The Last Human IV - Ch. 6 - Break & Be Broken (Patreon)

< First | < Prev | Next > 

***

Eyes watched from the cracks in the walls, lips and tongues chattered from the branches of the potted trees. Elusive figures flitted across the windows, casting shadows that weren’t really there. Cyrans and avians and a host of other xenos moved in the bricks or rustling the leaves of the trees, or melting out from the vine-wrapped columns that held up the ceiling.

Yet, Agraneia was alone.

The faces belonged to the dead, the dismembered and blasted and burned. They looked like the soldiers she’d fought with, painted with blood, wearing flesh burned or rotten. They looked like lassertane, gaunt and malnourished and cut to pieces. They looked like the xenos from the planets conquered by the Emperor’s Glorious Armies.

All their deaths belonged to her.

At least, here, in the old training tower atop the Palace, the screaming voices were softer. She barely heard their curses—you monster, you evil bitch—above the breeze that sighed through the tower’s windows.

And here, instead of suffocating her, that tightness in her chest fueled her work. There was room to fight.

Between the branches of potted trees, three heavy drones hovered above the stone training floor. Each one was made from printer scrap and discarded parts from old constructs, and a few hardy repulsor engines that Khadam had designed specifically for her. Their long limbs dangled with titanium claws and carbon steel razors, and their bodies bristled with gun barrels that shot something Khadam called “plasticized alloy rounds.” Should their weapons fail, they could simply drop on Agraneia, and crush her.

The Queen said they looked like floating piles of garbage, come to life. And while Agraneia didn’t understand what mechanisms kept the drones in one piece, she sure as hells knew how to take them apart.

“Resume,” Agraneia growled.

The drones blared a tone. They fanned out as they ascended above the training circle, rattling the branches of potted trees as they disappeared into the foliage.

There were faces in the leaves, too. They called to her, taunted her. One of them was screaming, and the smell of burned flesh stung her nose.

Agraneia closed her eyes. Inhaled, until the burning scent was replaced by soil and old vegetation, and the screaming, hateful laughter of the faces faded into the breeze.

A branch cracked.

Agraneia exploded into action. She threw her liquid arm up. The liquid metal stretched, and split open, until it became a webbed shield of silver. Plastic bullets snicked against the shield of silver webbing. Something crashed through the branches behind her—one of the drones came in low. Blue light flared from its repulsors, and its misshapen belly scraped and sparked on the stone floor. It lifted its belly, and tangles of claws grasped at her with razor fingers.

No more faces now. Only the fight.

Agraneia ran headlong into the drone’s grasp. She slammed her liquid arm down and leaped, propelling herself into a twisting sommersault over the drone. The liquid arm stretched into a metal whip that trailed behind her. With a snap of her wrist, the liquid whip sliced against the drone, carving deep into the metal armor. Agraneia sent an impulse, and the whip transformed into a hook. As she fell back to the ground, she pulled, and a hunk of the drone’s chassis ripped free and smacked into a column, scattering chips of stone.

The drone wobbled and bounced hard on the stones, showering the garden beds with sparks. It pulled itself back into the air, and turned faster than something that size should be able to turn.

Agraneia turned her liquid arm into a lance, with a thick cone tip. She leaned forward, and was about to charge at the machine when a voice shot past her ear:

“You’re still not listening.”

She jerked her head toward the sound of the voice. There was no one there.

The drone almost swooped out of her reach. Agraneia put all her strength into that final jump, and was rewarded by the sensation of her liquid arm sinking into the drone’s armor. She could feel the chassis crumpling as her lance cut through reinforced steel. With one last burst of defiance, the drone flared its engines, and clapped her body with its own before it crashed to the ground and rolled to a stop.

Agraneia’s back slammed on the stones. She barely had time to pick herself up when the other two drones crashed through the branches. Through the rain of leaves and shredded bark, they twisted their bodies and aimed their gun barrels at her. The guns started to whine. Agraneia had a split second to dive to the floor before a stream of bullets spattered around her. She threw her arms up to protect her face. Stinging impacts broke the scales on her natural arm, drawing blood. The drones announced each successful hit with a loud warning bark: “Appendage destroyed.”

She’d have to finish the fight without her natural arm, then.

As she ran behind the nearest tree, she held her liquid arm behind her. The sentient metal caught the rest of the bullets, whispering as it stabbed them out of the air. Plastic rounds pattered softly to the stone, as the drones kept firing.

