Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“What? Does not that mean in popular language: God is disproved, but not the devil?” –On the contrary! On the contrary, my friends! And who the devil also compels you to speak popularly!?

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“Hey, come on, check it out!” Cielo said as he bounded into the war room. “What do you think? Not bad, right, buddy?”

“I have to admit, Cielo,” Argilla said, standing up from the briefing table and blinking her eyes, “I expected this to turn out much worse with you in charge.”

“Aw, come on. I put a lot of effort into this. And I wasn’t asking you anyway, Argilla. Come on, buddy, look! Didn’t I do a good job?” Cielo stepped closer to Serph.

Serph nodded and managed a grin. “Yes. Well done, Cielo.”

They were back at the Embryon base. The other core members of the tribe were sitting around the briefing table. Cielo’s cheerful voice had the effect of lighting up the whole room, breaking the heavy silence that had fallen. He gestured proudly at the doorway.

Entering behind him was a small figure, eyes wide with surprise. Cielo grinned and pulled a chair out for her. “Don’t just stand there, Sera. Have a seat.”

The girl smiled and sat down. The makeshift surgical gown they’d dressed her in had been replaced with one of the temperature-controlled suits typically worn by denizens of the Junkyard, along with a short khaki jacket. Below that, she wore a slitted skirt and a pair of light leggings. Across her shoulders were the orange markings that identified the wearer as a member of the Embryon. Going by her outfit alone, she looked like a Newborn freshly recruited to the tribe.

But the unguarded expression on her face as she looked around at her surroundings in complete confusion would have made her conspicuous even for a Newborn; likewise her short black hair and the deep black irises of her eyes. Now that she was here in the room with the others, it was all the more apparent just how small and delicate she really was. The jacket Cielo had found for her was undoubtedly the smallest they had, but even so the protective gear looked baggy on her slight frame.

When Serph’s team had returned from the ruins of the Vanguard base, the first thing they had discussed was how the girl had managed to escape from the guarded room at the Embryon headquarters, and from there, how she’d found them out on the battlefield.

How had she made it all that way on foot, without even the simplest protective gear to keep her safe from the enemies she could have encountered anywhere along the way? There wasn’t a single path through the Junkyard that wasn’t littered with rubble and shattered glass—it was unthinkable that she’d made the whole trip barefoot. And yet she had arrived without so much as a scratch on her feet. There had only been the long self-inflicted cut along her wrist that she’d made to save Serph and the others.

The guards who had been posted outside her room made sworn statements that they never left their posts, and that the door was never unlocked. Lookouts on patrol elsewhere all claimed they had not seen her out and about within the base, nor had they seen anyone leave. In the Junkyard, the loyalty of a tribe’s members was unquestioned, and Serph had no reason to doubt the word of his people now.

But that still left no explanation as to how the girl, Sera, managed to show up at just the right place at just the right time. For one thing, she’d been unconscious when they set out. How had she even known to go looking for them?

Her eyes had gone wide when they asked her. “I just felt like I needed to go where you were. I could hear how much you were suffering. I had to go. And so I did, that’s all.” She looked as though she didn’t know why she was being asked such an obvious question. They had tried phrasing the question in a dozen different ways, but she gave no better explanation, and so Serph had had no choice but to let it go. The girl was still weak; she had lost a lot of blood in bringing the four warriors out of their berserk creature-state.

“Hey, are you feeling any better?” Argilla asked now, putting a hand on her forehead. “You must be lightheaded after losing all that blood.”

“I’m all right. I got some rest,” she said, smiling back at Argilla. “Besides, I came here to help, so I don’t mind.”

“You keep saying that,” Gale said. “I would like you to clarify whom you intend to help. Do you mean the five of us here? The Embryon?”

“I . . .” The girl tilted her head, as if not quite understanding the question, and looked uncertainly up at the tall bishop. “I’m here to help everyone,” she said after a moment. “That’s all I know.”

“You appeared in the crater formed after the destruction of an object that appeared at the border of our territory,” Gale continued. “How did you get there? What was that object, and why did it suddenly appear at that location? What relationship do you have to it, or to the transformative powers we have manifested?”

“I’m sorry,” Sera said, hanging her head. “I really don’t know. When I came to, I was outside, and I felt the compulsion to go to you. You were in trouble, so I needed to get to you and give you my blood. That’s all. I don’t know what else I can say.”

“Come on, Gale, she’s in no condition for an interrogation,” Cielo said impatiently. “Look at her. She’s scared. And she just woke up, so she’s probably just, like, all confused and stuff. Once she gets some real rest, she might remember more. Right?”

“I agree with Cielo,” Argilla said—a rare thing for her. “We’re not going to accomplish anything by intimidating her. All that matters for the time being is that she saved us. We should be more concerned about our link to the Church. Has it come back online yet?”

“The link is still down,” Gale answered. “All of our communication requests have been met with silence.”

“We’re getting nowhere,” Heat muttered from his bench against the wall. “I thought that once the girl woke up we might learn something, but all we’ve got is more headaches. She’s nothing more than useless baggage.”

Argilla bristled. “Hey, don’t talk about her like that. She’s the only reason we were brought back from that—that state we were in. If she hadn’t shown up, we’d have . . . we’d have eaten each other.” She shuddered, as if the horrifying memories were replaying themselves in her mind.

Serph felt his own mouth go dry. Argilla was right: he didn’t want to think about what would have happened if Sera hadn’t shown up when she did.

Heat was the only one who hadn’t partaken of Sera’s blood. He said simply that he’d feasted on Harley’s corpse until he’d eaten his fill, at which point he came free of his transformation. He’d added almost offhandedly that “it tasted like shit,” but hadn’t offered any more than that.

Afterward, he had steadfastly refused to take any of Sera’s blood, and his irrational aversion to and wariness of the girl didn’t appear to have lessened after being told how she’d brought the others back to human form. If anything, they seemed to have grown stronger. Now, as she perched on her hard chair, pale face turning this way and that as she regarded her surroundings with amazement, he watched her like a hawk.

“At any rate,” Serph said, forcing the dark memories away, “we have her to thank for snapping us out of our . . . let’s call it a rampage. Also, having Sera near us appears to be preventing whatever happened to the Vanguards from happening to the Embryon. Isn’t that right, Gale?”

“We do not yet have conclusive proof. However, in comparing the Vanguards and the Embryon, her presence is the only differing factor of note. Given that we do not know the current state of the other tribes, I cannot make any decisive statement to this effect, but if we assume that the spheres of light spread throughout the entire Junkyard, it is possible that being in relative proximity to the girl serves to somehow curtail these . . . rampages.”

“Good grief, man, could you be any wordier?” Cielo said. “So the short version is that having her here might be what’s stopping us from going crazy? If that’s how it is, then awesome. And y’know, at this point, we should probably stop talking about her like she’s not even here.” He reached across the table and took her hand in his. “I mean, she came to save us, all on her lonesome. And even without getting into all that going crazy stuff, what reason do we have to turn her away? We could use all the help we can get.”

“He’s right,” Argilla said. “A Newbie like her—less than a Newbie—wandering out there aimlessly? She wouldn’t last five minutes. Besides, maybe she’s the key to stopping our transformations.”

