Chapter 2

Chapter 2

. . . up they rose

As from unrest, and each the other viewing,

Soon found their Eyes how open’d, and their minds

How darken’d.

—Milton, Paradise Lost

“What are you looking at?”

Serph glanced up from the screen of his terminal. He was in his private quarters, but the door was open, and at some point Heat had come in; the big man stood leaning back with his arms folded, one of his feet braced against the door frame.

They were in one of the rooms of the run-down building to which Serph and the others had first staked a claim on the day they petitioned the Church to found their tribe. Rusty ducts and exposed pieces of rebar showed through the crumbling concrete; the worst sections had been patched with quick-drying cement.

Serph’s room reflected the general state of the tribe’s headquarters. This was a military installation, after all, so priority was given to shoring up exterior defenses over enhancing personal comfort. The Embryon had needed to expand rapidly due to the influx of new personnel, and now, rather than having everything centralized in one main building, the base was a haphazard affair, sprawling out in every direction, making it neither easy to navigate nor pleasing to the eye.

“Has something got you interested in your stats after all this time?” Heat asked. “I mean, you gotta be pretty used to your own face.”

I should be, shouldn’t I? Serph thought.

The flickering screen showed the head shot of a slender young man with silver hair and silver eyes. In the archived image, he looked pallid and expressionless, like a corpse. Alongside his picture, numeric values for all sorts of data fields scrolled by. Height. Weight. Registration number. Statistics on every part of his body. Elapsed time since rebirth. His status within the Embryon. The Combat Points he had earned so far.

This was Serph. The data, the code that defined him.

Somebody else might say his face looked rather feminine, he considered. Or perhaps it might be better to call it androgynous. His features were light and symmetrical, so perfect as to approach artificial and lifeless. His chest and shoulders were far more slender than Heat’s, and he was shorter and lighter as well.

Heat. His red hair made him immediately recognizable, and he was tall enough to stand out in any crowd. He had broad shoulders and a burly chest that gave weight to his presence whether or not he spoke a word. His face, too, was decidedly more masculine than Serph’s, with a strong jaw, chiseled features, and tanned skin. Beneath his unkempt crimson bangs shone piercing red eyes.

Heat was the silent type, and rarely spoke to anyone other than Serph. For him to come and strike up a conversation of his own volition felt somehow out of character.

Serph felt an awkward twinge in his chest.

Have I—has Heat—always been like this?

Serph brought his hand up and waved it in front of his face. His fingers were long, slender, and dexterous. The simple act of thinking that this was his hand made him feel weird all over again.

And my face, too.

“You worried about something there?” It was only when Heat asked, voice quiet, that Serph realized he’d begun to stroke his left cheek.

“Yeah. I am worried. Aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Heat replied, lifting up his left forearm to reveal a dark, oddly shaped bruise.

The edges of the bruise were well defined, making it look as if it had been stenciled there; it was in the shape of a fireball leaving behind a trail of flame. The fireball itself bore a mouth with sharp fangs, opened wide like it was roaring.

Serph looked back at his screen. The face of the young man was the same as ever, but he knew the same could not be said for his own. Something had begun to change.

Serph, too, had a distinctive black bruise, in this case on his left cheek. It looked like a spray of water droplets, a different image than Heat’s bruise, but clearly in the same general style, and also with an irregularity that could be interpreted as a mouth with fangs.

“Do the others all have them too?” he asked.

“Yeah. Argilla on her chest, Gale on his left shin, and Cielo on his right thigh.” Heat shifted his stance, then lowered his voice. “The locations are all different, but they’ve all got a mark somewhere on them. We haven’t checked the whole tribe yet, but it looks like we could be talking about everyone here in the base.”

“So then it wasn’t just people who were at the battle. This might have happened to everyone in the Junkyard.”

Heat was quiet for a moment, and then merely shrugged. Serph set his terminal into sleep mode before turning around in his chair to look at his lieutenant again. “Do you think that these bruises have some connection to the black object and those lights we saw?”

“Beats me. Though to be honest, right now I can’t think of anything else that could have caused it.” Heat brushed his hair out of his face in irritation. “What has the Church said?”

“Nothing yet. Gale is getting his implants calibrated right now, but from what he tells me, all Church networks are currently down. I haven’t had any luck accessing them either. It looks like our server is operating in standalone mode.” Serph shook his head. It felt like it was packed tight in foam. “What about the girl?”

“Still sleeping, as far as I know. I think Argilla’s looking after her, but I’m not sure.”

“Maybe we should go and check up on her.” Serph stood. His body was sluggish and weary, demanding more rest, but he didn’t have time for that now.

He stopped as he walked past Heat. “You coming?”

“Nah, I’m good. I lost one of my best grenade launchers in the battle—I need to get in some practice with a new one.” He shoved off from the door frame and started to march down the hallway, but he stopped to look back over his shoulder when Serph called out after him.

“The girl—I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen her somewhere before.” Serph lowered his voice. “Do you get that feeling too?”

There was a brief pause before Heat responded. “Maybe. And that freaks me out.” He hurried on his way, leaving Serph standing in his quarters, alone with a gnawing sense of déjà vu.

“Hey, buddy!”

Serph staggered as a blur of bouncing blue braids came bounding into the room, slamming right into him.

Cielo’s pale blue hair was pulled into a series of tufts held in place by metal clips. His big, round eyes flickered across his surroundings, as if looking for anything that might draw their interest. The large pouch at his waist slapped against his thigh, allowing fleeting glimpses of the black bruise beneath it.

“Quiet, Cielo. We don’t want to startle her,” Argilla scolded, looking up from where she knelt by the side of the girl’s bed.

Argilla was fit and muscular, and tall for a woman, close to Serph’s height. The slit in her long skirt offered an appealing glimpse of her bare legs underneath. Her eyes were the same soft pink as her hair.

With gentle, careful movements, she was straightening the sleeping girl’s disheveled hair with her hands. As she moved, the opening at the front of her suit showed her own black bruise. Hers was shaped like a series of waves arranged in an inverted triangle, sporting the same unusual fanged mouth design as the others.

“And what’s with the ‘buddy’ this and ‘buddy’ that? You address our leader as ‘sir.’”

“But ‘sir’ sounds so stuffy,” Cielo pouted, his arm still thrown around Serph’s shoulders. “And saying ‘buddy’ just sounds so much more me. Makes it feel like we’ve got a real bond. Besides, you don’t mind being called ‘buddy,’ do you, buddy?” he said with mock pleading.

Serph forced out a strained laugh, then signaled his agreement with a fatherly pat on Cielo’s head. Cielo let go and hopped around in triumph.

“Sir, this is ill advised. You can’t allow one of your subordinates to address you like that.”

“I don’t mind. Cielo’s one of my top people. He can call me whatever he wants.” But even as he spoke, Serph struggled against an unnerving feeling of dislocation.

Argilla and Cielo. And Heat, too. The three of them have been at my side for so long. So why do I feel like this is the first time we’ve ever met? Like this is the first time I’ve associated whatever those names represent with actual people named Heat, Argilla, and Cielo . . .

He did his best to force the sense of dissociation from his mind. There was no time to dwell on that sort of thing right now.

“How’s she doing?”

“Not good. It’s like all she’s doing is breathing. And really quietly, at that.” Argilla appeared ill at ease, so Serph knelt reassuringly beside her. The mysterious girl was tucked under a white sheet, her chest rising and falling ever so slightly. It didn’t look like she was going to be waking up anytime soon. Even with Cielo making a fuss nearby, her eyelids didn’t so much as twitch.

“We did a full medical scan, and there isn’t anything physically wrong with her. Actually, I’d say there isn’t enough wrong with her.”

“What do you mean?”

“She doesn’t appear to have any combat experience whatsoever,” Argilla said. “In fact, she doesn’t look like she’s from the Junkyard at all.” She gestured to the nearby monitor, and Serph raised his eyebrows at the data that scrolled by on-screen.

The girl had no scars or signs of any previous injuries, nor did she have any implants. Her muscle-to-body-fat ratio was exceedingly low. The skin on her feet was so soft it seemed as if she’d never taken a single step on hard ground. The logical assumption was that she’d never been in combat, but even “Newbies” didn’t have bodies so frail.

“If she isn’t from the Junkyard, then what is she doing here?” Serph’s inquiry was met with silence. He hadn’t expected anything else; Argilla certainly couldn’t have an answer to such a question. Serph scratched his head and stared at the sleeping girl.

Newbies, more properly called “Newborns,” were those who had recently been given life underneath the Temple. When denizens of the Junkyard died in combat, their bodies dissolved and rose up into the heavens, where they joined the ever-present clouds before falling back to earth again as rain.

Those raindrops accumulated at the heart of the Junkyard, in the central area known as Sahasrara. There, the rain flowed to the depths of the Temple, arriving at a place of purification where it was washed clean of its karma before being given new life and taking the form of a person, who would then be sent out to take part in the ongoing conflict. That was the doctrine of the Church, at any rate.

Newborns were all different, varying in terms of gender, physical appearance, and innate skill, but in general, everyone was built with a predisposition for combat, and all were relatively similar in terms of fitness and martial prowess. There were outliers, of course. In the case of a smaller individual like Cielo, he made up for his size by possessing powerful legs that made him unusually quick and agile. Argilla was another such example; as a woman she was physically weaker than the average male, but she had been graced with the rare talents that made for an expert sniper. People from the Junkyard tended to compensate for weakness in one area by naturally excelling in another.

The Church loosed the Newborns into the Junkyard; after that, they were on their own, with no one else to protect them. Once they left the Temple, they had two options: either they could join a preexisting tribe, or they could band together with other Newborns and form a tribe of their own, taking territory from an existing tribe by force to make a place for themselves. Those that could do neither were quickly slain, left to be reborn once more.

Besting another tribe and taking their territory was the far more difficult option, and actually succeeding in doing so, as the Embryon had, required uncommon synergy among very talented individuals. That didn’t mean the process had been a painless one. Serph had sustained his fair share of injuries, and many of his subordinates had endured worse. And yet this girl had no wounds, no physical strength to speak of, and no enhancements of any kind—not even the most basic of implants that the people of the Junkyard were all given in order to keep them linked to the Church.

“She doesn’t have a tag ring, either?”

Argilla shook her head. The tribe had sent out several teams to investigate in the aftermath of the incident, primarily around the border of the Vanguards’ territory where they’d found the girl. Thus far, none of them had reported finding anything, but then, the girl herself had had no possessions whatsoever when they discovered her.

Tag rings were a form of identification provided by the Church. Everybody had one. Without it, a person couldn’t obtain ammunition, new weapons, or even food supplies. The rings were also necessary for making information queries to the Church for Combat Points and the like, and they served as the authentication needed to enter certain areas and bases. No matter how skilled an individual might be at combat, it would be practically impossible to live in the Junkyard without one.

But that was neither here nor there, at this point. Serph sighed and stood. “It looks like we’ll have to wait for her to wake up. Argilla, I’d like you to look after her for a little while longer.”

“Roger that, sir,” Argilla said, keeping her head down. In a voice almost too soft to hear, she added, “Once she wakes up, I’m sure she’ll tell us something.” Serph pretended not to hear.