Behind the trunk, Agraneia climbed into the low branches of the tree—made all the harder by her “dead” arm. She had to rely heavily on the liquid metal to pull her, even as sticks and stems bit at her face and tore her clothes. Yet Agraneia thrashed through the branches like a wild animal, and catapulted above the two drones.

The liquid arm was a part of her—it knew what to do. Her fist became a drill, and when she punched down into the drone’s chassis, her am drove into the core of the drone. The drone’s repulsor didn’t gutter—it just went out. It started to fall, with her still on it. Agraneia kicked off its body, and lunged for the last drone. But this one was ready. It calculated, and bobbed just beyond her reach.

As she fell, the drone twisted its chassis in three separate directions, and aimed its guns at her. Agraneia threw her liquid arm at the drone. The silver metal stretched, as if it was made of hot tar, and stuck to the drone’s chassis.

The drone’s claws snapped at the strand of liquid metal, but found that the metal had solidified. Its claws screeched and broke against the sentient metal. So, it changed tact. Its repulsors flared hot, and it shot into the sparse canopy of the trees, battering Agraneia against the branches.

With a growl, Agraneia kicked her legs back and forth, trying to generate enough sideways force to slow down the drone, maybe throw it off balance. Maybe she could get it to smack into the trunk of a tree, or maybe she could impulse the arm to let go at just the right moment and—

“Cyrans don’t have wings,” a voice croaked in her ear.

Shut up, Agraneia thought. But her eyes automatically glanced at the floor, far below. Her stomach flipped.

“What happens when you fall?”

“Shut up!” Agraneia roared, and threw her weight into the next swing. The liquid arm, still attached to the drone, stretched. She plunged, heels first, through branches and kicked at the drone’s backside, adding her momentum to its speed. The drone tried compensated immediately. Its repulsors rotated, and it caught itself just before it smashed against the wall. But Agraneia’s feet found the wall, giving her enough room to run up the stones and to kick off the wall, and land on top of the drone. It sank beneath her sudden weight, struggling to right itself.

The liquid arm snapped back into shape. Agraneia raised her arm, and her fist became a drill. The air was filled with an electric burning scent as the drone redirected all its power to its repulsors. It bucked, hard, and threw Agraneia high. Her legs kicked. Her whole body revolted at the her sudden weightlessness. Panic welled in her chest. Cyrans don’t have wings. What happens when—she flailed, reaching for the nearest branch, forgetting that her natural arm was supposed to be dead. She caught one too hard, ripping scales from her palms as she tried to catch herself, and slipped.

The liquid armor flung itself out, a dozen strands in a dozen directions. It caught the trunk of the nearest tree, gouging the bark. It stuck to the drone, and Agraneia’s sudden weight made it spin. With its repulsors maxed out, the drone couldn’t rebalance itself, and it spun fast enough to pull Agraneia with it, yanking her from the tree. It wrapped itself in strands of liquid metal.

The strands snapped.

Agraneia fell through the understory of the tree, and smacked against the stones. The wind gone from her lungs. She couldn’t even cough. Her world shrank as darkness narrowed her vision to a single green point.

She felt, more than saw, a black-feathered body standing over her. A black beak opened to speak. “Better move, cyran.”

Her vision widened just enough to see the drone’s dead body crashing through the branches. She rolled out of the way. It smashed on the stone next to her.

In the blink of an eye, the remaining liquid armor spread out in a thin shield. It stabbed at the shrapnel, shuddering as it caught a piece of the drone’s chassis that would have smacked into Agraneia’s skull. The rest of the fragments exploded across the stone floor. Then, all was quiet. Only the sound of the breeze, and the thudding of Agraneia’s heart.

She lay there, dazed.

“Well, that was terrifying,” Khadam said. The god was standing in the training tower’s only doorway, wearing a worried grimace. “Terrifying, but impressive.”

The voice of doubt was already in her ear, coarse and gravelly: “What’s so impressive about you? You had to cheat to kill them. And there were only three of them. How many bodies does the Swarm have?”

Agraneia sat up, grunting from the pain that only now announced itself as the thrill of the fight started to fade. “Not good enough,” she grunted.

Khadam smirked, as if Agraneia had told a good joke. “There’s no such thing as perfect.”

“I must be ready,” Agraneia said. “The Swarm will hold nothing back.”

“And if you keep going like that, you’ll have nothing left to give. You can’t train for every eventuality.”

Failure, the voices whispered at her. Failure. Never worthy. Never good enough. They were so much louder here, in this city. In this place, so full of memories.

“I have to try harder,” Agraneia said. “I shouldn’t have lost the metal.”