Heat held up his hand. “Sorry to have to burst your bubble, but look at this.” The fireball mark on his right arm flashed with crimson light. The others watched as his forearm transformed into a monstrous, red-skinned hand with four gleaming claws. Tongues of fire danced along the claws and fell from them in tiny droplets of flame.

He waved his clawed hand in front of Argilla, who watched as if frozen until he changed it back. “The girl only holds back the hunger we feel after we fight. Our transformation powers haven’t changed at all. We can assume those forms whenever we want, of our own free will. You’ve tried it for yourself, haven’t you, Serph?”

“Yes,” Serph admitted.

He’d spoken to Gale about it already, and indeed, even after Sera had rescued them, they remained able to use their transformational powers. Rather than activating them freely, though, they seemed to be rooted in natural instincts, triggering automatically once one of them went into a combat mindset. Though they hadn’t tested it yet, it was possible that, in addition to the hunger, strong emotions such as fear or anger could also cause them to change. Perhaps Sera’s presence would help in those situations, but it seemed that she had no ability to remove the transformation power itself.

“Then what’s going to happen to us?” Argilla asked. She was staring blankly at her hands on the table.

“I’m sorry,” Sera said, setting a hand gently on Argilla’s shoulder. Her tone grew firmer when Argilla looked back up in surprise. “At least by drinking my blood and being near me, I don’t think there’s much chance that you’ll suddenly change. And if I can get to people before they lose control, I can stop them. That’s one thing I am sure of.”

“Sera.” Argilla was at a loss for words as the girl embraced her. “You—”

“By being near me, I think people can build up an immunity so they won’t have to devour each other. But the virus mutates rapidly. The others have to take some of my blood before it’s too late to help.”

“On what basis do you make this claim?” Gale interjected. “If you do not have any memories, what makes you so certain of this? What is this virus you mention? On the molecular level, your blood is no different from that of an ordinary human being—and yet it has this power. Explain how this is possible.”

“I . . .” All of the certainty on Sera’s face fell away. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I honestly don’t. All I know is that it’s what we need to do.”

“We cannot allow our tribe members to ingest a substance whose mechanism of action is unknown.”

Gale had conducted an analysis on Sera’s blood as soon as they had returned to the base; the results all came back in the green. There was nothing about her blood to set it apart from human baseline, save the fact that it was even cleaner than that of a Newborn.

“While it may seem harmless to us at present, there is no telling what kind of negative effects might—”

“Gale, that’s enough,” Serph interrupted. “The important thing is that we know firsthand that Sera’s blood does have some kind of special power. If it might stop what happened to the Vanguards from happening to us, it wouldn’t hurt to keep her plan in mind.” He turned toward Sera, who was still quite pale. “But you did lose a lot of blood earlier. If you tried to give blood to our entire tribe you’d kill yourself.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Sera said, her tone assured. “I needed to use a lot of blood for you because you were in such a precarious state, but the people here in the base aren’t that far gone yet. Just a drop apiece should do. So I wouldn’t need to give much for you to have enough for everyone.”

Serph wanted to ask how she was sure, but he stopped himself. He already knew what her answer would be. For now, it was better to focus on the practical side of things.

“Gale, why don’t you get a blood sampling kit and some pharmaceutical gelatin capsules—enough for the whole tribe. We can use those to distribute the blood.” Gale nodded and stood. “For now, we’ll tell them that it’s medicine being distributed by the Church due to the current situation,” Serph continued. ”We should probably take some ourselves and—Heat, where are you going?”

Heat was already halfway to the door. “I don’t want any.”

“Are you disobeying a direct order? Argilla asked.

“I like my power.” Heat made a show of triggering flames to rise up between his outspread fingers. A flame of a different color danced in his red eyes as he watched. “This beats grenades any day. A little more practice and I’ll have it down. I don’t want to put anything in my body that takes this away from me. Besides, I prefer the taste of my enemies’ blood to some flavorless pill.”

His mocking retort hung in the air, taking all the wind out of Argilla’s reprimand, and he left before anyone could say anything more. The door shut behind him. Gale turned to Serph, his face expressionless. “Sir, I believe you should consider punishing this insubordination.”

“Leave it be. Heat’s just being Heat,” Serph said. There were too many other things on his mind—who Sera really was, the effects of her blood, their bizarre transformative powers . . . and their hunger for flesh.

Deep down inside, he could feel that his appetite, while it had been suppressed, remained a very real presence. If he let his guard slip, it would come back in full force to consume him once again.

He gazed over at Sera’s porcelain profile. Not for the first time, he had the impression that he knew her face from somewhere. Try though he might, the lingering threads of his memories kept slipping through his fingers.

Serph shook his head, and tried to focus on the problem of what to do about his second in command.

Heat had been a member of the Embryon since the beginning. They’d emerged from the Church as Newborns together, and ever since, the red-haired trooper had been Serph’s right-hand man. No, more than that—it was like they were two halves of the same whole. Back when their previous leader was killed, Serph and Heat had skirted the law that required the losing tribe to join ranks with the victors. Right after their own leader fell in battle, before the fighting had a chance to settle down, the two of them had managed to single-handedly take out the enemy tribe’s leader, leaving both tribes without a leader simultaneously.

That meant the lot of them were effectively Newborns once again. Ordinarily, their individual skill would have determined whether they were killed or taken in by another tribe. Heat, though, had refused go in for either of those options. He’d pointed out that the laws also allowed for Newborns to form their own tribe.

“So that’s what we’re going to do. And you’ll be our leader. Simple as that.”

Serph thought back to that conversation. His memories from before the incident with the black object felt distant, like they belonged to someone else, but he could recall the tone of Heat’s voice and the look in his eyes with unusual clarity. It was more than a little irregular for a tribe to consist of only a leader and a single follower, but the Embryon had managed to survive.

Now that Serph thought back on it, Heat’s pride and arrogance—or, more charitably, his determination and simple refusal to bend to anyone else’s will—were qualities that he’d always exhibited. He played by the Church’s rules, but he was merciless when it came to facing off against anyone who tried to hold him back. The only exceptions to that had been the leader of his original tribe, and Serph.

Those inclinations were all too apparent now. Whatever that mysterious object had done to them, Heat was right about one thing: the transformations themselves and the powers that came with them far outclassed any conventional weapon.

Harley was a perfect example. After he’d assumed his monstrous form, he’d held his own against an assault by the five Embryon members even after Argilla had blown off half of his face. If they could somehow use their new powers while still keeping a grip on their consciousness and their sanity, they’d be nearly unstoppable.

It was all well and good that Sera’s blood could bring them out of their rage state, but if there was some chance that it might inhibit the transformations themselves, then to Heat, who was rather taken with his new abilities, Sera’s blood—even the girl herself—might as well have been poison.

That Sera’s face seemed to trigger some almost-accessible memory made the whole situation even more exasperating for Serph. Pangs of doubt twisted within him like thorns piercing his heart. Could Heat be right? Or was his rejection of the girl a sign of something more insidious?

The words of that black animal—the ‘cat’—lingered in Serph’s mind. He has chosen. They had seemed almost a hallucination, and yet the creature’s silver-eyed stare had left faint scars across his thoughts, like the scratches of a set of claws. They didn’t hurt, but from time to time, they would come to mind, if only to remind him they were there.

