dry whisper. "Is this the kind of people you would allow to live in your domain?"

His pale face turned slightly toward the cave mouth, looking past the rocks toward the stone arch that led into the Shadow Library. “A fascinating little corner you built for yourself. Perhaps you will invite me inside one day.”

The Operator directed her index finger at N’vaa. “Does that word work for you as well?”

A dry laugh came from the darkness beneath his hood. “If you did that, you would truly hurt my feelings. I don’t know how I’d react.” N’vaa drifted backward and vanished.

Guards and facility technicians dropped to the ground beside the weather balloons. A technician scrambled backward on his knees, his forehead scraping the rock. "Forgive us! We didn't know!"

“Please have mercy! We had no choice!” a woman yelled from the dirt. She wore a torn, stained blazer that looked like a front-desk or administrative uniform. Once perhaps attractive, she was now a filthy wreck after months here. “Don’t send us out there! Please!”

The Operator walked down the slope toward the pod lines. She stopped five paces from the technician. "How many?"

The man kept his face pressed against the ground, trembling. “What?”

"How many people did you sell to those things?"

Dan stepped forward, kicking the nearest guard in the ribs. Dan leveled the tip of his sword an inch from the man’s throat. “Answer her! How many of our people did you feed to those monsters?!”

The senior researcher looked up, face slick with sweat. “We stopped counting after the third month and stopped keeping logs. It was the only way to stay sane.”

“You piece of shit,” Dan said, pressing the flat of his blade against the man’s cheek. “How many are left?”

“Around three hundred thousand,” the researcher blurted. “Three hundred thousand pods are still online in the lower sectors. That is all that remains! We were trying to survive! What else could we do?!”

“Survive by slaughtering everyone here?” Lessa shouted, her blade trembling.

“You didn’t see what was happening out there!” another scientist yelled from the ground, pointing at the sky. “We watched whole planets crack open and vanish into those mouths! We are waiting for our turn. Every day, we sat here, waiting for this rock to be chewed to dust! Those smoke things spoke through our comms. They offered a way out. People in exchange for passage to a new world. We just wanted to live!”

The Operator walked towards a group of tied-up guards and scientists. The rope on some of them cut deep into their wrists, crusted with dried blood.

“And you?” the Operator asked, looking down at them. “What do you think of all this?”

A guard with a split lip and a bruised eye lifted his chin. “We can’t blame them entirely. Before this, none of us cared about the people in the pods either. But your perspective changes fast once you look at what's happening in the sky. Nobody stays sane in a place like this.”

He met the Operator’s gaze. Please, give us a chance. Let us go. We will secure the remaining pods and protect what’s left.”

Dan lowered his sword, glancing at Lessa. “I can trust them, but what do we do with the rest? They killed thousands of people, and others helped them; falling into madness is not an excuse.”

“We need to establish order and assign punishments proportional to the severity of the actions. Many here know this place’s secrets or how it works, which could help the Operator…”

The conversation between Dan and Lessa gradually faded from her mind. She glanced at the staff kneeling by the pods, all those who had negotiated with the monsters.

Does Lessa truly think these bastards will change who they are?

Three hundred thousand frozen bodies downstairs, and a bunch of cowards who spent a year feeding people to monsters to save their own asses. You don't put a collar on someone who already sold out his own kind and expect him to work for you. You just get a backstabber waiting for the lights to go out.

"No," the Operator said. She pointed straight at the staff kneeling by the pods. "Leave these assholes alive, and they'll end up killing people like them." She shifted her hand toward the tied-up prisoners. "The ones who haven't lost their humanity. The ones who actually understand what's at stake here. You leave this scum breathing, and the first chance they get, they'll sell out the rest of us just to save their asses. You two are too close to this. Get this through your heads: I'm the one getting my hands dirty, so you don't have to."

“Wait, Operator!” Lessa said, stepping toward her. “We could just…”

The Operator lifted her right hand. She didn’t look at her face. She pointed her index finger straight at the senior researcher, kneeling on the ground.

"Krozzul."

A bitter iron taste coated her tongue. The space around the researcher warped. The ground gave way, and an unseen force launched his body into the red sky, tearing out of sight.