He headed back toward his own quarters to get some rest. Before he made it to the elevator, though, he heard a high-pitched voice call out “Buddy!” from behind him.

“Hey, ah . . . hey, buddy.” Cielo hurried to catch up, then hesitated, chewing his lip. “So, like, about what happened before. I—”

“It’s all right,” Serph said quietly. He knew what Cielo was worried about, but he didn’t want to discuss it. Not yet. “Things are really hectic right now. Once the Church’s systems are back online, we’ll check up on who the girl is. There’s no one in the world the Church doesn’t know about.”

“Yeah.” Cielo nodded, but he was visibly dispirited. He hovered close to his leader as if seeking cover.

Serph wanted to tell the youngster that he wasn’t alone in being afraid. The sense Serph had of being out of place, being out of sync with reality, had faded somewhat, but it all still lingered somewhere deep down inside him.

Uneasiness just meant that some key piece of data was missing. But Serph was sure that it wasn’t just lack of data about the black object that was causing the anxiety he felt. Cielo was trying his hardest to act calm because he could see how Argilla and Serph made a point to keep their composure. He was doing his best to make light of things too. The way that he’d suddenly decided to call Serph “buddy” was probably part of that.

“Listen,” Serph said, “if you don’t have anything to do, why don’t you go and dig up something for the girl to wear when she wakes up? We can’t just have her walking around naked, after all.”

“Yeah. Yeah, all right, buddy,” Cielo said, his expression brightening a little. “Sure. I’ll go do that. When she wakes up, she’s going to be part of the crew. Prepping some clothes for her is the least I can do. After all, it’s gonna be my responsibility to set a good example.”

Cielo did a little hop, turning around in midair before scampering down the hallway with a wave. Serph waved back, and felt the sinking feeling in his chest return, even stronger than before.

He was the leader, the lifeline of the tribe. If he died, then so did the Embryon. It was like Argilla had said, “Soldiers can always be replaced.” But the leader . . .

In the Junkyard, all that mattered was the creation and destruction of the tribes. There was a whole clan of people relying on him to make the right choices.

Still, he may have been a leader, but he was only one piece of the system. A leader was only important insofar as he or she was irreplaceable within a given tribe. The regular members of any tribe could simply join up with another if their leader was defeated. Which meant that it wasn’t really the rank-and-file who needed to keep the leader safe—that was something that Serph had to do for himself.

But right now, Serph felt like he had a responsibility to quash Argilla and Cielo’s sense of unease. That might be above and beyond a typical leader’s duty, but Serph couldn’t help it. He felt it was the right thing to do.

He was starting to get a headache. Trying to refocus, he headed back to his quarters.

“Sir.” The call came in through his terminal just as he opened the door to his room.

“Gale? Are your calibrations finished?”

“The recalibrations have just been completed.” The bishop’s voice was an unfeeling monotone. “Our connection to the Church, however, has not yet come back online. In the meantime, I would like to go over the facts as we now understand them. Would you please come to the briefing room, sir?”

The briefing room was located in the innermost section of the base. It was the largest room in the facility, but with the holo-monitor, the various pieces of analytical equipment, the terminal-equipped round table, and sufficient chairs all crammed within, there was barely any space left to breathe. Still, this was the only room in the base whose walls were reinforced with sturdy carbon crystal and self-repairing organic compression fibers, strong enough to fend off even a fairly large-scale assault. This was the central hub for the Embryon’s tactical planning, information processing, and contact with the Church; if this room were destroyed, the base wouldn’t last much longer.

Serph had called for all four of his core members to take part in the meeting. Gale hadn’t objected, but once they had gathered, he pointed out that he would be presenting tactical information which, for strategic planning purposes, should be known only to the leader and his chief advisor.

Argilla and Cielo immediately clamored in protest.

“I’m a member of the Embryon too,” Argilla said. “I have a right to know what’s going on.”

“Yeah. You can’t hog all the time with my buddy!”

“Gale,” Serph said, holding a hand up to silence the others. “We’re dealing with an unusual situation right now. We might come across some things that you and I can’t sort through on our own, and if that happens, there may not be time for us to get the others up to speed. For right now, I think the five of us should have a grasp on everything we know about the situation.”

For a brief moment, Gale was silent in thought, and then he dipped his head. “I cannot argue with that logic, sir.”

Unlike roles such as sniper and shock trooper, which were assigned based on an individual’s acquired skills and talents, the position of bishop was a different matter entirely. People became bishops because they were born to be bishops.

Certain Newborns were gifted from birth with raw intellect and tactical knowhow. These individuals were referred to as bishops, and could be identified by the special protective hoods that covered their heads, which were packed with delicate electronics. They emerged into the world with brain implants that gave them a direct link to the Dissemination Machine that was central to Church operations.

Other Newbies received implants as well, but nothing like the loadout of the bishops. In addition to their connection to the Dissemination Machine, each also had an organic display grown into their retina, allowing them to sort through data without need of a terminal, while internal memory storage enabled them to record everything they saw. All told there was a lot precision equipment that required careful calibration. Bishops also underwent regimented thought conditioning, making them more like humanoid computers than people.

That was probably why Gale didn’t appear to be experiencing the same sense of discomfort as the others. Serph had sensed an undercurrent of unease while talking to Heat, Cielo, and Argilla, but Gale exhibited nothing of the sort.

Gale was a tall man, with green hair worn long in back, his matching eyes partially concealed by his hood. He had a long, expressionless face, with thin lips and a sharp, high-bridged nose, and he was visibly the oldest of those present. He wasn’t as broad-shouldered as Heat, but his arms were muscular, which was rare for a bishop—a sign of the excellent physical prowess he also possessed.

If the leader was the heart of the tribe, then the bishop was its brain. Having a good bishop could determine whether a tribe thrived or perished. Gale had belonged to the small tribe the Embryon defeated in their takeover of Muladhara. It was he who had detected that his leader had fallen in the midst of that pitched battle, and had called out at once for a cease-fire. Then, in accordance with the law, he was brought into the Embryon, becoming Serph’s first bishop, and the best he could have asked for.

Gale waited motionless for his leader’s next directive.

“All right, Gale. Why don’t we start by going over whatever information you have about what happened, beginning with the appearance of the object.”

“Acknowledged.” A pale green grid flickered to life above the table, displaying a three-dimensional image of the “object” in question.

“This object appeared two cycles ago at approximately 00:00 ST, at coordinates 02A7-7B77845. Its composition, purpose, and other details are unknown.” Gale changed the angle of the display as he continued his explanation. “The object’s time of appearance at 00:00 ST is a matter of conjecture; the exact time is unknown, though this estimate is derived from eyewitness accounts from our troops stationed along the border. Our sensor data corroborate this. One moment, the object was not present, and the next, it was.”

“What the hell?” interrupted Cielo. “It couldn’t have just appeared out of thin air.”

“Quiet, Cielo,” said Serph. “Gale, please continue.”

“The following day, at 06:23 LT, we received a warning from the Vanguards. They stated that they regarded the presence of the object to be an act of aggression by the Embryon, and threatened to retaliate if it was not removed.” The timestamp scrolled across the screen as Gale went on. “In response, the Embryon concluded that the object had been placed there by the Vanguards. We warned the Vanguards to remove the object, threatening an attack of our own if they did not comply. That same day at 10:02 LT, Vanguard and Embryon forces engaged each other in combat. We were successful in driving the Vanguard contingent back to their own border. During the engagement, we confirmed the presence of the enemy leader, Harley Q, on the battlefield. Reasoning that this situation presented a potential opportunity to eliminate the Vanguards, Embryon leadership amassed the tribe’s forces along the border for a full-scale assault.”

At this point, Gale closed his eyes, and silence hung in the air.

“And then”—it was Heat who broke the silence, practically spitting out the words—“we headed in, and something happened. That’s the part we want to know about. Spare us the long-winded intro.”

Gale hesitated. “The data is insufficient.” It was rare for the bishop to lack an immediate factual response. No, it was unheard of. “We have almost no data pertaining to the situation beyond this point. Nearly all of our sensors went black. The Church’s Dissemination system may have some data, but we remain unable to access it. We have yet even to account for the whereabouts of all forty of the Embryon members who took part in the attack, or whether those unaccounted for are alive or dead.”

“Try not to dwell on that,” said Serph. “For now, just tell us what you can. You’re the bishop—give us your best educated guesses.”

“I will transfer some visual data from my personal memory banks,” Gale said after a few moments. “At this stage, this is the only verifiable information I have at hand. The contents are of little significance, but there is nevertheless merit in sharing it.”

He opened up a console at the head of the table and gently swiped his finger across the board. He let down his hood, exposing the implant embedded behind his ear, pulled a cable out from the console, and plugged it into the metal jack in his head. The others watched as the 3D display above the table wavered and disappeared, replaced by the image of a battlefield hazy with falling rain. The perspective was from high above, looking down at the circular field below: a recreation of Gale’s view from his rearguard position with the bishop unit. There was an occasional flicker of static, making the forms of the soldiers clashing below even harder to see.

“The resolution is poor. In addition to running the footage through video processing, I have attempted to use a direct wire connection to minimize data degradation, but these measures appear to have been insufficient.”

“No, this is fine, Gale. Keep going,” Serph replied, staring intently at the video feed. Here was an outside observer’s perspective on what had happened while he’d been caught up in all that chaos.

Serph could see himself. As the tactician behind the operation, Gale was high up and far back, able to look down at the battlefield, with nearly all of both the enemy and their own forces within his field of view. The audio was garbled, but it was enough to make sense of what was going on. Serph saw himself leap out from behind a concrete wall. He came under attack, he returned fire, and then he rolled back into cover.

There was an explosion. Cielo and Heat came charging down from either side of the embankment. Grenades exploded across the battlefield while Cielo’s squad pinned down enemy troops that were trying to advance. Argilla, meanwhile, used her sharpshooting talents to pick off enemy soldiers one by one. Amidst the unfolding carnage, one soldier with striking silver hair—Serph himself—darted from behind one barrier to another. So far, events were unfolding as Serph remembered them.

In one corner of the image was a timer displaying the time elapsed since the start of the battle. When the counter reached 00:52:43, the incident began.

“What is that?” someone said, voice raw. Serph knew how they felt. The black object on the battlefield, having gone largely ignored up to that point, shuddered and began to glow. The scales that formed its exterior opened up one by one, revealing nothing but light within—a mad, whirling light.

The image from Gale’s point of view bobbed as he appeared to step forward. The battle below seemed to diminish in intensity. Lights spiraled and swirled above the object’s now-open bed of scales, and then one of them shot out at incredible speed.

The briefing room went dead silent. No sound came from the monitor above the table, but the scene continued to play on. The streak of light struck one of the nearby Vanguard soldiers, who immediately dropped his weapon and fell to the ground. He was still alive, though; the man writhed in agony, his twisted fingers digging furrows in the dirt. His fingers and nails began to turn black.

As the tribe members on both sides began to retreat, the lights rocketed after them as if giving chase. In rapid succession the lights struck each of the combatants, dropping them to the ground. Then there was a burst of static, so extreme as to briefly blot out the entire image. A figure came into view, thrashing about. The image shook violently, broke apart like shattered glass, fixed itself, and then broke apart again. The noise reached a deafening pitch, and Argilla and Cielo both scrunched up their faces as they covered their ears.