Gale was preparing to take a blood sample when he let out a hiss and slumped forward. The tube in his hand fell to the floor, and Sera, who was closest, struggled to hold him steady.

“What’s wrong, Gale?” Serph asked. “Are you okay?”

“It is . . . not that,” Gale forced out through clenched teeth. “It is a . . . transmission from the Church. A forced interrupt.” He brought a fingertip to his temple and creased his brow in discomfort. “It is coming through on a restricted, unidirectional emergency channel. I am putting it on-screen. All other functions will be . . . temporarily suspended.”

As soon as he had finished speaking, he went completely limp, collapsing against Sera. Argilla helped her ease him into the nearest chair.

Sera looked up at Serph and asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’ll be all right,” Serph assured her, seeing the look of panic on the girl’s face. “Once the transmission is complete, he should be fine.”

Sera nodded, though she still looked ill at ease. She put her hands atop Gale’s and peered into his face. The monitor on the table flickered and came to life, white noise filling the screen. After a few moments of static, a pale, oval, almost-human face resolved on the white screen. The Dissemination Machine.

“This is quite the dramatic entrance, don’t you think?” Serph said, his tone rather harsh. “I’d like to know why there’s been a communication blackout until now. And I’d also like to know why you felt the need to go so far as to subject my bishop to a forced interrupt.”

“Those questions . . . cannot be addressed.” Only the Dissemination Machine’s lips moved as it spoke.

The Dissemination Machine was the Church’s representative of sorts. While the white warrior priests served as the Church’s guards, it was the Machine that was responsible for directly overseeing the denizens of the Junkyard. More often than not, people communicated with it like this, remotely; even Serph seldom interacted with it in person. Now, only its head appeared on the display, a stylized white ceramic representation of a human face, cold and alien.

That air of inhumanity brought Serph’s own recent sense of displacement back to mind, but he continued on. “Then does the Church know anything about the current phenomenon—about what’s happened to us? We’re suddenly able to transform into bizarre new shapes, strange creatures with incredible powers, which we’re sometimes unable to control. There have been other unusual happenings as well.”

The Dissemination Machine made no response. Serph went on. “I want to know what the Church has to say about this. Is this something that you intended to happen? If it is, I think we deserve an explanation.”

“Those questions . . . cannot be addressed,” the Dissemination Machine repeated. “This is a notification to the heads of each of the tribes. All tribe leaders are to report to the Temple of the Church of the Arbiters of Karma in Sahasrara at 12:00 LT for an important announcement. Until then, there will be a temporary cessation of any and all hostilities throughout the Junkyard. I repeat: all tribe leaders are to report to the Temple of the Church of the Arbiters of Karma in Sahasrara at 12:00 LT for an important announcement. End transmission.” The screen went black.

“What the heck was that all about?” Cielo muttered. “Something to do with our powers, you think?”

“I hope so,” Argilla said under her breath.

Gale groaned as he came to. His eyes widened in surprise as he looked up to find Sera peering into his face with concern as she held his hands.

“What is happening?” he asked. “Have I been restrained for some reason?”

“She’s worried because you blacked out,” Argilla said, sounding exasperated. “Can you honestly not tell that she’s concerned for you?”

Cielo snickered. “I guess even bishops don’t know everything.”

“I was merely carrying out one of my expected duties. ‘Worry’ and ‘concern’ are imprecise terms. If you could elaborate further on what you mean by—”

“Yeah, okay, that’s enough of that,” Cielo said as he pulled Sera away from Gale. “Sera, let’s leave this ingrate here and be on our way. I can show you around the building. I’m sure there’s a lot you still want to know.”

“Don’t push her too hard,” Argilla said. “She still needs rest.”

“Hold on. I cannot allow you to do that,” Gale said, rising unsteadily to his feet. “I have orders to take blood samples from her and create medication to distribute to the tribe members first.”

“There’s no rush for that right now, Gale,” Serph interjected. “Although we don’t know for sure what the Church is going to do, given that we’ve been summoned, it stands to reason there might be some announcement about the current situation. If our link to the Church gets restored, maybe we can check to see who Sera is and if there’s any record of her past. There might even be some information about her blood, who knows? Are you still unable to access the Dissemination Machine’s data system?”

“The previous transmission was one-way only. I do not have access.”

“Then I guess I have no choice but to go.” Serph’s face was grim. “Since all fighting has been called off, it should be safe to travel alone. They’ll only let leaders into the Temple, anyway.”

“Are you sure?” Sera was gazing at Serph anxiously.

Cielo put an arm around her shoulder and gave her a playful shake. “Don’t worry, Sera. The Church has records on everyone in the Junkyard. I’m sure we’ll be able to learn more about you. Chin up!”

Sera shook her head. “No, that’s not what I mean,” she replied. “I mean about Serph going by himself. What if someone attacks him along the way?”

“Hey, didn’t you hear the conversation just now?” Cielo crossed his arms in mock disappointment. “The Church called for a cease-fire, so attacking anyone is a no-go. Any sort of combat, whether it’s a shootout, or a knife fight, or even a barehanded brawl, is forbidden. And nobody ever disobeys an order from the Church.”

But the concern did not leave Sera’s face. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but instead just hung her head sadly.

“Besides, my buddy here is tough! He’s the toughest of us all. That’s how come he’s the leader of the Embryon, right, buddy?”

“That’s right, Cielo,” Serph said with a smile, meant less for Cielo and more for Sera. He felt a touch of relief when he saw the tension lessen on her face.

“You will still be at risk on your own, sir,” Gale said. “In addition, there is also the return trip to consider. Perhaps I or some of the other tribe members should accompany you.”

“No, we can’t do that. We don’t know if or when I might wind up . . . changed again, and if I do, I don’t want to have anyone else near me. The first time was enough. I want everyone else to stay here and follow up on what we’ve been able to learn already. I’ll be back soon.”

Gale was quiet for a moment, then said, “Understood, sir,” setting a hand to his chest while dipping his head. “Then I wish you luck. Have a safe and speedy return.”

Sahasrara, the shining lotus . . .

Sahasrara stood at the figurative heart of the Junkyard, surrounded by the other six areas which the tribes fought endlessly over. It was a holy land encircled by a deep chasm whose walls were covered with a smooth, blue metal unmarred by a single blemish or speck of rust. The only way to cross was by one of the eight bridges known as the Arya Marga—the Noble Eightfold Paths—that radiated out from Sahasrara. The outer ends of the bridges were ornamented with gates through which only the highest-ranking members of each tribe were allowed pass, and the gates themselves were decorated with elaborate carvings of calligraphic text.

The official name of the Church was the Church of the Arbiters of Karma. It was the sole and absolute authority in the war-torn Junkyard, the mediator, the law. Warriors who fell in battle were reborn through the Church’s facilities and sent back out into the fray to fight anew. The arbiters were the sacred and sacrosanct heart of the Junkyard, collecting, maintaining, and saving all data about the ever-changing conflict, the rise and fall of the different tribes, the shifting military borders, and the changes in control over each area. They alone oversaw the way to the ultimate goal of all those born into the Junkyard: the gates to Nirvana.

Those gates would only open to those who had lived and died over and over, who accumulated sin after sin and had their karma cleansed time and time again. The only means of escaping the never-ending battle lay atop a pile of corpses tall enough to tower over the six areas of the Junkyard, rising all the way to paradise.