Lessa stood frozen mid-step, her eyes locked on the empty patch of dirt where the researcher had been kneeling a second earlier. Neither moved. Neither spoke.

Panic broke out among the remaining facility crew. The guards and technicians who had worked to sell the innocent people in the pods scrambled on all fours, clawing through the dirt, shoving one another, and tripping over each other as they ran.

The Operator swung her arm, pointing out the technician holding the remote control. “Krozzul.” He shot upward, ripping through the upper atmosphere toward the dark beyond the dome.

"Run! RUN!" one of the facility guards screamed, scrambling blindly up the slope.

"Krozzul."

Another member of the ‘selling innocent people’ club suddenly tore away from the ground and disappeared into the void.

"Krozzul."

One of the technicians, whose hands were tied, looked up at the shock on Lessa’s face.

"Miss, look at me. Please."

Lessa turned toward him. Dan looked over as well.

“It might look sickening, what she’s doing,” the technician said, his voice low. “Maybe you’ve never seen people die like that. But you need to know this: what she’s doing has to be done. What those bastards did was… was mass m-murder. Plain and simple.” Tears tracked through the filth on his cheeks. “Hell, I helped kill innocent people, too. Maybe I deserve the same death. But knowing them? They would’ve done it all over again at the first chance they got.”

"Krozzul.

"Krozzul."

As the Operator charged toward them, some dropped to their knees, begging for mercy. Others rushed her in groups, trying to tackle her before she could speak. A few just stood there, weeping and shaking, accepting their fate. The Operator pointed her finger at each of them without hesitation.

"Krozzul."

"Krozzul."

Her voice tore through the screams, hurling them past the dome and into the sky, where they were ripped apart and devoured. The prisoners, still bound, sat on the floor, wide-eyed, staring at the empty ground where their captors had just been. Nobody in ropes had been harmed.

As she lowered her arm, her right hand felt dead, fingers stiff. Her mouth tasted of copper. “Lessa, I don’t plan to stay in this place… and you’ve already seen how time moves differently here. Leaving those people alive would have been a ticking time bomb.”

“I’ve never seen people die like that,” Lessa said, staring at the ground. “I thought that if they saw the big picture, if they realized we’re all that’s left, they might change their minds. I don’t know. I was an idiot. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not an idiot,” Dan said. He pointed his finger at the bound prisoners. “Just save that kind of thinking for them. They think as you do, and they’re the ones who actually want to help the people in the pods.”

“Please help me cut them loose,” the Operator said. “Take the technicians and help those who are awake in the pods; it doesn’t feel right to freeze them again.”

Dan released one of the technicians, the one who had spoken to Lessa. Rubbing his raw wrists, the man looked at the row of cryo-pods and shook his head. “I know this sounds awful, but you can’t wake those people up.”

“Why not?” Dan asked. "Most of them are pounding on the glass, losing their minds in there. They're terrified."

“You don’t get it,” the technician said, keeping his voice low. “Many of our people killed themselves after seeing what’s out there. Some lost their entire families. Others couldn’t handle the sky. The people in those pods are from another continent…”

"Their continent is gone, just like everything else," the Operator cut in. "What's your name?"

“Jor. My name is Jor, ma’am. Here’s the thing: all of them lost their homeland. Many of them caught a glimpse of the sky through the glass. You can tell by how they’re hitting the pods that they’ll have questions we can’t answer. We have to put them back under.”

The Operator eyed him. “And what about you? How are you handling this? What makes you different from those who lost their minds?”

“Most of the ones who stayed sane had family living in the employee housing units,” Jor said. “Like me. My wife and my son. That’s why it was sometimes hard for me to blame the others. Plenty of them lost more than you can imagine.”

“So, are there more people inside?”

“Yes, ma’am. Most of those left think as we do. And they’ve got families to protect, too.”

“All right, Jor,” the Operator said. “I’m the Operator. These two are Dan and Lessa. Please gather your crew and make sure the people in those pods are put back to sleep before they hurt themselves. Once you’re finished, we need to discuss the next steps for this place.”