“Sir, get down!” A sudden, clear voice rang out—Gale’s voice. In the distance, Serph had risen up from behind cover and was staring at the glowing object, dumbstruck. A moment later, his body jerked, and then he staggered backwards before falling forward to his knees, clutching at his chest. Bright red blood trickled from the wound.

Gale let out an unintelligible shout. The kneeling form of Serph looked so far away. Gale ran, the image shaking back and forth.

Abruptly, he turned.

Something was coming right towards him, a mass of pure, white light.

Impact.

The image went white. Then it cut to black.

“That is all,” Gale said softly as he unplugged the cable.

The room was quiet. Nobody knew how to react to what they’d just watched. Unnerved by the uncomfortable silence, Cielo fidgeted, then turned to Serph.

“It looked like you got shot, buddy. Are you all right? That was a direct hit.”

“I’m fine. I remember getting shot, but when I came to I didn’t have any injury. Just a hole right through the protective lining of my suit. Which is another thing to add to our list of unknowns.”

“Ah, all right.” Cielo’s smile was an awkward mix of nervousness and relief. “I mean, so long as you’re okay . . .”

Serph gave Cielo a little nod. “All right, Gale,” he said briskly, “what about these . . . bruises on our bodies? How do they relate to what happened back there? And did it only happen to us?”

“We have finished inspecting all Embryon members. Each of them has a mark somewhere on their bodies, including those who remained back at base during the battle. Here.” The image changed, showing rows of stylized icons.

There was the water mark on Serph’s cheek. The fireball on Heat’s arm. The waves and fangs on Argilla’s chest. The tornado on Gale’s shin. Cielo’s series of concentric rings. The marks from the five key members were in a row at the top, and beneath those were seven or eight less elaborate designs.

“There aren’t as many marks as there are people,” said Argilla.

“The same designs repeat themselves on multiple members of the tribe.” Gale input a series of commands, and underneath each bruise icon appeared the faces and identity codes of different tribe members. Each design had between five and ten people associated with it. “The five of us, however, have marks that appear to be of completely unique design, shared by no one else. Though as we have no means of checking the other tribes, we cannot be certain.”

“Well that doesn’t exactly make me feel any better,” Cielo grumbled. “What the heck is goin’ on? Our enemies up and disappear, we get these strange bruises, and the Church doesn’t tell us a thing! What are we supposed to do?”

Everyone in the room was thinking the same thing. A gloomy atmosphere hung over the meeting. No one, not even Gale, said a word. For a time the whole group merely sat in silence, staring at their own hands on the table.

Then the comm link on the table started to blink. Before Gale could answer it, Serph reached over and pressed the button. “This is the briefing room. What is it?”

“This is Recon Team Three,” said the voice coming through the speaker, mingled with a touch of static. “We’re currently scouting out Svadhisthana, but, ah . . . um, sir . . .”

“What’s going on? Give me your report.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” The scout’s voice betrayed a hint of panic. He swallowed before going on. “We’re here at the border between Svadhisthana and Muladhara, but there isn’t anyone here.” Serph exchanged glances with the others in the room. “We haven’t seen any Vanguard sentries. Ordinarily, we’d take this as a sign that they were preparing for some kind of incursion, but there hasn’t been any movement. We sent out a patrol to check things out, and the place looks deserted.”

“Can you give me a visual?”

The image above the table switched to the feed from the reconnaissance team over by the edge of Svadhisthana. Gale layered a coordinate grid over the map. They were at coordinates 3065-A-w3. And as the man had said, no one was there. The image showed what was likely a camouflaged patrol station, but there was no visible activity. The position of the camera suggested that whoever was filming was standing out in the open, an easy target, and yet they weren’t coming under fire. That was decidedly odd.

“Could this be a trap? Are you certain there is no one there?” Gale said into the comm.

In a more relaxed tone now, the scout answered, “I don’t know.”

Several of the members of the recon team had been out scouting for enemy movement, he said, when they came across a soldier in Vanguard markings. However, the enemy showed no hostile intent, and did not seem disposed to attack. When they found him, he was simply clutching his head and shaking, hiding in the corner of a ruined building. When the recon team went inside and asked him his identity, he screamed and ran from the room. They had then searched the area, but found no further sign of him. The tone in the scout’s voice as he delivered his report didn’t fully mask his own confusion.

“Good work,” Serph replied. “Since we can’t rule out the possibility that this is some kind of ruse, you’re ordered to break off pursuit. For the time being, why don’t you come on home. We’ll update your orders as needed. Be careful on your way back, soldier.”

“Roger that, sir.” His tone was rather cheerful, and he hesitated a moment before adding, “And it’s an honor, sir.”

The call cut out, and Serph blinked in confusion. “What did he mean by that last bit?”

“He’s happy that he got to speak to his leader directly, buddy. That’s an honor, right? I mean, I get to talk to you all the time, but still.” Cielo finished with a chuckle.

“The lower ranks don’t even get to see you most of the time, Serph. It must’ve been a shock to suddenly wind up talking to you,” Argilla said with a laugh of her own. Heat maintained his stony silence, and Gale, not comprehending the others’ amusement, began his analysis of the footage from Svadhisthana.

Serph didn’t understand either. Had the tribe always felt as though speaking to their leader was so unusual that it was cause for celebration?

A leader was only a part of something bigger. The same held true for the other members of the tribe. Together, they made up this thing called the Embryon. Sometimes, one part of the machine needed to speak to another; it was just a matter of course. There was nothing remarkable about it.

Nonetheless, the scout had been happy just to get to speak to him. And now that he thought about it, Serph had unthinkingly added something to the end of his own message. “Be careful on your way back.”

The scout had already made his report back to base; what did it matter to Serph what happened to him after that? The loss of any one soldier would have negligible impact on their military situation. They were at war; there was no place for adding little niceties to a transmission.

And yet the words had just come out of Serph’s mouth.

“My analysis is complete.” Gale said, lifting his hands from the console. “Given the data we have just received, Svadhisthana does appear to be deserted. We are receiving similar reports from our other reconnaissance teams.”

The others looked at Gale as he continued. “The vast majority of the area is in a similar state of abandonment. We have had two other instances of our people coming across Vanguard members, and in both cases, the individuals panicked and fled upon discovery, making no attempt to fight.”

“What’s their deal?” Cielo asked. “If they’re not surrendering, then their leader can’t be dead.”

“One of them reportedly called out something quite peculiar as he fled,” Gale added. “He said, ‘Don’t eat me.’”

For a moment, it was like Serph’s mind had gone blank.

“What the hell?” Argilla murmured. She repeated herself, intonation rising. “What the hell? What does that even mean, ‘don’t eat me’? He says it like—like that actually happened. Like we actually . . . actually did eat some of them. That’s ridiculous! What do they think we did to them?”

“Argilla, calm down,” said Serph.

“I’ve had enough of this!” Argilla shouted as she slammed her fist down on the table. “Of all of this. I want to know what happened back there. I want to know what happened to me, what happened to all of us. And I want to know who the hell that girl is!”

Serph’s hand darted out to grab Argilla’s wrist before she could hit the table again. “Argilla,” he said. “Stop it. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I’m scared,” she said, going still. She lowered her head, concealing her expression, but she clenched her shaking fist so hard that the knuckles turned white. “I’m scared.”

“This isn’t going to solve anything.” Serph put a hand on Argilla’s back. “For now you need to try to relax.”

After two or three heaving breaths, the tension finally drained from Argilla’s body. “Sorry. A soldier shouldn’t lose her cool like that,” she said. “Maybe I should go back to my quarters and rest. Ever since we got back I’ve had a headache and this weird feeling in my chest.”

“Right. You’ve been looking after the girl this whole time. You’re dismissed. Go and rest up.”

Argilla smiled. “Yes, sir.” She rose and walked out of the briefing room with shaky, uneven footsteps.

Cielo watched her leave. “Do you think she’s all right? She’s been pushing herself really hard. Her face has gone all pale since she’s been spending all her time watching over that girl.”

“Women tend to be less physically enduring than men,” Gale said. “Such is to be expected.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Cielo snapped. “Look, I know you’re a bishop, but doesn’t all this make you nervous? Or scared or weirded out?”

“I am ‘nervous’ in the sense that I am discomfited by my inability to predict a situation as unprecedented as this. It is unpleasant to lack a definitive course of action to follow. ‘Afraid’ and ‘weirded out’ are not precisely defined terms. Could you rephrase your query?”

As Cielo pulled his hair and swore under his breath, Serph stepped in. “Gale, how do you feel about the bruise that’s on your leg?”

“It may not be a bruise; the data is insufficient. The cause remains unclear, though it does not seem to be caused by any external—”

“Never mind that stuff,” Serph said, cutting him off. “Forget the data. I’m asking you how you feel about having that mark on your body.”

For once, Gale was quiet. He lowered his eyes, and what looked like doubt crept across his face.

“That’s what fear is. That’s what Argilla and the others are all feeling right now. Remember that.” And I need to do the same, Serph reminded himself. Gale did not respond. He simply reached down to rub at the black, cyclone-shaped bruise on his shin.

“So what do we do?” Heat said, finally chiming in. “Are we just going to sit around on our hands while we wait for our link to the Church to come back online? Or are we going to go and take some initiative for ourselves?”

“I have provided all of the information I have at my disposal. I defer to our leader’s judgment. What is your decision, sir?”

“I . . .” Serph hesitated. He’d been about to order a quick incursion into Vanguard territory, but he found himself surprised by a new concern. If at all possible, he wanted to avoid casualties—he wanted to keep his people out of danger—and realizing that made him take back what he’d been about to say. He did his best to force away the fear and doubt that was coming to mind. “I think we should go to Svadhisthana,” he said at last, casting his hesitation aside. “I want to talk with Harley.”

“For real?” Cielo was taken aback.

Heat narrowed his eyes.

Only Gale remained impassive. “We do not know whether Harley Q is dead or alive,” the bishop said, “nor do we know his whereabouts.”

“But the members of his tribe aren’t surrendering to us,” replied Serph, “which means that he must still be alive somewhere. The area itself might be abandoned, but if we can make it to their base, I’m sure that we’ll find people there. Then, if we can confirm that he’s dead, we’ll cement our victory. And if he’s still alive, we can ask him about what happened with the black object. If the same thing that happened to us is happening to his people, he’ll want to know what’s going on, too.”

“You said yourself that this could be a trap, sir.”

“I did. Which is why we need to proceed with the utmost caution. This is too dangerous for a mere recon team, and if we send too many people, we run the risk of provoking them.”

“So you’re suggesting we go there ourselves. Sounds simple enough.” Heat slowly shoved off of the wall. “And whether he’s dead or alive, we’ll get Harley against the wall and rip what we want right out of him. Right, Serph?”

“Yeah. Right.” Serph felt like something was stuck in his throat as he replied. Heat had a very different line of thinking than Argilla or Cielo. Serph watched his broad-shouldered lieutenant stalk out of the room, seeing him in a new light.