In Sahasrara, there was no sign of the devastation that blanketed the other areas. Named for the thousand-petaled lotus, it was kept apart from the filth and destruction by its dark, foreboding chasm-moat, a circular gash in the earth so deep that it was said that another world existed at its bottom. This lower world was said to be a holy place, where all those who died in this world gathered together and were separated by the weight of their sins before being cleansed. The karma of the fallen was wiped clean there in the innermost depths of the earth; and then, in accordance with samsara, the eternal cycle of reincarnation, they were given new life on the surface as Newborns. It was an underworld where death ruled supreme, and yet also a holy womb of rebirth.

Serph stopped at the edge of the bridge that he’d crossed countless times before. Since he’d become the leader of the Embryon and the ruler of Muladhara, the Church had summoned him here more times than he could remember—and yet now those memories felt like they belonged to another world, another lifetime. He gazed upon the unblemished bridges as if seeing them for the first time. They were made of an unknown substance that had a faint sheen, like metal or polished plastic; the elegant, flowing curves of their decorative design, dimly lit by the magenta sky, framed the deep, dark abyss below.

Areas like Muladhara and Svadhisthana had seen such vast devastation that they contained hardly any manmade structures that were still completely intact, but in Sahasrara, such structures were abundant. In addition to the long, white bridges like the one that stretched out before him, there were the towering Temple spires that rose against the sky, plazas and staircases and ornate handrails, as well as the various terraced gardens, all parts of a well-designed whole, every piece perfected. Everything glittered white and gold, pristine, with no trace whatsoever of bloodstains or bullet holes or the scorching touch of flame.

Aside from the white-clad warrior priests who were assigned by the Church to maintain order on every level, no one knew what the Church’s true intentions were, or what was inside those sparkling buildings. Only a select few people from the Junkyard were even allowed to enter the Church’s ground floor, and its other levels were strictly forbidden to all Junkyard denizens. What took place on the other floors had never been revealed, and until now, nobody had been interested enough to want to know. But this time, as Serph headed up the steps toward the Church door engraved with its dual thorned crowns, he felt a subtle sense of annoyance and discomfort that was new to him. The people of the Junkyard lived a life of bloody conflict, fated to suffer through any number of trials, while the monks lived in ignorance in their sublime tower that stretched all the way up to heaven. Serph’s finger was itching to give them just a single taste of gunfire.

He hadn’t been able to shed his anger at the Church for hurting Gale by issuing the forced interrupt, or for letting the bishop’s talents go to waste during a situation as unusual as that which they now faced. As a bishop, Gale existed for sifting through information, and being confronted with so many abnormalities without any data to work with was a tremendous burden upon him. Added to that was the fact that the forced connection could have caused severe damage to his friend’s nervous system. Serph wasn’t willing to just let that slide.

His feelings continued to gnaw at him as he moved to insert the identification ring around his finger into the slot in the gate in order to gain admittance. As he did so, his eyes drifted up, alighting on one of the inscriptions.

Om Mani Padme Hum

Om, jewel in the lotus, hum.

At once, his blood began to boil, and a burning tightness caught in his throat. He felt an almost explosive force stir within him—another mind, another presence, rising up unbidden. It was a sensation he remembered all too clearly from back in Svadhisthana, with Harley: the hunger, the instinct to fight, the craving for battle.

No.

Serph groaned, wrapping his arms around himself, digging his fingers into his shoulders as he tried to contain the mixture of fear and desire welling up inside him.

He heard a faint, mewling cry from above, and then the tinkling of a bell.

The pressure inside of him vanished as if he had only imagined it. Serph let his arms drop back to his sides, and peered up to the top of the arch.

The cat was there.

Its pointy ears poked up, little black triangles against the magenta sky, and its silver eyes sparkled in its tiny, angular face. It opened its mouth again and let out another meow, then quickly turned around and hopped out of sight, its long tail trailing behind it as it disappeared. The sound of the jingling bell receded with it.

A bell?

It had been around the cat’s neck, Serph realized. A tiny decorative bell. And somehow the echo of its sound reminded him of Sera’s voice.

Which didn’t make any sense at all, Serph thought, shaking his head. This time, he took care not to look up again as he inserted his tag into the slot. Those words above the gate were apparently some sort of trigger for the transformation. He would need to keep them in mind if he ever wanted to consciously enter that state.

Om mani padme hum...

“You’re with the Embryon, right?” someone said to him as he passed through the final gate and into the vestibule beyond. It was a young woman, with yellow markings at her hip and shoulder. That meant that she was one of the Solids, the tribe that controlled Anahata. If Serph remembered correctly, their leader was named Mick the Slug.

But Mick was a man, which meant that this woman was some sort of aide or bodyguard who had accompanied her boss here. Her hips swayed slowly as she approached Serph, and she fluttered her unusually red tongue while looking him over, up and down; she flashed a grin when she saw the black mark emblazoned on his cheek. Sharp teeth glimmered as she smiled.

She let out a long hum of consideration, and then licked her lips. “So it happened to you, too.”

Serph backed away reflexively; as he did, the woman gathered herself into a crouch.

She jumped, leaping three whole meters in a single bound. While in midair, her body was enveloped in an aura of blue light, into which she seemed to vanish for a moment. Then her arms shot out from within that glowing haze, transformed into something skeletal, almost mechanical, many-jointed and twisting like tentacles.

Serph jerked out of the way. Blue light flashed in front of his eyes and the words in the back of his mind came rushing to the forefront. His right arm glowed blue, and he watched as it changed shape and turned bluish-black before becoming encased in a gray-white carapace. His palm split open, and he heard the blade slide out from within. Its pointed tip traced an arc through the air as it severed his attacker’s black tentacle-arm with fluid ease.

The woman let out a screech that sounded like two pieces of metal being scraped together, and she cradled her arm as she landed on the floor. She was no longer a woman by this point, or even human at all. The upper half of her body was something human-like, while the bulk of her form had taken on a more rounded shape, sporting a number of black legs. A long, thick tongue, looking like some sort of internal organ, slurped out from between her lips to lick at her bloody cheek. “Nicely done,” she said in a grating voice. “But you’re not getting away.”

“Fighting is forbidden in Sahasrara.” Serph’s voice rumbled as well. The burning heat that had collected in the mark on his cheek began to spread out further, suffusing his whole body with power. Even as he issued his warning, he basked in her hostility and malice as if it were a pleasant shower. There was an enemy here. He could fight it—and then devour it.

“To hell with the law. I’m hungry.” The creature’s many legs scuttled about as she looked for an opening to attack. Her claws scraped against the polished white floor, making an ear-piercing sound. Although she had lost one of her limbs already, it didn’t look like she was going to back down. Serph thrust one of his arm-blades out in front of himself, feeling the thrill of combat rising within him, along with a hunger that felt so good that it made him queasy. His eyes were drawn to the fluids that dripped from his foe’s severed leg, and the tip of his tongue quivered as if he were already slurping it up, feeling its warmth and tasting the sweetness of flesh.

There was madness in the voice of the thing that had been a woman. “I don’t know who you are, but you hurt me. And you’re going to regret that.” And then she leapt towards Serph again. An instant later he was struck with a disorienting sensation, and his vision went white; blindly he held up an arm to fend off the blow from the sharp claws coming at him from above.