She nodded at the drone, wrapped in thin strands of liquid armor. The armor was the only thing that gave her any advantage over the machines. Without it, she was nothing but flesh and blood. Weak, and brittle. To lose even a drop of it was a great failure.

Agraneia stood to retrieve it, but Khadam said, “Stop.”

“I need the metal.”

“No,” Khadam said, sounding like a disappointed drill instructor. “Don’t go to it. Call it to you.”

“It’s not attached.”

“It’s still a part of you. Even if it’s nowhere close to you. Reach out with your thoughts, and call it back.”

She flicked her eyes up to the windows, to the shattered branches of the trees. To the shadows, where the faces lurked. And laughed. And reminded her of what she was. “My thoughts … are polluted.”

“You think it won’t work?” Khadam put her hands on her hips, and cocked a sarcastic grin, “You dare doubt the creation of the gods?”

“Fine,” Agraneia blew out a breath. “How?”

“It wants to obey.”

“I am not you. I am no deity.”

“Neither am—look,” Khadam sighed, “It doesn’t matter what you are. It already listens to you. It knows you, Agraneia, better than you think it does. Imagine it, as if it were already whole. All you have to do is bring the parts together. Concentrate, and guide it, if you need to. You don’t ask your arm to move, do you? You just move it.”

Agraneia focused on the crumpled drone lying on the floor. Sunlight twinkled on a strand of silver. How could something so dead ever come to life again? What had breathed life into this metal, in the first place?

The gods. “And you are no god.”

But Khadam, the last living god, told her to try. So she would. Agraneia clenched her jaw, tilted her head forward, and narrowed her eyes at the silver strands.

Move.

Come to me.

Move, gods damn you.

The faces laughed and chittered at her. “You will never be worthy. You animal. You beast.”

She widened her eyes, and strained her neck and clenched her jaw so tight until her teeth creaked. Come to me. Come back. Her muscles trembled, and her lungs burned as she held her breath. MOVE.

Did the strands shift? Was that a ripple of movement?

Dark spots grew at the corners of her sight, and she gasped, letting go of the command.

“You always were slow to learn, weren’t you?” that familiar voice croaked. “Five years you’ve had that armor, and you still have no idea what you’re doing.”

“I said shut up!” Agraneia shouted. Her voice bounced between the branches of potted trees and stone columns.

Khadam arched an eyebrow at her. Agraneia growled and threw her natural arm up, winging at the pain from the plastic bullets. Pain was the least she deserved.

“Well,” Khadam said, “I didn’t say it would work the first time. Keep talking to it. Think with it. It will learn to listen, and so will you.”

Then, the human clapped her hands, and the scattered pieces of the drones scraped and screeched across the floor and, as if by magic, dragged themselves together. Some parts hissed as magnets resealed themselves. Others were more damaged, and the drones had to hammer them back into place, except for one piece of chassis, which merely spun in a scraping circle.

Khadam frowned, and kicked at it. It flipped, and flew straight at the half-mangled drone.

“Agraneia, do you think I’m crazy?”

“Maker?”

“I mean, for listening to Yarsi. She seemed so convinced that Laykis is coming here. She’s just a lassertane. A child. How would she know that?”

“Why did you listen to her?”

Khadam shook her head, and frowned up at a crack, running up one of the ancient columns. “I have a theory. I wonder if our mute friend is a human.”

It was Agraneia’s turn to frown. Even the voices went silent for a moment, as if they, too, were listening to Khadam.

“Not biologically human. Not like me, or like Poire. But that device on her neck is full of memories.”

“From her kin. Her ancestors.”

“But the lassertane didn’t build that device. I’m sure of it. It had to be made by human hands. And it’s no small thing. The amount of data it could store, if stored properly, could be immense.”

“You think it may contain memories from a human?”

“Maybe. The question is whose.”

Agraneia rolled her natural shoulder, wincing gingerly. A few loose scales glittered as they fell from her skin. “She’s had five years to tell us. To write it out.”

“She might not know.”

Agraneia gave the god a bewildered look. “How could she not know?”

“That implant isn’t like mine. It’s experimental, at best. I don’t know if it’s a prototype, or if they had time to test it, but it’s obviously imperfect. For one, it sticks far out of her skin,” Khadam touched at her own implants, sleek and curving, almost flat against her temples and cheeks. A strip ran down the center of her bottom lip, glistening in the sunlight. “Whoever made her implant probably ran out of time to perfect the design. And certainly not on a lassertane.”

“Can you … talk to the device? Like you, hmm, talk to the constructs?”