Serph realized he was afraid of Heat, his most trusted companion, his second-in-command.

But what was it he was scared of? It wasn’t as if Heat had threatened him personally. That would have been a violation of the laws. Members of a tribe simply did not defy their leader.

Heat.

Saying aggressive things like that was just the sort of person Heat was, right? Serph felt a tightness in his chest when he thought about it. It wasn’t Heat himself that Serph was afraid of, he realized; he was afraid of the comrade he knew and trusted becoming someone else.

But what did it mean to “know” him? Heat was still number two in the Embryon, a skilled combatant and Serph’s direct subordinate—Heat wasn’t the sort of person who would overstep his authority. But though Serph had witnessed no direct change in the burly shock trooper, he had a slowly growing conviction that something was different now. Yes, Heat had changed.

Serph couldn’t have put his finger on it, but Argilla and Cielo had changed as well. On the surface, Gale appeared to be the same, but the bishop was impossible to read at even the best of times.

Cielo poked his head back into the room. “What’re you still hanging around here for? We gotta go, buddy.”

“Yeah. I’ll be right behind you.”

They had all changed. As for what that meant, Serph still didn’t know, but the niggling notion that he was missing something refused to go away.

They entered Svadhisthana certain that they would come under immediate attack, but their fears turned out to be unfounded.

“What’s going on? Is this place really empty?” Cielo was following close behind Serph, sounding almost bored as he looked around. When they’d first crossed the border, they’d kept communication down to hand signs and essential conversation only, but as they made their way further and further in, it became clear that there was little to get worked up about, and they’d allowed themselves to relax.

Svadhisthana shared a large part of its border with the Embryon’s territory of Muladhara, and there wasn’t much difference in the terrain of the two areas. Serph and the others entered on foot through what had been a contested region along the border that had switched hands countless times, essentially making it the front line in the conflict between the two tribes. Abandoned buildings and bombed-out vehicles had been left there to rust in the silent rain. Their present journey would have taken no more than a half hour if they’d used a vehicle themselves, but to avoid drawing attention they’d opted to go by foot.

“It’s like they just left everything behind and ran,” Cielo said. “Here, look at this.” He picked up something from behind a piece of rubble. “It’s a shotgun. It’s out of ammo, but it’s not broken or anything.”

“It doesn’t look like it jammed or malfunctioned, either,” Serph said, taking the gun from Cielo and giving it a quick inspection. “You know, it definitely seems like there was a battle here. There are shell casings all over the place.”

“A battle with the Embryon?”

“I don’t think so. Our recon team didn’t make it this far in—and they would have reported it.” Serph gazed up at the sky. Shade Time wasn’t as bright as Light Time, but it never got pitch black. There was always a faint glow from somewhere in the dull gray sky, illuminating the tiny drops of silver rain.

He looked over at Argilla, in the center of the small group’s formation. She really didn’t look good. Her face was beyond pale—it was downright ashen.

Perhaps he should have made a more earnest effort to stop her from coming along, but it was too late for that now.

A short time earlier, as the team was about to set out, Argilla had insisted on joining the expedition.

“I’m a member of the Embryon, too. You can’t just leave me here. Don’t worry, I can still pull my own weight.”

Serph shook his head. “But if you come, there won’t be anyone to watch over the girl—well, to stand guard over her, really. We still don’t know who she is, so we can’t rule out the possibility that she’s some kind of enemy agent from another tribe.”

“So lock her in her room or something. Post guards outside the door. Gale should be able to think of something. Please, sir—I need to see what’s out there. I need to know what happened.”

Argilla had refused to back down, and so Serph had conceded in the end. He asked Gale to assign a guard detail to stand watch over the sleeping girl in Argilla’s place, and the bishop quickly selected a group.

“Our destination is the Vanguards’ base in Svadhisthana,” Serph had told his four core members once they’d assembled. “Our objective is to locate and question their leader, Harley Q. Things are going to be a bit different this time around. Our primary goal is to establish a dialogue with him. If we encounter any of the enemy en route, you are not to fire unless they show hostile intent.”

“You’re being naïve,” Heat said under his breath. “It’s kill or be killed.”

“Heat!” Argilla snapped.

Gale turned to Serph, expressionless. “Are you going to allow such insubordination, sir?”

“That’s enough, all of you,” Serph said. He turned to Heat with a stern look. “Heat, if you feel like you’re in danger out there, defend yourself. But I don’t want you to kill anyone who doesn’t pose a threat. Our main objective here is to gather information, and it won’t do us any good if we kill the source of that information. Am I understood?”

Heat pressed his lips together as he met Serph’s silver-eyed gaze, then he shrugged and looked away. “Understood, sir,” he muttered. “If that’s a direct order, I’ll follow it. I won’t take any action unless provoked. Is that what you want?”

“Yeah, that’s what I want,” Serph said quietly, then raised his voice again. “Remember, we’re not out to rack up a kill count. It’s information we’re after.”

Serph stared at Heat’s broad back as the shock trooper strode ahead of him. He could clearly recall the look of resentment on Heat’s face at the reprimand he’d given.

As far as combat ability was concerned, there was no one in whom Serph had more faith. The Embryon leader was extraordinarily quick and nimble, but he didn’t have anywhere near Heat’s strength; no one was Heat’s equal in terms of sheer physical might. He was the tribe’s lead combatant, and his talents had gotten them out of a number of dangerous predicaments. But now he was making Serph uneasy.

By the time they’d finished their preparations, it was almost Shade Time. They had made their way cautiously across the Junkyard in the dying light, past the recent battlefield that they’d dubbed “Ground Zero,” and into Vanguard territory. Now a sullen gray began to creep in at the edges of the dark magenta sky.

Serph hadn’t noticed them before, but as he looked up through the falling rain, he could see faint, glimmering green lights far off above. He quickly lost sight of them if he didn’t keep his full attention on them, but here and there, he would catch a green flicker amongst the heavy gray clouds.

It was a color that was almost eye-piercing, Serph thought. It occurred to him that it was very much like the green light he’d seen emanating from the strange object at Ground Zero, and he looked away.

“I have been conducting a continual search for hostiles,” Gale said quietly. “At present, there are no enemy heat signatures in a fifty-meter radius. I have detected several surveillance devices and traps, but they are inoperative. They all appear to have been taken offline.”

“That’s weird,” Serph said. If this were all a ruse, it would make more sense to leave the traps and surveillance instruments operational. Just as that thought crossed his mind, he lifted his foot up with a start, seeing a black, tar-like substance pooled around his feet. Was this one of the traps? He quickly tried to back away from it, but the sticky muck clung to the underside of his boots in gooey strands. It didn’t appear to be either explosive or corrosive.

“Doesn’t look like a trap,” Heat said. “If it were, it wouldn’t be so obvious. Gale, any idea what this stuff is?”

“I shall investigate.” Gale knelt down, sticking a finger into the tarry puddle. As a bishop, he had a much more finely attuned array of sensory devices than the others.

Argilla looked down at the dark puddle and raised her eyebrows. “Gross.”

The mysterious substance was thick and black, filling a small depression in the ground. Scattered around nearby were various pieces of equipment, from guns to boots and helmets, and countless bullet holes riddled the walls and the ground. A fierce battle had evidently taken place here, as well.

But if that were the case, where were the bodies? Argilla examined the bullet holes in the area and concluded that the fight hadn’t taken place all that long ago—certainly not long enough for any bodies to have dissolved.

Bodies in the Junkyard didn’t stick around forever. After three days’ time, they dissolved on their own, rising into the heavens to become part of the silver rain that was falling even now, continuing the Church’s cycle of rebirth.

It was strange, then, that there were no corpses here so soon after the battle. There were no records of a large-scale engagement having taken place earlier, and it made even less sense that the Vanguards would have had some kind of internal struggle.

“My field analysis is complete,” Gale said, removing his finger from the pool. “My sensors are unable to conclusively identify the substance or its makeup, though I have been able to determine that it is not poisonous, corrosive, or volatile. It should be safe to touch. I will collect a sample and conduct a proper analysis once we have returned to base. Cielo, my kit, if you would.”

“Sure thing,” Cielo said, retrieving the sampling kit from the pouch at his hip.

“If there are no bodies, couldn’t that just mean the survivors took them when they ran?” Argilla asked.

“No, that doesn’t add up. If everyone fled, why would they leave their guns behind? Why would they have taken off their combat suits and their boots?” Serph indicated a single, discarded boot, stuck in the tarry puddle. Its top was tilted towards them, revealing the empty interior; the opening looked a bottomless chasm. Argilla shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.

“I have finished collecting the sample,” Gale said. “I have also determined the location of the Vanguard base. It is not far from here.”

As an up-and-coming tribe, the Embryon had a small base. The Vanguard base, by contrast, was a full-blown military installation. Although it too had been built on a foundation of ruined buildings, the damaged areas had been patched up, and the various defensive fortifications that had been built, including observation platforms and gun batteries, made it look far more impressive. All told, it appeared to be around twice as large as the Embryon base, and the large-bore cannons and battlements that lined the walls put it in a different league entirely in terms of exterior defenses.

And yet the place was silent. As Serph’s five-person team made its approach, there were no warning shots. The entrance to the base was sealed tightly shut, but not a single lookout was posted along the walls. Storage containers, long ago stained red with rust, had been stacked up in massive piles, and silvery water pooled in the covers of combat vehicles that had been left with their doors open.

“This is way too quiet. Are you sure this is the place, Gale?”

“I am detecting ten individual heat signatures inside. They are likely members of the Vanguards. Based on the data I have at my disposal, this is the most likely location for their base.”

Cielo pointed. “Look, it’s more of that stuff.” In several places on the walls of the base and on the ground nearby were pools of the black, tar-like substance they had seen before.

Serph studied the rusted containers carefully, but nothing moved or made a sound. “I guess they’re really not going to open fire. Come on, let’s head inside. Watch out for traps.”

Gale took point, making use of his enhanced sensors, and he performed a careful inspection of the area around the entrance. It was hard to believe his declaration that there were no booby traps to be found.

“Are you sure? They just locked the door and left it at that?” Serph asked.

“Maybe they abandoned this base and set up shop somewhere else,” said Argilla, sounding doubtful of her own suggestion.

“Regardless, all we can do now is go in and check it out,” Serph said. “Gale, open the lock. But be very, very careful.”

Gale leaned in, preparing his jack, along with the code that should release the electronic lock. After a few moments, there was a heavy thunk, and the sturdy, metal doors swung outward.

Cielo was the first to step inside. “Whoa. What happened here?”

“It looks like there was a fight here inside the base, too,” said Serph.

“A fight?” laughed Cielo. “This place is a downright disaster area. And look, there’s more of that black gunk splattered everywhere, too.”

Cielo was right. The solid exterior of the base belied the state of total ruin within. There were gaping holes in the walls, and nearly all of the lights were broken. Bullet holes and traces of explosions riddled the floor, and discarded weapons and ammunition were scattered all about.

A number of walls had been torn down, opening a clear path into the center of the base. As Serph and his team advanced, whirls of dust puffed up around their feet. There were piles of rubble everywhere, resembling the war-torn battlefields outside. Monitoring stations and weapon storage lockers, already well-worn from use, were now completely destroyed, and shattered glass and bits of twisted metal littered the ground.