The attack never reached him. A shock rod swung through the air, bathed in pale blue light. The woman let out a shriek as it struck her right in the head and sent her sprawling. Her legs scrabbled at the floor as she struggled to get up, and she let out another deep, visceral scream.

A white figure slid into view. “Fighting is forbidden here,” it said in a voice without emotion or intonation.

“A warrior priest!” The woman’s voice was suddenly tinged with fear, and she hastily emerged from her transformation.

The white warrior priests who defended the Church were so named for the white armor and skin suits they wore, along with full-face helmets with polarized visors, which gave them an imposing, inscrutable air. On their spiked shoulders, engraved in black, were the two overlapping rings that were the sigil of the Church.

The priest returned his shock rod to the holster at his thigh, making the short, white cape that hung from his shoulders ripple. He was a towering figure, his gleaming white form distinguishing him immediately from the members of any tribe, all of whom were inevitably clad in gray and khaki with the exception of their marking colors.

“Both parties are ordered to cease hostilities. Failure to comply will result in punishment.”

The woman staggered to her feet. She was back in human form now, her entire right arm missing. Rage burned in her eyes as she glared at Serph, but she appeared to have backed down for now. Fresh blood dripped down from between fingers she pressed to the wound, spattering the clean white floor with drops of red. The warrior priest did not appear to notice.

He turned his black visor toward Serph. “Serph, leader of the Embryon,” he said. It was a statement, not a question. Serph nodded, and turned his transformed arm back to normal. The change came as easily to him as breathing, which surprised him and made him feel somewhat disgusted at the same time.

The woman swallowed a lump in her throat; apparently she had not realized who she had just tried to attack. “Leader?” she gasped. “I didn’t—”

“You have come to the Temple as instructed,” the priest said, as if the woman wasn’t even there. “The Church is aware of the destruction of the Vanguards. Request completed.”

The woman let out another quick gasp.

“The leaders of the other tribes have already arrived,” the priest said. “Make haste, Child of Purgatory.” He then turned and began walking away. As Serph followed after him, from the corner of his eye he saw the woman run off, still bleeding from the stump of her severed arm.

The Embryon had triumphed over the Vanguards. That made for a major shift in the balance of power. No doubt the woman was on her way to inform her tribe of the news. Although the Embryon were a comparatively small tribe, her people probably hadn’t anticipated that someone who controlled an entire area would have ventured to Sahasrara all by himself. Especially not since they were the Solids.

The leader of the Solids, Mick the Slug, was a cautious man, one who put his own safety above all else—the complete opposite of Serph, who frequently took part in front-line engagements. It was said that Mick never left his tribe’s headquarters in Anahata. Apparently, the Solids’ headquarters rivaled that of the largest of the tribes, the Brutes of Ajna, in terms of defensibility; it was a veritable fortress.

It was unfortunate that Mick’s tribe had learned about the defeat of the Vanguards, but the Church would make an announcement in due time anyway. The Solids would just know about it a little sooner, now. As leader of the Embryon, Serph knew that it was also a bit disadvantageous for him to let the enemy see his face, but this wasn’t the first time this had happened. He was a front line fighter, and he wasn’t shy about making himself an easy target. He needed to be careful during long-range gun battles, of course, but he had ways of dealing with that.

Moreover, Serph realized, the way that the tribes fought was about to change completely. It already had, really. There were people like Heat, who was steadfastly honing his ability to control fire. The woman from the Solids, rather than attack Serph with a gun or a knife, had transformed on the spot in order to engage him in close combat.

He and his lieutenants had assumed that the strange phenomenon that afflicted the Embryon and the Vanguards had extended to the other tribes as well, and now they had confirmation of that fact. Against Harley’s monstrous form, firearms had been all but useless. If that level of power had been conferred on all the people of the Junkyard, then the weapons they were familiar with might now be a thing of the past. From now on, conflicts would likely be decided as a clash between one abomination and another, powers against powers.

And the victor would devour the loser.

Serph and his guide passed more people as they made their way across the broad Church vestibule. The leaders of the larger tribes had evidently been accompanied by sizable entourages, which were now waiting here, their leaders having already been led into the sanctuary.

As the warrior priest guided Serph past them, the crowd began muttering—first with wariness and scorn, and then, after a few moments, with surprise and suspicion. The news that he was the leader of the Embryon, and that the Embryon had defeated the Vanguards, was quickly spreading.

The ones keeping the most watchful eye on him were the Solids of Anahata, all marked in yellow, and the Maribel of Manipura, their markings crimson red. Both were mid-sized tribes. Despite their control of the entire Muladhara area, the Embryon had been at the bottom of the tribal pecking order. Now that they had defeated the Vanguards, however, they now ruled over both Muladhara and Svadhisthana, which made them as powerful as those other two, or perhaps even more so. The Solids and the Maribel were currently deadlocked with one another, and the sudden emergence of a third party that could rival their forces was sure to be no trifling matter to them.

The top two tribes currently vying for power were the Wolves of Vishuddha, in white, and the Brutes of Ajna, in indigo. Fighting among the lesser tribes didn’t worry them, to the point that they tended to simply ignore the others’ power struggles, but even they turned to look at Serph as he walked past, eyes narrowing with interest. They would be sure to inform their own leaders as soon as they returned.

Meanwhile, Serph was noticing that the Church itself had gotten larger. The structures in the middle of the Arya Marga had been expanded to include several hundred additional floors. The visible portions alone accounted for eight hundred floors underground and a thousand above, and those didn’t even account for the highest heights or deepest depths.

The tower rose in nested terraces, wider at the base and funneling upwards. At the top of the majestic, elegant structure were the gates to Nirvana, the paradise where all of one’s hopes and dreams would come true. It was the duty of the Arbiters of Karma to judge the sins of those down in the impure world below, and to guard those gates until the day that someone came and settled the Junkyard conflict once and for all.

“Tell me,” Serph said to the warrior priest he was following, “what does the Church think about what’s happening? Are they the ones who granted us this . . . transformative power? Have they issued this summons to explain that?”

“The Church does not explain,” the priest replied, as if the question had been anticipated. “The Church only gives orders. It gives, it guides, and it takes away—all for the sake of samsara and the path to Nirvana. You need only follow, Child of Purgatory.”

Serph opened his mouth, but then remained silent. Asking more would only be a waste of time. The priests were merely a mouthpiece of the Church, and would speak only what the Church would have them say. Realizing that, Serph felt another emotion running counter to the deep-seated awe he’d always felt towards the priests.

What was it? Annoyance? Defiance?

The authority of the priests and the Church they served was absolute—at least, as far as Serph knew. The Arbiters of Karma were the unquestionable and inviolate mediators of the Junkyard. When they issued commands, the people of the Junkyard followed them without hesitation. That was how things had always been done.

But the fight that had just taken place here in Sahasrara had been more than just unusual. Before now, the very thought of it would have been unthinkable. And yet the woman had transformed and attacked him, and he hadn’t hesitated in the slightest to use his powers in turn.

Were the laws beginning to lose their effect?

Serph’s hand had gone to his cheek without his realizing it, and he could feel a tingling sensation in his strange black bruise. Everything had changed so drastically since those marks had appeared. He had the distressing feeling that the world itself was starting to fall apart, and for a moment he stumbled.