“I could. But I’m afraid it would kill her. The implant already made her mute, which means its deeply intertwined with her nervous system. Her brain, and everything.”

“Then, what?”

“I think she’s might be working through the memories. I think … something is changing in her. Or something outside triggered that change, just as it triggered her muteness. When did she lose her voice?”

Agraneia shook her head. It had been so long, she couldn’t quite remember the chain of events. “She spoke with Poire. And then … and then we left. I don’t remember.”

“Today, the way she looked at me. At us, when we were standing on the Gate. I don’t know. It felt like she knew something. It’s weird, but I thought it was a good idea to listen.”

“That’s what I always say,” the voice in Agraneia’s ear whispered.

“I don’t know,” Khadam shook her head, still grappling with the concept. “Do you think I’m wasting time by listening to her? It’s possible the girl is losing her grip on reality. It’s possible the device is destroying her, slowly.”

“But you don’t think so,” Agraneia said.

“You call me Divine. You call me Maker, as if I was a member of some great Pantheon of gods. But there were billions of us, and my clan lived away from everyone, in the dark, out of necessity. We hid, not just from the disease that was killing us, but from threat of the Sovereign Swarm. Rodeiro knew it was too powerful. He knew it that if it should strike, it would wipe us all out in a flash of lightning. I came to his clan when I was young, which means I don’t know what things we built. I don’t know what is and isn’t possible. The girl might see something, or nothing, or everything.”

“Hmm,” Agraneia scratched her chin with the remains of her liquid arm. “Do you believe this construct, this Laykis, is still alive?”

“Laykis isn’t just a construct,” Khadam said. “She’s an android, built in a human’s image. Nor is she an emulation. She’s a self-motivated sapience. Her core is more advanced than any construct I’ve ever met. She was created by a master of the Flow and coldsmithing, both. Tython was a legend, so much so that even we had heard of him.”

“Eolh told me of this … android.” she bowed her head in shame. “I admit, I did not believe that such a being could exist, at first. You think it—she—would be useful?”

“I should never have let her go. But like I said. She’s her own person. And she’s devout. She believed in an untrue prophecy, and part of me wonders if she still does, even after everything we found. Even after Poire died.” The god rubbed her hand along her jaw, and chewed the inside of her cheek. Lines of concentration furrowed her brow. “It’s only two days, right? We can wait two days. I wanted to work on our suits anyway. They shouldn’t sweat so much—”

“And if Yarsi is wrong?” Agraneia asked.

Khadam blinked at her.

“If this android doesn’t arrive?”

Khadam shook her head, clearly at a loss. “I won’t waste more time.”

“The Sovereign hunts.”

Khadam nodded, darkly.

Agraneia stepped close to the god. Back home—before home was obliterated—there had been statues of gods. They towered over the streets, and lined the temples, and Agraneia had always assumed the statues were true to size. The gods, she thought, must’ve been huge. But Khadam only came up to her chin, and Poire had been smaller still. And yet, standing this close in her presence, she could sense it. There was something about Khadam. Some divine presence, an untouchable grace that radiated from her every move.

“Divine One, if it helps, work only on your own suit. I can stand to sweat.”

Khadam smiled, but there was no joy in it. “You say that, now, Agraneia. But we’re going to a dam. One that’s been empty for ages. I don’t know the state of it. If its trajectory has been altered, and it orbits too close to a star, it might be hot enough to blast the scales off your bones.”

“Ah. In that case, perhaps less sweating is preferable.”

Khadam snorted.

The drones had repaired themselves, as best they could. Still, one of them lay with its core exposed, and a fine mist leaked out of the dark, spherical object. Another jolted back and forth like a turtle, stuck on its shell.

“You know,” Khadam said, frowning at the mess—and at Agraneia’s bruised arm, “Whatever’s bothering you, it might be healthier if just talked about it, instead of taking it out on these poor machines.”

A spike of worry shot through Agraneia. “You said the drones do not feel.”

“They don’t. It was just a figure of speech.”

Agraneia relaxed.

“But it’s you I’m worried about, Agra.”

“I am fine.”

Khadam eyed her, doubt plainly written on her face.

“It is … it is this city. I do not like it here.”

“Because of her?”

Agraneia’s shoulders stiffened. A wave, old and tired, washed guilt and shame upon the shore of her heart.

“What happened between you two?” Khadam pressed. “Talya still looks at you.”

Agraneia had to swallow before she could answer. “We were not a good match.”

“Because she’s avian?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“My old mentor used to say something: if you can’t talk about it, you won’t master it.”