As they made their way further into the base, they came across more and more of the black tar. There were pools of it all over the floor and patches splattered onto the walls. It dripped and dribbled, mingled with blood, looking like it had been flung about haphazardly.

“If there was a fight here, who were they fighting? None of our people could have made it this far in,” Argilla said.

“Maybe some of our forces were taken prisoner back during the battle at Ground Zero and tried to fight their way out,” Serph offered.

“Unlikely,” replied Gale. “I cannot imagine that any captives were taken given the circumstances. Even assuming that they were, however, the firepower they possessed is not consistent with the large-scale battle evident here. The structural damage to the base is too great to have been caused by any conflict they could have been involved in.”

Cielo rubbed his jaw. “Gale, what other explanation is there? The Vanguards didn’t do this to themselves.”

“However unorthodox that may appear, I believe that is the most likely hypothesis at present.”

“Yeah, that makes sense—wait, what?” Cielo clutched onto one of Gale’s arms. “Whoa, what’re you talking about? Members of the same tribe can’t fight each other. I mean, they all have to follow the same leader. How could a fight like that even happen? The leader has absolute control—that’s the law. You know that, Gale!”

The leader of the tribe was its master, and the other members were extensions of his will. That, along with the inviolate nature of the Church, was one of the fundamental rules of the Junkyard. The members of a given tribe all acted on the orders of their leader. For members of the same tribe to attack one another would be akin to the right hand trying to chop off the left. It was unthinkable.

“I am indeed aware. That is why I said that it is unorthodox.” Gale’s voice revealed only the faintest hint of distress. “However, after discarding the other improbable possibilities, it is the only explanation remaining. We lack the data for a more conclusive analysis. This is an unprecedented and highly irregular situation.”

“‘Irregular?’” Cielo seemed on the verge of saying more, but instead he just let out a deep, exhausted sigh.

Without warning, they heard a loud crash from behind.

Gale and Argilla whirled around and opened fire. Cielo followed suit.

A section of wall already perforated with several holes collapsed, unable to resist the brunt of their combined firepower. Large chunks of masonry fell loudly to the floor, and then lay still. From behind the remains of the wall crawled a man, whimpering as he came into view. On his shoulders and cheeks he bore the green markings that identified him as a member of the Vanguards.

Serph began to approach him, but Gale stepped in front of him, gun at the ready. “You should stay back, sir. I will question him. There may be some risk involved.”

“No. I need you to keep sweeping the area for traps.” Serph strode past Gale and helped the man to a sitting position. “Are you one of the Vanguards?” Serph looked the man over, assessing his injuries.

He was gravely wounded. There were massive gashes in his chest and abdomen, and he was covered in streaks of half-congealed blood. It was clear that he didn’t have much longer to live. “Can you talk?” Serph asked. “How did all of this happen? What in the world happened here?”

The man’s lips moved as he tried to speak, but no sound came out. His mouth, red with blood, twitched and quivered. “Our . . . leader,” he finally managed, the words little more than a groan. Before he could continue, the man’s head slumped forward.

“Hey, stay with me! What happened?”

Suddenly the man’s body started to jerk and spasm in Serph’s arms. On reflex, Serph tried to push away from him. The man’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he bolted upright. Then he let out a scream.

“Look out!” cried Cielo.

“Sir, get back!” Gale brought his rifle to bear and tried to interpose himself. The man’s eyes were rolled back so far that only the whites showed. His mouth opened wider and wider, and he let out a tremendous bellow. As Serph tried to pull away, the man twisted around and bit his forearm.

His mouth, now grotesquely enlarged, bore rows of gleaming teeth. They were inordinately sharp, and they made a distinct, nauseating sound as they grated on the surface of Serph’s armor. Serph reached for the holster at his hip as he struggled to wrest himself free.

A gunshot rang out. Serph felt a splatter of lukewarm blood across his cheek. The man collapsed to the floor in a pool of gore and brains, his huge mouth hanging wide. Serph staggered, instinctively cradling his aching arm as he looked up to see Heat standing there, smoke wafting up from the barrel of his handgun.

“I think that qualifies as ‘provoked,’” Heat said, his tone cold, a cruel glimmer in his red eyes.

“Yeah,” Serph replied, taking a few breaths to recollect himself before wiping the blood away. “Good job, Heat.”

Argilla stepped closer as Heat silently holstered his gun. “That was freaky. Did he just go delusional as he was dying or something?”

“He bit you, buddy! Are you hurt?” Cielo asked.

“No, it’s fine. His teeth didn’t make it through, but—” The word “why” got stuck in Serph’s throat as the man’s body began to turn black at the extremities.

The five of them stared as the corpse appeared to writhe in anguish. A shadowy black shape slithered out from his toes and fingers as if it were a living thing, spreading across his entire body as they watched.

The dead man screamed. One of his hands shot out and clutched Serph around the ankle. The corpse’s fingers turned black, bit by bit, then began to crumble away, starting with the fingernails. Its digits then broke off at the knuckles, crumbling into dust before they even hit the floor. A sob began to emanate from the throat of what had up until a few moments before been a man, but it was cut off as a thick mass of the black substance spewed from his throat. There was a sound like that of rustling paper, and its arms came off at the shoulders before they too turned black and crumbled apart.

Just before the body turned completely black, Serph pulled free of the fragments that still gripped him. The fine black powder that fell to the floor began to melt away. The others stood by and watched transfixed, and within a few seconds, nothing human remained.

All that was left was a black, tarry puddle like the one Serph had found in the ruined city outside—the one Gale had been unable to identify.

A cry caught in Argilla’s throat; she staggered backward, covering her mouth with her hand. Cielo looked like he was on the verge of throwing up, and Serph felt some of the strength leave his legs. Gale’s face was calm, though even he couldn’t hide the slight twitching in his cheeks.

“Why did that just happen?” Argilla demanded, her voice hoarse. “When people die, they’re returned to the heavens. Nothing is supposed to be left behind afterwards.”

“There is no record of such a phenomenon having occurred before. Evidently, the abnormality of this situation is becoming more egregious.”

“Let’s get going,” Heat said. “This way.” He started off without waiting for his dumbstruck companions to follow.

“Hey, wait up!” Cielo called out. “Doesn’t this bother you just a bit? A guy just died in a seriously freaked out way.”

“So what?” Heat replied without even looking back. “Dead is dead. If he were still alive and coming to attack us, that would be a different story. Which might be fun, but hey.”

“Heat!” shouted Serph.

“What?” Heat stopped and turned to face his leader. His response was so calm and collected that Serph was shocked into silence. The gleam of hunger in Heat’s eyes was clearly visible now. Cielo gave Serph an anxious look.

“Just hold on,” Serph said before heading toward Argilla, who was huddling behind a section of broken wall. He was concerned for her—but he also couldn’t bear to look at Heat’s face a moment longer. “Argilla, get it together.” He reached out to touch her on the cheek, certain now that allowing her to come along on the mission had been a mistake. Her face had lost practically all its color.

“Sir . . .” Argilla looked back at him, and as she did, Serph felt a chill run up his spine. He pulled his hand away. For just a moment, her eyes seemed to shine bright as gold. An instant later it was gone—a trick of the light, perhaps. But he could have sworn there was a momentary gleam in her eye at the sight of the smear of blood on his cheek.

I must be seeing things, he told himself. Argilla’s eyes were the same pale pink that they always were. He regained his composure and reached out to set a hand on her shoulder. Her skin was cold and clammy. “Argilla, you stay here. There’s still the chance of an enemy attack. Hold this position and wait for us to get back. That’s an order, you hear?”

“No,” Argilla said, then touched her mouth, as if surprised by her own words. She slowly brought her hand back down, then repeated her refusal with more confidence. “I want to know what happened, sir. I know I’m not doing well—my head feels like it’s about to split in half, I’m sluggish, and I barely have the strength to move. But I’m going with you. If I wind up in trouble, don’t worry about me. But I need to know.” A long moment of silence hung in the air.

It was Gale who spoke next. “I have located Harley Q.” Serph and Argilla both turned to look at him. “He is in a hallway on the second floor. I believe he spotted us a short time ago and is currently heading deeper into the base. In all likelihood, he is attempting to flee from us.”

“Well he’s not going to,” Heat said, heading off at a quick gait.

“Let’s go, sir,” Argilla said, forcing herself more upright and tightening her grip on her gun. She bit her lip, and the look on her face showed that she wouldn’t take no for an answer. “You don’t need to worry about me. We need to catch Harley. He has to know something.”

The scale of destruction grew worse as they approached the heart of the base.

“I smell blood, and . . . and something else,” Argilla said.

The ceiling of the narrow concrete corridor they were following had collapsed in places, and both the walls and floor were smeared all over with black tar and blood. The carnage was catastrophic. In addition to the signs of a gunfight, it looked like some giant blade had carved deep furrows into the concrete. It appeared as though there had been fire, as well, leaving behind burned-out rooms littered with corpses, their limbs shriveled, flesh turned to ash. Yet the combat suits that held the bodies showed no signs of having been touched by flame.

“What happened here?” Cielo asked. “How could people wind up dying like this?”

“There is insufficient data to determine their precise manner of death,” Gale said. “There is insufficient data for any of the things we have witnessed within this facility.”

“Yeah, I know, Gale,” Cielo replied. “I was just thinking out loud. You know, like normal people do sometimes when—“ He cut himself off and pointed down the hallway. “Whoa, you see that?”

Up ahead another corridor intersected with their own. Someone had appeared briefly there, staring at them and then jumping back out of sight almost as if struck. As the figure disappeared from view, the team’s heat sensors clearly showed it tripping over itself in an attempt to flee.

“We have located Harley Q,” Gale said. “He is heading for a room further in.”

“Stay on your guard, everyone. He’s desperate, so be prepared for anything he might throw at us.” As Serph issued that warning, his own apprehension began to make his insides churn. There were so many unknowns: the strange tarry substance; the golden light in Argilla’s eyes and her poor physical condition; not to mention his own ever-growing sense of fatigue, which he had yet to mention to the others.

Along with a bizarre sense of exhilaration . . .

They pressed on, making their way up a twisting stairwell. Before long, they had their target in their sights, dead ahead. He crawled and stumbled forward, stopping to steal glances back at them before ducking around another corner. His gaunt face looked like it had taken a beating, and it was frozen in a look of such stark terror that he almost looked ridiculous. Harley’s labored breaths came amidst choking and sputtering as he scrambled ahead, propelling himself with both hands and feet, his panicked footsteps echoing down the hallway. The footfalls of his pursuers became mingled more and more with his panting and huffing as they drew closer.

Harley was sobbing now. He shouted something unintelligible, and he made no attempt to defend himself as he fled.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Serph said. “None of the other members of the tribe have come after us. Do you think this some kind of trap after all?”

“Unlikely,” responded Gale. “A tribe the size of the Vanguards would not use their leader as bait. And our previous combat reports do not show them having ever made use of such a strategy.”