They walked down a long hallway with round columns along either side, arriving at last at the inner sanctum. The warrior priest flashed a light, signaling to the two guards standing by the massive double doors, and then he turned to Serph. “You may enter. Do not tarry further. Already you are one hundred sixty-three seconds behind schedule.”

The doors swung open, slow and stately, revealing a lift within. It was circular, large enough for a single person to stand atop it, and it glowed with a faint light. Serph stepped up onto the platform, and as he did, it began to slide along with little or no resistance.

The transfer tube was lined with a bioluminescent substance that gave off a bluish light and cast almost no shadow. As he looked down at the few pale shadows that did dance around at his feet, however, Serph thought of the personal interface for the Dissemination Machine and its expressionless face mask. The light glowing from the organic plates gave him the same impression as the glow of that mask. Maybe that was simply because they were both things under the purview of the Church, but something about it was still unsettling.

It was said that in the Junkyard the dead rose to the heavens and became the rain, which then was collected by the Church to be reborn. But what if some portion of it wasn’t able to be reborn, and was used instead for these panels, or the visage of the Dissemination Machine?

Serph shook his head and forced away his ridiculous thoughts. The moving floor came to a halt. In front of him was an open, arch-shaped gate. Inscribed at the top, once more, was the mantra of “Om Mani Padme Hum.” He passed through the gate, doing his best to avoid looking at the words. The moment he stepped through and into the darkness beyond, he felt a sharp tingling in the mark on his cheek.

After spending a moment in complete darkness, the light modulation device in Serph’s eyes activated, allowing his surroundings to come slowly into view. He switched into simple night vision mode, which allowed him to see that he was inside a vast dome, with six stages jutting in towards the center. In the middle, hanging down from the ceiling, glowing with a faint, white light, was the Dissemination Machine.

The personal interface that appeared via transmission showed only the face, but the main system itself was made of six human figures, everything from their waists down and foreheads up embedded in the machinery. Cords and cables formed intricate, twisting patterns, the smooth metal beating like some kind of black heart. The human figures—they were really little more than abstract forms—were hung upside-down like prisoners in steel cages, their blue-black lips opening and closing, emitting no sounds. They were illuminated only by their hands, which constantly moved up and down, bathed in pale blue light, following intricate patterns, as if they were tracing the shapes of letters over and over again in the darkness.

Serph stepped forward and inserted his tag ring into the console that had been set up on his stage.

“Embryon leader, personal name Serph, code EM-00001A, ID confirmed.” As the system spoke, an obscuring screen descended. It was quite rare for all of the tribe leaders to come together, and since the defeat of a leader spelled the defeat of a tribe, any personal information about them—including their faces—was considered confidential. It seemed, then, that the Church wanted to remain impartial in the conflict, and not let the various leaders go back to their people with information about the other tribes. Well, it’s a bit too late for that for me, Serph thought to himself.

The other stages likewise had screens blocking their occupants from view. Only one of them was empty. The stage that had been set up for the ruler of Svadhisthana sat there unmanned, shrouded in darkness.

“Have the Vanguards not arrived yet?” asked a man’s voice, deep and resonant and tinged with mild annoyance. It was evidently one of the other assembled leaders. The obscuring screens kept the stages hidden deep in shadow; all Serph could make out were the outlines of the occupants’ legs. That was likely all the others could see of Serph, as well.

“The Vanguards have been defeated by the Embryon,” the system replied. “The Vanguard leader, personal name Harley Q, code VA-00003H, is a confirmed casualty. Svadhisthana is now under the control of the Embryon. Ergo, the leaders of all major tribes are now present.”

There was only a faint stirring in the air; no one was gauche enough to make a big fuss over the announcement. Even though Serph knew that no one could see him behind his screen, he could still feel the stares cast in his direction. It set him on edge.

“Bah. That hardly matters,” said another man’s voice. Compared to the first, who had been clear and articulate, this man made wet, lip-smacking sounds as he spoke. “The petty squabbles of the weak don’t concern us. So, why have you called us all here, Dissemination Machine? It must be something important.”

That had to be the leader of the Solids of Anahata, Mick the Slug. It seemed the woman who’d attacked Serph had somehow gotten the news to her boss right away. He made his identity obvious through his half-assed, paper-thin bravado, and his massive form swayed conspicuously behind his screen.

“We have no matters of importance to discuss with you.”

Clearly, the Dissemination Machine’s response was something none of them had expected. Serph bristled and leaned in closer as the air filled with jeering and clamoring. Cries of “What is the meaning of this?” and “Explain yourself!” echoed back and forth, but one voice, that of an angry woman, cut through them all.

“What in the world is going on, Dissemination Machine? Do you take us for fools? We are faced with a situation that is abnormal in the extreme. Have you not brought us here to explain this?”

Of all the major tribes, only one had a female leader: the Maribel of Manipura. The woman who was speaking could only be their leader, Jinana.

“Nearly all the members of my tribe have some kind of strange mark that has appeared on them,” she continued. “They transform into things that cannot even be called human, and are then killed by their own allies. The other tribes must be experiencing this as well. Tell us what the Church has to say about this. That is why we have come here. Is this the will of the Church? Answer us, Dissemination Machine.”

“We acknowledge no such abnormality in the Junkyard,” the Dissemination Machine replied, so emotionless as to almost mock Jinana’s question. “There are no matters for the Church to inform you of, Child of Purgatory, nor was it the will of the Church to order the leaders to assemble. We are aware of nothing. There is no abnormality in the Junkyard; changes to Purgatory are not possible.”

“Then why have we—”

“Allow me to answer that question.” All twelve of the Dissemination Machine’s arms spasmed and flailed, and it spoke now with a completely different voice. This was a voice that had actual intonation and emotion—along with a distinct air of superiority.

Serph took a step forward before he could stop himself, bracing a hand on the obscuring screen to hold himself up. Murmurs of surprise rose all around the room. The six human figures bent sharply backwards, and the pale blue light swirled about in dizzying patterns.

A moment later, their movements went completely still, and then the face masks opened their mouths in a voiceless scream. The glowing lights burst apart and scattered, and then, all of a sudden, the six bodies of the Dissemination Machine hung down like limp, dead flesh. Only its flaccid lips wiggled, all six mouths beginning to speak the same words.

“I am Angel. You know me as the one you look upon as you gaze up at the heavens.”

“Angel,” someone repeated, with undisguised shock in his voice. “Are you the one who controls the Church?”

“If it helps you to think of it that way,” the voice replied, amused. “It matters not. You have only to follow the rules that I am about to give you.”

“New rules?” Jinana asked.

“Yes. It was I who gave you the demonic marks on your bodies. Your Atma.”

“Atma.” Someone repeated the word with a hoarse gasp. The voice belonged to Mick. “Then you’re the one who gave us our strange powers and the ability to transform?”

“Indeed. Along with the need to devour.” Serph could hear the gloating in that voice, and it sickened him. “Atma is the power of demons, as well as your Asura forms. It is the vital force of your true selves. As you do battle and devour the flesh and blood of those you defeat, your power will grow stronger. You no longer need mere guns or knives to fight—now you need only your bodies and your new abilities. Your reward shall be the release from your hunger, along with the path to paradise.”