“Then I won’t master it,” Agraneia shrugged, pretending she didn’t care. “You always were so good at lying to yourself.” She ignored the croaking whisper, and tried to focus on the silver strands, still wrapped around the dead drone. She put out her silver hand, thinner than before, and tried to will the severed metal to reach back.

Her metal fingertips tingled.

“Listen!” The word, as sharp as any blade, severed her concentration. But Khadam hadn’t spoken. She was staring at her, her lips pressed together in that hard expression she always wore.

“Lie to yourself all you want. But if you don’t master it, it will master you.”

Agraneia stretched her silver fingers out further, struggling to pull the severed strands to her. They didn’t move, didn’t even tremble or shake. They remained as inert as any other metal. Dead.

“But you’re used to that, aren’t you, cyran?” A flutter of movement, an impression of black feathers, just on the edge of her vision. “Being mastered. You miss being told what to do. Because, then, it’s not your fault. None of it is your fault.”

He was there. She could feel him. She just couldn’t see that damned, dead avian.

Eolh.

“What do you want?” Agraneia asked the shadow.

But Khadam couldn’t see him. Khadam thought she was talking to her.

“I saw the way you looked at Talya. The way you tried not to look at her. You two were so close, once. You were so good to each other.”

“Wrong,” Eolh croaked in Agraneia’s ear. “Talya was good to you. What did you ever do for her?”

Agraneia grunted, “I don’t want to talk about—”

“Everywhere she went, there you were. Every meeting, every council with the Queen, every gathering with the other xenos. When I left for the Valley to work on the Ark, I knew I would have to leave you behind. I was sad, because you were one of the few I liked, but I was also happy. Because you had found someone. Why did you leave her? Why did you avoid coming back?”

“I … I don’t …”

“Go on,” he crowed, “Get mad. That’s all you ever could do. Because if you get mad, it’s not your fault, is it?”

“Do you love her?” Khadam asked.

Agraneia balled her hands, natural and liquid, into fists. Her eyes locked onto her feet, because it was the only way she could avoid all the smiling, screaming faces. She could ignore them, all of them, except for one. Black feathers. Black beak. A face, lost in a shining brightness that hurt to look at. He was right there. Taunting her.

Khadam put a hand on her shoulder. Agraneia flinched, but didn’t pull away.

“To have someone love you, it’s rare,” the god said. “It’s rarer than anything I know. If you love her, you have to give her everything. You don’t know if you’ll have this again. Look, you’re my friend, and I like you. But she sees something in you. Don’t ask me what, because I don’t see it. But the way she looks at you, even after all these years—”

“Stop,” Agraneia growled, sharper than she meant to. But now that it was out, all of it wanted to come out, and the ghosts screeched with laughter, “There is nothing in me worth her love. I am broken, and you waste your words on me. I don’t want to talk about her. I don’t want to think about her. I don’t even want to hear her godsdamn name again.”

The ghosts howled.

But one voice, one that belonged, not to a ghost, but an angel, cut through the din.

“And what about what I want?”

Talya, the Queen’s closest handmaiden, stood in the door of the training atrium. She had changed so little. The soft, white feathers of her face had aged, and her young beauty had aged into something so much more exquisite. It hurt, to the very core of Agraneia’s being, to even look at her.

Talya bowed deep at the waist, “Pardon the interruption, Divine One.” Her voice was stiff with held-back emotion.

“Yes,” Khadam cleared her throat. “I mean, I, uh, had something—where’s might I find the Queen?”

“In her chambers, Divine One.”

“Thank you,” Khadam bowed awkwardly back. She clapped a hand on Agraneia’s shoulder, and pulled her down to speak into her ear, “The armor will answer, if you call it. Keep trying. Both of you will learn. But only if you talk.”

“Will it?” a sly voice croaked, as the god walked out of the tower, throwing one last meaningful glance at Agraneia, and then at Talya.

Agraneia forced herself to look at Talya. Once she started dragging her eyes up the slender avian’s form, the harder it was to look away. Irresistible. How could anyone not fall in love with someone like her? When Agraneia first laid eyes on the woman in that hospital, back when Agraneia was still convalescing from the fight with the Swarm, she hadn’t believed a xeno so beautiful could exist.

How could she be even more beautiful now?

“Hello,” Talya said.

“Hello,” Agraneia rumbled back. Cringing at the sound of her voice, so coarse compared to Talya’s beautiful song. “How … how are you?”

“I thought I was better, until you came back.”

***

Next >