“Can the chatter,” Heat said, raising his gun. A short distance ahead the hallway ended at a door that looked like it led to either Harley Q’s private quarters or the war room. Harley scrambled inside and slammed the door behind him. The malfunctioning lighting flickered weakly.

A moment later the team reached the doorway. They found the door locked firmly shut, but Heat kicked it right off of its hinges, sending up a cloud of dust. A meek scream came from within.

“You got nowhere to run, Harley,” said Heat. “Put your hands up and do exactly as we say. Trust me, you don’t want to provoke me.”

“S-Stay back! Don’t come any closer!”

Harley Q was a completely different man than the adversary they had once known. His eyes were sunken, and his cheeks had gone ghost white. He huddled against one wall of the room, quivering with uncontrollable fear. His once unremarkable face, framed by his red hair, was now so gaunt that he looked like he was already a corpse.

The room itself—once the Vanguards’ war room—was an even bigger mess. The tactical planning table had been torn free of the floor and thrown against the wall, its monitors shattered, cords and other components dangling from its insides like entrails. Here, too, was more of the black tar. And there was blood—so much that it nearly covered the entire floor. The stench of it hung in the air, thick enough to choke on, and it made Serph’s throat twitch.

“Hands up, Harley!” As Serph drew closer to him, Harley let forth a high-pitched screech that sounded like the wail of a siren, an inhuman sound.

“Please! Don’t eat me! Don’t eat me, don’t eat me . . .” He broke eye contact as he stammered, covering his head with both arms. He sank into the fetal position, hiding his face behind his hands.

“What’s he rambling on about? He’s gone totally nuts,” Cielo said with a snort.

Serph held him back. “What do you mean, ‘don’t eat me’?” Stop now, a voice inside him said. He knew, somehow, that there would be no going back if he asked what he wanted to ask, and yet his mouth, as if acting on its own, formed the words. “Just what did we do back there?”

Harley lifted up his tear-streaked face. “You . . . you devoured us,” he choked out. His hollow eyes had taken on a sickly yellow pallor. “The five of you, you turned into monsters—you ate all my men!”

Silence fell over the room. Serph was overwhelmed by a sense of utter despondency. Deep down, some part of him had already known what the answer would be, but like a fool, he’d asked anyway.

“What’re you talking about?”

“Those . . . weird lights . . . came shooting through the air. And then I—and then all of us—we transformed into these . . . monsters.” Harley coughed out a one-note laugh as he spoke. “And then we fought. Friend or foe, it didn’t matter. It was chaos—every man for himself. And anyone who lost was torn apart, and then . . . and then—” His voice was shaking.

“Shut up!” Argilla screamed all of a sudden, bringing up her gun. Before anyone else could react, the barrel of her gun spat fire as she riddled Harley’s body with holes.

“Argilla!” Serph dove in and batted the assault rifle from her hands. Heat quickly kicked the weapon away, its magazine already spent as it went skittering across the floor.

“I didn’t eat anybody!” Argilla called out, shaking her head wildly back and forth as Serph restrained her. “I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have done it. It wasn’t me!”

Cielo grabbed hold of her, as well. “Calm down, Argilla. We know you didn’t do it.” But even as he clung to her, he was shaking so badly that it was he who would have fallen over if he weren’t holding on to her.

Serph stared wide-eyed at Harley Q, who lay with arms and legs splayed across the floor, still twitching. The movements of his limbs were unnatural, as if they were no long part of his body, and were instead wriggling about like living things in their own right. As Serph started to move closer, someone grabbed onto his arm, and he looked up to see Heat holding him back, his grip so tight that it was painful even through the combat suit.

“Don’t get too close. Not just yet,” Heat said, and the fierce expression of hunger on his face was even more prominent than before, enough to send a chill down Serph’s spine. “We don’t know if he’s finished. We still don’t know what he really is. We haven’t seen what he’s capable of in a fight.”

“I . . . hunger.” Harley’s voice was almost too quiet to hear. Dark blood welled up from his gunshot wounds, which were healing even as they watched. His bloodstained lips curled up into a cruel parody of a smile. “Hungry, cold, aching all over—I held my men as they begged for help, as they fell to the ground, their bodies turning black from head to toe. I could feel what they were feeling, their fear, their pain, their suffering and how they kept wondering how and why this was happening.” His words grew stronger as he spoke. “Their bodies were just so full of information. And I knew . . . I knew that I could get at it, and it would make me a little bit warmer, but then I’d just get cold again, so then I’d eat another of my companions, and it was terrible and saddening and it pained me so, but”—his lips twitched as his grotesque smile broadened—“it just felt so, so good!”

Cielo cried out and jumped back, looking down at his feet. A black liquid with a strange greasy sheen was burbling in from every direction, the same substance they’d found in the hallways outside. “What the—whoa!” The pouch at his hip jerked, and a sampling capsule came jumping out from inside it, the one that Gale had collected on their way in. The capsule shattered, and the black liquid inside joined with the rest. It was all flowing to Harley Q. It spread over his mangled body, blackening his skin wherever it touched him, and soon it covered him completely. Rather than coat him, however, it seemed to be absorbed into his body.

He stirred, as if there were someone else hiding beneath his skin, and his back and shoulders and arms spasmed, twisted, and flailed all about.

A sound like a sigh escaped from his smiling lips. “Now, then,” he murmured, one word bleeding into the next. “I’ll just have to eat you before you eat me!”

“Open fire!”

At Serph’s command, the five-person team focused their firepower at Harley, directing a hail of bullets at his rising form.

They had no effect whatsoever.

Harley appeared to be getting to his feet, but in actuality, he was merely growing in mass as he rapidly absorbed more and more of the black tar, growing so huge that he obscured the wall behind him. He loomed over the Embryon team as they tried to fall back.

Harley’s body had the same greasy sheen as the tar itself, black and sticky. His outline was constantly changing, never settling on a given shape—a squirming mass of tar. One moment he was an abomination sprouting twisting tendrils, the next a polyhedral shape with remarkably smooth surfaces.

“I’ll eat you! Eat, eat, eat!”

Cielo shrieked.

His legs wheeled about in the air as the abomination reached out with a long arm and plucked him off the ground. Harley’s face peered out from the top of the distorted body—the last part of him that was still human.

Argilla took aim at that face and opened fire. She sprayed holes in the monstrosity, but they didn’t even slow him down. As he absorbed the bullets, one of Harley’s clouded yellow eyes lolled over to fix on her. “That hurt, you bitch! Hurt, hurt, hurt!”

A black, oozing arm darted at Argilla from behind. She let out a scream. It was as if the entire room had become an extension of Harley’s body. No matter where anyone turned, the creature was waiting for them.

Serph shouted as he fired ineffectually at the arms that had gotten hold of Argilla and Cielo. He might as well have been unloading his clip into a massive lump of clay. The blue-black flesh quivered and writhed, expelling the bullets, which then fell to the floor with a clatter.

Heat cursed and kept on shooting, but with each pull of the trigger, the abomination only seemed to grow bigger. The stench of decay in the air changed into something more biting and acrid as fluid dripped from the monster’s body, the drops spattering on the concrete like hot oil.

“Dammit!” Heat hurled aside his spent handgun and drew a knife.

“We have to retreat, sir!” Gale shouted. “We are outmatched!”

“No! We can’t leave Cielo and Argilla!” Serph shouted, holding his ground.

An instant later he felt a terrible force wrench him powerfully from within.

Serph cried out, dropping to his knees. His gun clattered to the ground. Deep in his gut, he felt a silvery streaming, like a coil of pure energy unraveling itself inside him. Its movements had the liquid quality of mercury as it coursed within him. His body was like a shell, torn asunder so that it could birth forth the thing inside.

Pain and pleasure became one.

The uncoiling force bore against his forehead from the inside, and he twisted his body wildly in a struggle to fight it off, but it was no use. The flow of silver energy burst through his skin, engulfing his entire body in a spiral of light.

Om Mani Padme Hum

Varuna

Serph screamed. He could feel himself becoming something else, something that was both him and yet also a creature that was ferocious and cold and unscrupulous, and his scream was one of denial and despair and fierce delight.

Through the platinum shimmer Serph’s senses grew keener, and he perceived a shift in the battle.

There was a flash of light, and Harley let out an ear-piercing screech. One of his tendrils wavered, dropping the prey it had seized. The figure tumbled toward the floor, but just before it hit, its body spun around and then whirled up and hovered near the ceiling.

“I’m floating! No, I’m flying!” The voice was distorted, as if it were coming from the depths of a chasm, but it was unmistakably Cielo’s. His face, however, was no longer human—nor, for that matter, was the rest of him.

His mouth had taken on a sharply hooked shape, with narrow teeth visible within. His arms were long, blue, angular projections reminiscent of the wings of a glider, sporting hands with sharp claws at their ends. A series of five bright stripes ran from his hips to his thighs; his legs were long and slender to match the rest of his graceful form. Lightning appeared to dance in his hands, turning into bluish-purple fireworks that cascaded over his body like water breaking across the bow of a ship.

From somewhere below came a deep rumbling, and then there was a tremendous boom as a section of the floor erupted. A terrific billow of dust filled the room. Then, from inside the whirling cloud emerged a pair of whip-like appendages, twisting up and down and side to side. Harley withdrew in a creeping, worm-like motion as part of his body began to smolder where a piece of searing hot concrete had pierced it.

The figure with the whip-like arms came into view, taking rough, panting breaths. Its arms twisted and darted like singing wires, spiraling outward, skimming across the floor. The contours of the body were feminine, with an ample bust and slender hips. Each of the creature’s breasts bore a mouth lined with sharp teeth, ferociously baring its fangs.

“Argilla? Argilla, is that you?” As Serph called out, he could hear that his voice was distorted in the same way that Cielo’s was. His body was hot all over, and there was something strange about his sense of vision—everything looked so clear. Too clear. He was taking in his surroundings with a degree of clarity far beyond the capability of human eyes.

Argilla let out a high-pitched scream and flailed her whip-like arms as she stalked toward Harley. Harley’s twisting, predatory tendrils surged forth, a wave of blackness coming from every direction, but Argilla’s limbs spun more swiftly, knocking them all aside.

Her piercing gaze focused on her enemy’s midsection.

Without a sound, a black sphere appeared in midair near Harley’s gut. At first, it looked as if it were going to merge with the rest of his body, but then the sphere disappeared with a reverberating boom, taking most of Harley’s abdomen with it. Only an empty void remained in its wake, and Harley thrashed in agony, bent over the gaping hole where his stomach had been. Harley lurched toward Argilla in a massive black wave, trying to engulf her, to use her body to replace his missing flesh.

Just before the wave crashed into her, however, she was swept up by a quick gust of bright, emerald-green wind. A moment later she was set down on the far side of the room, whisked away from Harley’s attack by a being with a long, slender head and semitransparent, emerald-green wings that draped from its shoulders to its hips. The newcomer quickly brandished its arms, mowing through an oncoming mass of dark tendrils. Its green wings fluttered swiftly, creating a virtual blade of air that sliced through its foe.

Those green wings concealed a supple, long-legged figure. A gleaming white blade extended from one of its pointed feet, cutting through the encroaching tentacles. Its head split open down the middle, revealing row upon row of gleaming teeth, and a squirming tongue flicked into view for an instant before disappearing. This couldn’t be Gale, could it? And yet Serph knew that it was.