“To hell with that!” One of the screens was shoved violently back up into place, and from behind it stepped a woman, her pale cheeks flush with anger. She had bright green hair that came down almost to her shoulders, with matching green eyes that seemed to shine from within. Her cheek and one of the legs of her suit were marked with crimson, her tribe color. She glared sharply at the Dissemination Machine, and at whoever was on the other side making its declarations. She shouted up at them. “So many of my people are dead! For no reason at all, they turned on each other, killed each other—and unable to stave off their hunger, they ate whichever of their companions happened to be within easy reach. Some of them are past the point of sanity. If these are your new rules, I will not have them! What in the world are you thinking? You say that you did this to us? If that’s true, then I will not forgive you.”

“Ah, you have grown up so quickly. Already you are able to spit such words of contempt,” the being that called itself Angel muttered calmly. “Whether you accept it or not, none of you have a choice in the matter, Asura. You will fight, and as you fight, you will hunger; when you hunger, you will eat, and if you do not eat, you will die. It is simple. Nothing has changed aside from the way in which you will fight. The weak will die, and the strong will remain. And the gates of Nirvana will open only to the strongest.”

“So you’re saying the basic rules haven’t changed, then?” someone asked nervously. “So, just like before, the tribe that’s able to conquer the Junkyard will be shown the way to Nirvana, and will be free to leave this world? We can still keep doing what we always have, fighting for supremacy?”

“No, not quite. There is one—” There was a brief moment of hesitation. “There is one additional condition.”

“And what’s that?” Mick asked.

“There is a girl.”

As Angel said that, Serph felt himself grow tense.

“A girl with black hair. She is still young. A frail little girl with black hair and black eyes. Bring this girl here, to the top of the Temple. Do not kill her; you must bring her here alive. Whoever is able to both conquer the Junkyard and bring the black-haired girl here shall be the first to have the gates of paradise opened unto them.”

“Wait!” Jinana snapped. “If it’s just a girl you’re after, why do we need these horrific powers? Remove these brands from us and change us back to normal. Bring back those who were devoured and make us forget all that we saw.”

“That is impossible. It cannot be done,” Angel replied, with no hint of sympathy. “You have already had a taste of blood; if you had not, you would not be standing here. It is too late for you. There is no going back for one who has eaten of the fruit of wisdom.”

Jinana let out a low growl and covered her face. Serph had a very good idea of the kinds of things she had seen. What had happened to the Vanguards had more than likely happened to the other tribes as well, a bloody and gruesome scene straight out of hell itself. Serph and the others had been in the midst of that, too, and if Sera hadn’t showed up when she did, then Serph would be like Jinana was now, gripped in the throes of fear and regret.

No, Serph thought. I probably wouldn’t be alive at all.

Serph decided it was time to take action. “And just who is this girl?” he demanded, throwing up his screen and stepping into full view as Jinana had done. The haze that had clouded his vision vanished, and he could clearly see Jinana stiffen. It looked as though only now, as she saw someone else reveal himself, did she realize she had given the other tribes valuable information about herself.

But she recovered quickly. Masking her momentary shock, she stared with suspicion and interest back at Serph, taking in his silver hair and eyes, and his slim, athletic frame—unusually slender for a tribal leader.

Serph looked up at the Dissemination Machine, trying his best not to let Jinana read his face. “I would like to request detailed data about this girl you seek. What does the Church want with her? A mere description of her physical appearance limits our ability to search for her. What is the girl’s name?”

“Her name is—no, it can’t be.” Angel began to answer, then interrupted itself, and its voice degenerated into static. For a time they could make out only a single, harsh word: You! Angel appeared to have lost its composure; its movements grew more erratic as its murmuring continued. Its words, however, remained unintelligible, lost in the storm of static. The Dissemination Machine shook and shuddered, and yet Serph could all too vividly sense whoever was on the other side fixating a cold and steady gaze upon him. The mark on his cheek—his Atma—tingled painfully.

“I see.” The static noise only got worse, but a few more words slipped through at last. “Ah, I see now . . . Yes. Very well. So be it. He will be . . . surprised to learn of this. This has become most interesting.” Something like laughter mingled with the static.

“What are you laughing about?” Jinana shouted, stepping up to the edge of her platform. “Answer my questions, Machine! Who are you? Who is this girl you want? Why have you given us these powers? Answer me! Answer me, ‘Angel’!”

“I do not . . . need to . . . answer you. And my time . . . is . . .” For a long, painful moment the ear-splitting static prevented any more words from being audible. “My access grows limited. Do not forget this: you are Asura, evil spirits who exist to battle. Your Atma are your true selves. Rend, slaughter, devour your enemies—you cannot escape your hunger and survive. And your hunger . . . shall lead the way to paradise . . .”

Static noise overwhelmed Angel’s voice. It continued for a while longer, and then all sound suddenly cut out. The Dissemination Machine’s dozen arms went limp, sagging downward. The ensuing silence was almost deafening. The only sound was Jinana’s panting, echoing faintly off of the sanctum’s domed ceiling.

“The system has received a critical update.” The Dissemination Machine spoke again in the familiar, emotionless voice it had always used before. Its mouths stayed open as it lifted up its arms and slowly spread them wide. The glowing tips of its fingers began to trace new patterns.

“The Church acknowledges the existence of Atma,” it announced blandly. Jinana and Serph stood completely still, and the other leaders remained behind their screens, all those present holding their breath as the system droned went on. “There have been revisions to the means of fighting, and to the treatment of the dead. Permission is hereby granted to view details on these revisions, along with data regarding Atma. Data on Atma will be transmitted to the headquarters of each tribe. Take care, Children of Purgatory, until the day of salvation arrives.”

“Welcome back, buddy!” Cielo leapt up the basement staircase, his thick braids flying, taking three steps in a single bound. He caromed off Serph in his enthusiasm. “So hey, come on, how did it go? What did you guys talk about at the Temple? Did you find out anything about Sera? We’ve been on the edge of our seats, haven’t we, Sera?”

Sera came up the stairs after him. “Welcome back, Serph,” she said. She paused on the landing, her arms full of blankets and pillows and other more unusual things that Serph couldn’t identify—a heap of broken pieces of equipment, shiny shards of plastic and the like. Her cheeks were flushed, and her black eyes sparkled happily. “I’m so glad you didn’t run into any danger. I was just standing around worrying, so Cielo gave me a tour of the place. There are so many fascinating things here, and there’s a lot I haven’t even gotten to see yet. Can I look around some more later?”

“Sure, Sera. Later on. Cielo, where are the others?”

“Gale’s off analyzing stuff or something. I dunno what. Argilla’s at the shooting range downstairs teaching the Newbies. And Heat’s—”

Before he could finish, there was a loud boom from the top of the stairs to the second floor, and a massive fireball came hurtling toward them. Cielo let out a panicked squeal and ducked down, and Serph acted more quickly than he could think, swinging out with his right arm as he focused his power into it. It was bathed in pale blue light from the elbow forward as he unleashed a volley of frigid hail at the approaching fireball. Hot and cold canceled each other out, leaving a harmless burst of water and steam. Serph looked up the stairs, feeling the tingling in his cheek and the power pulsing through his body.

