Trustless Shadows, CH 09 (Patreon)

 “I want to apologize for Major Wise’s behavior,” she says as she sits. Her voice doesn’t have any of the exhaustion in it I remember from when Amanda had to deal with difficult people. “I never told him to treat you this way. I’m Colonel Madelaine Fallon. Doctor Gourd named you Derick—do you prefer to be called something different?”

I shake my head.

A man enters the room, carrying a keyboard. He’s panting and smells of exertion. He looks at me nervously. His blond hair is short and thin. This should indicate he’s older, but his face is free of wrinkles. He’s thin, wearing a shirt with pleated pants. Nothing about him matches the soldiers here.

“It’ll take me a moment to set up, Ma’am.” He sits on her right.

“It’s alright, Harry. Just let me know when you’re ready.”

The man nods and starts typing. The screen on the wall turns on and words appear. I match the speed the letters appear to the sound of his typing.

“Harry is my technical guy. There’s little he can’t do with computers.”

I understand most of the individual words, but the way they are strung together means nothing to me.

“Have you ever wondered how you can walk the streets without people running as far as they can from you? We know you’ve been continuing to fight demons since you’ve left Doctor Walker’s facility.”

I say nothing, but in truth I had been wondering that. How did Robert not know? How did anyone in the fighting arena not know?

“That would be Harry. We’ve been erasing the data as we come across it. Rest assured that your escapades are a safe secret with us.”

I can tell that she’s trying to sound like she’s on my side. Earning money would have been hard without her help, but this changes nothing. “I’m not going to help you.”

She nods. “Possibly, but before you decide, I think you need to hear what else I have to say.”

“It won’t change anything.”

“I’m ready, Ma’am.”

“Bring up the file.”

A face appears on the left side of the screen, looking straight at the camera. It takes half the space, and on the right, the rest is filled with text. The face is male, with a square jaw. It matches what Jason has described as “rugged”. He has short, pale brown hair, so short it looks more like brush bristles than hair. His ruddy pink skin is striped with black. Even the hair is striped with black.

“This is your predecessor.”

I try to judge if she’s lying. Amanda told me the three that came before me died.

“He was the first of Doctor Walker’s experiments. Like you, he came from the military. He was a colonel, highly decorated. Unlike you, he volunteered. Also unlike you, he retained his memories. The treatment left him with those black bands, scars of some sort. Doctor Walker wasn’t able to work out what caused them.”

She nods, and the image is replaced with a picture of a man, the same man by the stripes on his arms and chest, fighting people dressed in the uniform I recognize as Amanda’s support units. It’s in a large room, so training.

“He was active for five months before he began exhibiting signs his personality had been affected.” The image changes again. The man was fighting a demon. “During that time he took down a dozen demons, single-handedly. After that he attacked the human battalion that was in charge of escorting him. Twenty men and women died before they had time to react. Sixteen more died and fifty-three were injured in the process of subduing him. The experiment was deemed a failure, and Doctor Walker was ordered to destroy him.”

The next image shows demons, a lot of them, at least thirty, standing around a single human. It takes me a moment to realize what looks wrong with the image. They aren’t in the process of attacking him or each other to get to him. There is no indication any of them are hungry. They look calm, watching him, captivated.

The image zooms on the man, and now I make out the black stripes on his face. His hair is longer, and the pattern of stripes look different to me.

“This picture was taken six months ago by a drone. As you can tell, he’s quite alive. As far as we can tell, he is leading this band of demons.”

How is he doing that? Humans don’t order demons around. Even when I lived the lie, Amanda had explained that some demons would take humans as agents. She said they were tainted, which was why they smelled like demons to me, that a demon had infected them, made them act more like they did.

That was the lie. Humans will be violent of their own accord, but they do work with demons, for demons, but it is always the demon who is in charge.

“We’ve linked him to sixteen groups of demons like this one. Each of them was involved in a large-scale attack on a city over the last two year, but it wasn’t until this picture that we were able to identify him.”