“What’re you doing, Serph? Snap out of it. We’ve got work to do!” A hand with long, sharp claws gripped Serph’s shoulder. The voice was strange, but at the same time so very familiar. Serph turned around to look, and swallowed a lump in his throat as he saw the monstrous beast that stood there, its body massive and imposing, a pair of dome-shaped heads set atop its broad shoulders.

“Heat? Is that you? What happened to you?”

“Later. Here he comes. Don’t let your guard down.”

Serph turned his attention back to the battle. In spite of his injuries, Harley was shambling straight for them. Nothing human remained in his face, but his eyes still burned with a mixture of rage, madness, and hunger. “I’ll eat you! Eat all of you! Eat, eat, eat!”

On pure instinct, Serph brought his arms up in front of himself. Before he had time to wonder about the pale blue tone of his skin or the fact that sections of his arms were covered in some kind of carapace, a sound came from both forearms as they split open. There was no pain, only a growing sense of relief. From the fissures in his forearms unfolded long blades fashioned of bone. The blades danced, slicing through Harley’s flesh like it was no more than cobwebs. Harley screamed, and his warped body shuddered in agony.

His cries of anguish shook Serph’s body to the core. Serph tried to back away, but as he did, something dark and viscous wrapped itself around his torso and began to tighten. Immediately, Serph felt something sharp and silver release itself from within his body in a rush of unseen energy. It mingled with the dust in the air, surrounding him with a wintry chill that bit at his skin. Its effect on Harley was far more dramatic. The monstrosity let out another scream and tried to scramble back as his tendrils froze and shattered like glass.

“So, you have the power of ice? Looks like I’m your opposite, then.” A warmth washed over one side of Serph’s face as the low voice reached his ear. Serph turned to see Heat, who held an orb of crimson flame cradled in his thick red arms. The long claws at the ends of his fingers slid over its surface, as if caressing the ball of fire, and then he hurled it with an earsplitting bestial roar. The reek of burning flesh filled the air, and Serph could hear Harley writhing behind the ensuing screen of black smoke.

“Heat, we—what are we?”

“We’ll figure that out later. For now, we’ve got some new powers, so we might as well have some fun using them. Our prey is this way.”

Yes, something whispered in the back of Serph’s mind. Prey. Hunt it down, and then . . .

Serph realized that the voice in his head was his own, and in his confusion, he felt despair intermingled with an intense, animalistic sense of freedom.

Hunt it down, and then . . .

And then . . .

Serph screamed. He wasn’t even aware of it, so great was the sensation of pleasure as the blades of bone in his arms sliced through the flesh of his foe. The oozing tissue froze in the wake of his blades, then, a mere moment later, his opponent was knocked back by a powerful blast from another quarter.

Serph glanced over to see the female figure with the long, whip-like arms—Argilla—already preparing a follow-up attack. Something like a hole in the very fabric of reality formed between her hands, a powerful, gravitational distortion, which she then hurled with a single fluid motion. It detonated on impact with the creature’s torso, forming a massive hole—one that grew larger as the air howled around it.

As the creature screeched and attempted to lash out with its tendrils, it was buffeted by a gust of emerald wind. The being with the enormous mouth—Gale—fluttered his green, cape-like wings, roaring as he soared above the fight, generating another blade of air. His sturdy claws looked like long knives, glinting in the light, and as he kicked his way through the air, he sliced off several dozen more of Harley’s tendrils, scattering them in all directions.

The severed pieces squirmed, trying to rejoin with their host, but even as they did, a flash of purple lightning and a gout of red flame came from above. The huge, two-headed creature—Heat—had both of his huge mouths open in raucous, gleeful laughter as he tossed fireball after fireball. He drew steadily closer to his prey, brandishing brutal, curved claws wreathed in flame. Meanwhile, the one who controlled the purple lightning—Cielo—flew nimbly on his brightly colored wings, crowing as he darted between flailing tentacles. He let out a piercing cry as the lightning that wreathed his body arced out in scorching bolts of electricity.

What had happened to them? Even as he fought, somewhere in the depths of his mind, Serph marveled at the transformation. The bodies that he and his comrades now inhabited were something other than their own. Had they even existed before that thing—that mysterious black object—had burst open? Perhaps they had lain dormant inside of them all this time. What else could explain the feeling of joy and exultation that welled up inside him? Serph had never felt anything like this during the heat of battle—he had never felt anything like this in his life.

One of Argilla’s gravity orbs struck Harley squarely in what had once been his face. His head collapsed in upon itself, and all around the room, the tarry mass of his body quavered. The shaking underfoot made Serph drop to one knee. Mustering one last surge of strength, Harley sent dozens of tendrils crashing down towards the Embryon leader. Serph brought his arms up, shredding the cluster of tentacles just before they struck. The frozen remnants pummeled the ground in a hail of icy shards.

The monster wailed and screamed, trying to pull his body back together as he fled, but he was assailed by a combination of slashing wind, purple lightning, waves of gravity, and crimson blasts of flame. Serph let out a lingering shout as he unleashed the power building up within him. Pure white frost filled his vision, engulfing their foe’s black flesh, turning it into a pale mass of ice.

Serph emerged from his transformation.

He collapsed on the spot, exhausted, feeling like his body had been turned inside out. Nearby, Gale and Cielo had also reverted to their human forms, and kneeled panting on the ground. Heat, still transformed, came stomping towards them, carrying the creature-Argilla in his arms. He set her down.

“Is she still alive?” Serph asked.

“She’s all right. Just totally wiped out.”

Argilla let out a faint groan of confirmation and nodded her head, eyes still closed. There was a pale blue shimmer of light that sparkled along her skin, which slowly faded as she regained her human shape. While he waited for her to finish reverting, Heat cast off his two-headed, crimson guise. The pale blue light that came with the release of the transformation washed out the color of his red hair and eyes as a winning smile came to his face.

“Did we get him?” Argilla managed to wheeze out.

“He has ceased moving. It appears unlikely that he will resume hostilities. I am unable to confirm any life signs.” Gale still panted heavily as he spoke, giving a comic cast to his remarks.

“I can’t image he’d survive all that,” Cielo spat. Between Heat’s barrage of fire, Gale’s slashing winds, Cielo’s lightning, Argilla’s shockwaves, and Serph’s projectiles of water and ice, Harley Q—or the thing that had once been Harley Q—was now so badly mangled even its monstrous form was unrecognizable.

And yet, on the brink of death, there was some impossible spark of life still within their fallen foe. Its sprawling tendrils and folds of festering flesh twitched and shuddered, as if still searching for prey. As the five companions watched, the bloated body began to smoke as it writhed.

Heat stepped forward, and Cielo let out a panicked shout. “Hold on, what’re you doing? Stay away from him! He’s still moving.”

“I know he is. Otherwise this wouldn’t be any fun,” Heat said offhandedly as he knelt down next to the quivering mass of meat.

Serph saw the dangerous glimmer in Heat’s eyes again. He looked like a man possessed—the same look of hunger he’d had while walking amidst the death and destruction of the base. A chill of fear ran down Serph’s spine, and he scrambled to get up. “Heat, wait.”

“Wait for what?” Heat’s voice was oddly quiet. His gaze never left the wriggling remains in front of him. “This thing only used to be Harley. Now he’s something far, far more powerful, and you know that.”

“I—” Serph had to swallow a mouthful of bitter saliva. “I . . .”

“This man ate his own underlings. And it made him stronger.” As Heat spoke, he reached out to stroke a hand along what was left of Harley. He showed no concern at the fine hairs that rose up to grip at his palm. “So if we eat him, it’ll give us power. We’ll be the ones to grow stronger.”

Cielo stared at him in shock. “Heat, come on, cut it out. You’re talking crazy, man.”

“There is no basis for what you are claiming, Heat,” Gale added. “I do not comprehend.”

“What’s there to comprehend? I’m just pointing out the sensible course of action here.”

The color drained from Cielo’s face, and he shrank back. Serph spoke up, his voice raw. “Stop it, Heat. Let’s just go back.”

“There’s something inside of us,” Heat said, as if he hadn’t heard. His hand stroked the nauseating lead-gray flesh slowly, lovingly. “And that something needs to be fed. Fed by our fallen foes. Harley grew by devouring his own weaker henchmen. This time he was the one who was weak. Why shouldn’t it be his turn to get eaten?”

“But Harley used to be a human being!” Argilla cried out, her voice almost a scream. “Just like us.”

Heat merely snorted. “You call this human? This stinking lump of meat?” He rose and stomped with a heavy boot on the thing before him. It let out a shriek that sounded like nails on a chalkboard, but there were no words in its cry—nothing that could have come from a man. “No. It’s not. Not anymore. And neither are we. So why should we have to hold ourselves to human norms anymore? From now on, we get to decide on a new normal for ourselves. It’s as simple as that.”

“No it’s not, Heat!” Argilla said. “We’re still human. And so we . . . we—”

“Could a human being do this?” As Heat spoke, flames engulfed his left hand. His palm glowed red as it sank into the flesh of the fallen monstrosity, filling the air with stinking black smoke. The Harley-thing shuddered, letting out an ear-splitting howl before its cries of pain rose beyond the range of hearing.

“No,” Heat said, pulling his fist out from within the seared mass of flesh, flinging bits of charred tissue away in disgust. “We’re not human anymore, whether we like it or not. We need to accept that. There’s no point in denying it. And besides, we’ve already eaten people once before.”

Cielo swallowed a lump in his throat and stammered something incoherent. Heat continued, paying him no heed. “We have to learn how to survive. The things inside of us know the answers.”

“Heat, stop it,” Serph said. His voice was hoarse with pleading, although he knew his words weren’t going to do any good. Abruptly the stern look in his eyes abated, replaced by a haunted gaze.

“C’mere, Serph,” Heat said softly. “I’m sure you know this already—what it is you’re looking for. What smelling all of this and seeing all of this is making you feel. It’s no sin for us to . . . partake. We do this to survive! Here.” He held out his hand, holding a piece of dripping, bloody flesh that he’d torn from the monster. “Take it. You want to eat it, don’t you?”

Serph backed away.

Then he turned and ran, without looking back. It wasn’t disgust that drove him away—it was the realization that he wanted nothing more than to grab that piece of meat, to sink his teeth into it and let the blood flow down his throat as he devoured it completely, taking in all the power it would give him.

Had there been signs that this was coming? Something he’d missed?

The bewildering struggle and its bizarre conclusion had robbed him of his ability to be introspective. As Serph ran through the ruined hallways of the Vanguard base, his mind was filled with a dizzying array of fragmented images, pain becoming pleasure, man becoming monster, a whirlwind of grief and confusion as Harley’s face changed into a mask of revolting hunger and gluttony. And then, flashes of their battle.

They had assumed impossible forms; and somehow they had known how to make use of them. With a mere thought, he had made water gush forth from his arms, cutting through the air with a razor’s edge. He recalled the joy he’d felt as those blades of bone burst forth from inside his forearms and sliced through his enemy’s flesh; he had become a veritable whirlwind of death. Now, thinking about it made him sick to his stomach. But the worst part, the most nightmarish bit of all, was when Heat had offered him that meat.

“Take it. You want to eat it, don’t you?”

That piece of meat, dripping with thick, syrupy blood so dark it was almost black. It had looked . . . delicious.

Argilla was the first to make it out through the gate of the Vanguard base, pitching forward in her haste, as if she couldn’t bear to be inside that defiled building a single moment longer. She stumbled down the stairs and then sank to the ground, curling up into a ball as she rocked back and forth. Her face was so caked with tears and blood and soot that it looked like a mask.

“It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me,” she muttered to herself over and over, weakly shaking her head back and forth. “It wasn’t me. I don’t want to . . . I don’t want to eat anyone.”

Serph was next behind her. He tried to make his way over to his sniper, but he didn’t have the energy, and he collapsed a few steps from the bottom of the stairs. He couldn’t muster any words; he lacked the strength to do anything more than look over at Argilla and reach a hand in her direction. He was vaguely aware of Cielo and Gale coming out next, each helping to hold the other up. They took a seat somewhere nearby. Gale’s face was pale; Cielo’s was even more so, and he held his hands over his mouth and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, as if he could somehow escape what had happened by blotting out the sight of the world where it had taken place.

Another wave of nausea hit Serph, more intense this time, and he began dry-heaving. He tried not to think about what Heat was doing at that very moment back inside the ruined base.

Take it. You want to eat it, don’t you?

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there like that. In front of him, Argilla clutched her head as she shook it back and forth, making a sound like a muted wail. His own skull ached like it was being stabbed with dull needles, and Serph fought hard against the urge to vomit. Lifting his head up at last, he tried to croak out the words, “Why is this happening?”

At that moment, Serph’s mind reeled as he felt a painful jolt from within his gut. It was difficult to distinguish from the powerful nausea he already felt, but it had a very different source. Its fearful intensity grew steadily stronger, like something was trying to eat its way out from within his intestines.

He let out an involuntary groan and doubled over, but the pain wouldn’t stop. Rather, it continued to intensify, the burning sensation spreading from his gut through the rest of his body. The inside of his head flashed red and white. The image of that dripping piece of flesh came back to him, making his throat and tongue throb violently. He licked his lips, his tongue moving of its own volition. He felt no revulsion at the act; instead, it felt only natural. For a time it was as if he were watching himself dumbly through the eyes of a stranger—and then the stranger melted away, like wax over an open flame.

Only hunger remained. A fierce appetite, a desire to feed, instinctive and merciless, welling up inside of him like an incontrovertible need.

Argilla thrashed about, screaming incoherently. Cielo cried out as well as he slammed his head insanely against the ground. Serph couldn’t see Gale, but he could hear his urgent pants and groans.

Serph set his hands on the ground and tried to force himself up, his vision wavering, but he suddenly found himself without any support, and pitched forward onto his face. Only then did he realize that one of his forearms had liquefied into a formless mass of the black, tarry substance they had seen throughout the base.

You’re consuming yourself.

The solution to the problem came to Serph with shocking ease, the answer emerging from the thing that now lived inside his body. It needed food to replenish the energy he had expended during the battle—and that meant consuming the bodies of their fallen foes. If he didn’t, then the thing inside him would need to digest his own flesh in order to find sustenance. Left unchecked, it would eventually consume him entirely, until only a black pool of tar remained.

They hadn’t been the leftovers of Harley devouring his underlings, Serph realized. They were what was left of the people who had spent all of their energy to avoid being eaten, and so had wound up consuming themselves, instead. Somehow Serph knew instinctively that he only had about ten or fifteen minutes before he suffered the same fate. And there was only one way to avoid that.

Cielo suddenly stopped shaking and rose to his feet as if pulled by unseen strings. His head twisted at an unnatural angle as he turned his bloodshot eyes toward Serph. The bright red hunger in them made Serph’s body stiffen. He tried to call out Cielo’s name, but what came out of his mouth instead was the bestial roar of an animal staring down an intruder. Cielo’s eyes quivered. There was a fire in them, and they blinked two or three times before taking on a faint glow.

“Buddy . . . No, I’m not—” Cielo’s voice was warped and halting. “This isn’t—it’s not me!”

Serph wanted to tell Cielo that he knew that, but more than likely, Cielo saw the same thing in Serph’s eyes that Serph saw in his friend’s. Cielo came towards him, hand outstretched, uttering a long, sobbing cry. He began the motion as a plea for help, but as his hand swept forward suddenly he was swinging for Serph’s throat.

Without thinking, Serph brought up his right hand and deflected the attack. His forearm transformed, covered in an instant in glittering, silver-white armor, and with that new expenditure of energy, the aching hunger within him grew.

Some kind of warning squeaked its way out of Cielo’s throat, but then his moment of clarity was gone. In a swirl of light he reverted to the form he’d taken during the carnage inside, with glider wings and a beak like a pair of pliers. Purple lightning crackled menacingly around his body.

Serph knew that he had changed, too. He heard a creaking cry of alarm emerge from his throat. His body was no longer under his own control. It was the hunger that dictated his actions now, the deep-seated, instinctual desire to eat, to eat and quell the pain and emptiness inside.

Without the need to look, he sensed two other figures as they arose behind him and to his left. Before recognizing them as Argilla and Gale, he first acknowledged them only as food—something to be killed, blood and meat to be consumed.

Argilla wobbled from side to side as she approached, the teeth in her breasts glinting in the light. Gale, his massive mouth opening and closing rhythmically, looked over at him as well—despite having no discernible eyes. Cielo, his brightly colored wings unfurled, drew steadily nearer, clacking his beak.

Purple electricity came streaking towards Serph.

Serph avoided the attack. No, not Serph—it was the thing that inhabited his body that deflected the incoming bolts of energy. The arm that did so was no longer human; blades of bone erupted from the sheaths that had been Serph’s forearms.

He let out an enraged battle cry. Gale replied with a shrill call that felt like an icepick to the brain. Reason had been driven somewhere far away, and in its place was only a lust for battle and an overwhelming urge to feed that seemed to paint the whole world in shades of red.

Distantly, Serph could feel himself shuddering with joy in anticipation of the meat and blood that would fuel him. His human spirit cried out in desperate defiance as he was consumed by the flames of his increasingly inhuman hunger.

Cielo let out another painful screech as he swooped in for the attack. Serph radiated power from his entire being; it felt completely natural for him to freeze the water vapor in the air between them. A moment later, whirling blades of ice struck his purple foe. Cielo shrieked and backed away, shuddering once as he flew higher. A flash of lightning bathed the battlefield in violet hues. The hovering blades of ice were scattered away, and the ones embedded in his body vanished as well. The flying creature gave another shudder, scattering a rain of bluish-purple blood, then let out another roar as lightning enveloped its agile form.

Under Serph’s feet, the ground began to buckle and collapse, and he only barely managed to leap away in time. Argilla brandished her limbs as she prepared herself for a follow-up attack. Then, a barrage of wind-blades came whipping Serph’s way, gust after gust. He dodged them all, leaving them to smash apart overturned vehicles and pulverize walls. Gale, too, appeared to have focused on Serph; he crouched nearby, tongue writhing about, green wings preparing for another blast.

The last shred of Serph’s reason was slipping away. He was vaguely aware of someone screaming for help, but he wasn’t even sure who it had been. He let out one final cry.

Please. Someone. Anyone.

Stop this.

At the very edge of his perception, Serph detected a new target. An enemy . . . or a new source of food. Either was both.

Swiftly he focused his attentions there. With what passed for his eyes, he spied a peculiar form: a humanoid, not outfitted for combat. It had short black hair and wore nothing aside from a simple white gown. It was a girl, slender and elegant. Though barefoot, she walked toward him with steady steps across the rubble-strewn ground.

There was nothing in her demeanor to show she was afraid—or even cautious—which, paradoxically, put him more on guard. He clicked his tongue to make a rasping sound, the same warning he would direct at anything else he perceived as a threat. He felt the enemy’s attention slipping. Now would be the perfect time to strike.

But he did no such thing. He stayed rooted on the spot, unmoving. The girl calmly lifted up one hand as she approached him, and with the other rubbed at the inner part of her wrist. Fresh, crimson blood welled up and began to run, dripping from her arm onto the ground with every step she took. Her pale feet shone in the dim light as she held out her bloodied hand in offering.

He could hear a panicked cry from someone, somewhere, telling him to run—but he couldn’t resist the temptation of that streaming blood. With each drop, the sweet aroma of it grew more enticing. He watched as his own dark blue hand reached out to her, long blade still extended. Slicing the girl’s tiny head from her body would be like cutting through a piece of string. And blood would gush forth. Sweet blood. Energy. Power. Oh, how he hungered for it!

The girl stood there, smiling as she bled.

Then everything went black.

Serph felt soft skin against his lips and salty-sweet liquid on his tongue.

He jerked upright with a start. A pair of smiling black eyes gazed down at him. The girl shook her head in admonishment and placed a tiny hand on his head, pushing him gently back down. Then she pressed her open wound against his mouth again. Blood ran down his throat, but it wasn’t at all unpleasant—a warm drink, slaking his fading thirst. A sense of solace suffused him. The girl stroked Serph’s hair, humming some sort of simple melody to herself, almost too quiet to hear.

“Who . . . are you?” It was Argilla who spoke. She lay just beyond the girl, shivering; her voice was no more than a whisper. Faint, pink stains were visible around her mouth. Nearby, Cielo and Gale were huddled against one another in a daze. None of them had the look of hunger in their eyes any longer. Everything was eerily quiet, the girl’s soft humming the only sound.

“My name is Sera,” she said, her melody changing into singsong words. “I’ve come to help you. To help everyone.” As she spoke, the girl shed a single tear. It slid down her smooth cheek, catching the light for a moment before falling to the bloodstained ground.

“What do you mean, ‘help’ us?” Argilla asked. She was on the verge of asking more when the group heard the sound of heavy footsteps approaching. Reflexively, Serph put the girl behind him. Argilla and Cielo likewise drew protectively closer.

It was Heat. He paused and leaned against the battered gate of the Vanguard base, quirking his eyebrows, a closed fist covering his mouth. Noticing the girl his comrades were clustered around, he started to move closer, then abruptly stopped in his tracks, as if he’d come up against some invisible barrier.

“Heat?” Argilla called out to him, her voice wary.

But Heat remained frozen in place, eyes fixed on the girl. He opened his mouth to say something, but as he did, the girl carefully reached out her hand, just as she had to Serph, spreading her arms to beckon him.

Heat’s reaction was quite different, though. What Serph saw in Heat’s eyes was something akin to fear. The big trooper stumbled backward, as if buffeted by a powerful gust of wind, and then he turned around and began walking quickly away. Serph could feel the warmth from the girl next to him as he stood mutely watching Heat’s departure.

He has chosen.

The words echoed in Serph’s mind. He looked around and noticed a small animal with perky, triangular ears sitting nearby—a black cat, with silver eyes.

The future is not set in stone. It is always in motion. But he has chosen; that cannot be changed.

Who are you? Serph asked without speaking. But the cat was already gone, leaving only the memory of its tiny black form and glittering eyes.