“So Amanda lied to you also.”

“Yes. The little I’ve been able to get her to admit to indicates that she kept him hidden and restrained in the hopes of fixing what went wrong. I don’t know when he escaped, but I expect it was shortly before the first attack.”

“Get Amanda to tell you. I’m sure you have ways to do that.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t. In spite of this, you and your predecessors were considered sufficient steps forward for her to garner allies within the military. They are more interested in what she can continue to accomplish rather than the damage she caused by not destroying him.”

“So she’s still working?”

“Yes. The damage you and your demon ally caused to her facility was a setback, but all her research was backed up, and she wasn’t the only one collecting the condensed material that holds the demon’s essence. A few months ago she had everything running again, and immediately set to work building your successor. Then this happened.”

The image changes—an aerial view of a city with the streets black from all the demons running through them. I realize it isn’t a still image when I notice a car flipping over. I see demons break from the crowd to hunt down fleeing humans.

“That was three days ago.” The view changes. Armored vehicles are being torn apart. Heavily armored soldiers are ripped to pieces. “The military forces we had in place to take over from you were decimated in minutes. We don’t know how he did it, but he has succeeded in uniting the demons. He’s taken control of them, built an army, and has them using our tactics against us.”

“Should I care?” I ask the question even though I have an urge to run out and go stop those demons.

“You were made to protect humans from this.”

In spite of the urge I feel, she’s wrong. “That was the lie I was told. I was made so Amanda could find out how well I killed demons. She doesn’t care about saving humans; all she wants is to see demons die.” I indicate the screen. “This isn’t because of the demons. It’s because humans are taking over their world, over the wild where demons live.”

“No.” Her voice is hard, filled with certainty. “It’s because of this man.” The screen switches back to the still of the man’s face.

“He’s Amanda’s creation. Hold her accountable.”

“I plan on it, once she’s rescued.” She motions to the man at the keyboard, and the image changes. 

The camera is high, moving closer to the ground in a controlled descent. A building of glass and metal becomes more visible. I’ve seen many like it in my time traveling—every city has buildings similar to this one—but I know this one intimately. That is where I was born, where I live, where Amanda and Jason lied to me.

“This was taken this morning.”

Demons crowd the streets and alleys around the building. The camera moves around it, to the back. The garage doors are ripped open, and demons are pouring into the building. The camera moves along the building, down the narrow alley where Juliette rescued me. There too the door is ripped out, as are the others along that wall.

A demon drags a human out of the building, throws her to the ground, and roars. The human backs up, scrambles to her feet, and runs off. The demon waits a moment, then chases her.

The camera turns the corner and I am looking at the front of the building. The glass facade is shattered, and demons are coming and going as they please. Across the street demons are moving and gesticulating around the street lamps.

No, not just that. More poles have been added between them. People are tied to them. Only, it isn’t just people that are—

A black maw with sharp teeth appears, blocking the view. Then the screen is filled with static.

“That’s the last of—”

I’m on my feet. “Rewind it.” 

The man types and the images move backward. 

“Stop. Zoom on the left.”

More typing. The image resolves itself. 

Two poles, one a street lamp, and the other a large metal beam planted there by someone strong.

“Yes,” the colonel says. “That’s her. They caught her and strung her up for everyone to see. We don’t know why they did that, but at least we know she’s alive.”

I glance at who she means. Amanda is tied to the street lamp. I don’t care about her. I’m looking at the form tied to the metal beam, arms stretched over his head. His head is hung low, his legs are under him, but I can tell they barely support his weight. His skin hangs loosely on him, his form elongated as if he is being pulled from both ends.

I can feel in my body how weak he is; something about his posture resonates with me as if I know how that feels. But that isn’t all. I look at him and I know him. He looks nothing like the last time I saw him. There is no way I can know this.

“I’m in.”

The demon tied to that beam is Claws in the Dark. I am certain of it.