“That’s quite the way to greet someone, Heat,” he said.

“What’re you doing, jackass?” Cielo yelled and shook his fist. “You coulda hurt someone! Sera is right here!”

“Don’t worry. I had my power under control. You handled that well, Serph.” Heat met Serph’s gaze as he slowly made his way down the stairs. His red eyes were unwavering, showing no sign of remorse. He didn’t so much as look at Cielo, whose hair was practically standing on end. Sera merely stood there, her eyes wide with shock.

“And what if I hadn’t? Or what if I couldn’t have?”

“Was that a possibility?”

For a moment, Serph was at a loss. “No,” he said finally.

“Okay, then. So you reacted just like you were supposed to. No problem.” Heat strolled past them into the passageway that led to the first-floor facilities.

“What was that all about? Sera, he didn’t get you, did he?” Cielo asked as he checked Sera over for any injuries. In her shock, she had dropped everything she’d been carrying. As Cielo bent over and started picking things up, he said, “Man, Heat’s acting all weird. He keeps getting all up in your face, buddy, acting all . . . what would Gale call it? Insubordinate? I dunno, like, is it even cool for him to act like that? Is he pissed off at the Church or something?”

“I’m . . . not really sure.”

“Huh? What’s up?” Cielo stopped picking up the junk and looked up at Serph. “Did something happen at the Temple? You’ve got this weird look on your face.”

“There was a lot that happened,” Serph said, picking up a large carbon ball bearing that had landed near his feet. As he rolled it around between his fingertips, he heard more hurried footsteps from downstairs.

“Oh, good—there you are, sir.” Argilla appeared at the bottom of the stairs breathing heavily, gun in one hand. “There was a message from Gale. He says the Church transmitted a data archive containing new laws and rules of combat. And about something called Atma.”

“Already?” Serph handed the bearing he’d picked up to Sera, then slapped Cielo on the back and started walking. “Let’s go over these directives the Church gave us. Come on, Cielo. And you, too, Sera. It seems we’ve already fulfilled one of the new requirements for getting to Nirvana without anyone realizing it.”

“Atma?” Argilla said. “That’s what our powers are called?”

“There are a number of different types of Atma. These are indicated by the different marks that have appeared on our bodies,” Gale explained as the images on the screen scrolled past. The five others sat there in the light of the briefing room’s main monitor, faces growing pale as they watched. Gale’s matter-of-fact voice, however, betrayed no sign of unease. “Atma that are shared by multiple individuals demonstrate weaker capabilities than those possessed by only a single individual, or a select few. The ranking members of the Embryon all possess Atma that are likely unique; the documentation we received refers to these as ‘High Atma.’ The others, of which there are multiple instances, are ‘Lesser Atma.’”

Argilla held her breath as she listened. Cielo’s eyes were big and round, showing clear shock. Sera perched on a bench in the corner, fidgeting with the bearing Serph had found, occasionally swinging her legs.

“Nevertheless, it can be logically assumed that, as Lesser Atma are victorious in combat and continue to devour their opponents, they will grow stronger. However, at least insofar as the documentation shows, there is still a considerable gap between the capabilities of Lesser Atma and High Atma. Accounting for circumstantial factors and individual differences, a rough estimate suggests that a single High Atma has the equivalent potential of around twenty Lesser Atma.”

“So, like, the first time I ‘changed,’ I felt like I saw something inside my head,” Cielo said. “A phrase—‘Om mani pada-something.’ And then something that was maybe a name. ‘Dyaus,’ I think?”

“That was the activation command and the name of your Atma. Look here.” A portion of the display was magnified, showing rows of various icons representing the different markings that had appeared on the inhabitants of the Junkyard, and the names of their respective Atma. In the margin was an annotation that read:

Command Words: Om Mani Padme Hum

“When you are about to enter into combat, you can simply focus on these words and you will transform. You will, in essence, be pulling an activation trigger to begin the metamorphosis into your Atma. If an individual is suffering from either extreme psychological stress or hunger, then deliberate control becomes ineffective, but in ordinary circumstances, the command can be used at will.”

“So in other words, don’t let yourself get hungry.” Cielo let out a forlorn sigh. “I mean, these powers are incredible. Really incredible. But really, really gross.”

Heat appeared to be paying little attention to the conversation. He leaned against the wall by the door, creating little fireballs in his palm and extinguishing them over and over in his fist. The fire danced up through the gaps between his fingers like it was trying to escape.

“Heat,” Serph said impatiently. “Come here and listen to Gale for a bit. This involves everyone, including you.”

“I’m not sure it’s really necessary, at this point. I’ve gotten pretty used to this power by now.” There was boasting in his voice, but he pushed off the wall and strode across the room to sit down next to Serph. Sera grew still, watching him warily.

Heat glanced at the screen. The name ‘Agni’ was written underneath the icon for the mark on his right arm.

“Okay, so my Atma is called Agni. Does that mean something?”

“At present, the meanings behind these names are unclear. However, the being calling itself Angel, speaking through the Church’s Dissemination Machine, referred to us as a type of demon called Asura. Is that correct, sir?”

Serph nodded. He had told Gale about everything that had happened at the Temple. Everything, that was, aside from the sensation that Angel was somehow looking directly at him, despite the fact it had appeared only as a disembodied voice. That particular experience didn’t really seem relevant to the situation at hand—and the truth was, he was afraid to speak of it. He wasn’t even sure what it was that instilled such fear in him. He just knew that that voice, neither male nor female, with its mocking laughter, made him deeply uncomfortable.

“We are unable to confirm the significance of this statement, either; however, ‘Asura’ seems to be a name used to refer to a type, or perhaps types, of Atma, with some sort of special connotation.”

“So I’m Dyaus, Argilla is Prithvi.” Cielo counted off on his fingers. “Heat is Agni, Gale is Vayu, and you’re Varuna, buddy.” He shrugged. “That’s quite a mouthful. Hard to remember gibberish like that.”

“Varuna is the god of water,” Sera said all of a sudden.

The group turned to look at her with a start, as if they’d forgotten she was even there. She winced at the sudden attention, but then blinked and went on. “He is a very ancient Hindu god, the one who maintains Rta, the natural order and the laws of the universe. Agni is the god of fire, he who burns away that which is unclean with his purifying flames.”

“What’s ‘Hindu?’” Cielo asked, but Sera didn’t seem to hear him.

“Vayu is the god of wind, controller of the air and weather. Prithvi and Dyaus are among the most ancient of the gods, Mother Earth and Father Sky. All of these are names of powerful Hindu gods. They aren’t demons.”

The others stared at her with looks of surprise, and Sera shrank back in confusion. She turned to Serph. “What’s wrong? Did I say something odd?”

“Sera, how do you—oh, never mind.” Serph knew asking would get him nowhere. Besides, the meanings behind those names weren’t important right now—this new method of fighting they’d had foisted upon them was. They needed to be ready to adapt to the changing situation.

Serph had Gale bring up the specifications for each of their Atma. “Varuna is able to bring the surrounding temperature down to sub-zero temperatures instantaneously,” Gale said, pressing a key. “This allows atmospheric water vapor to be used as a weapon, and it can also be used to injure nearby opponents by freezing the water within their bodies. Both of his arms are outfitted with blades formed out of something that appears to be modified bone. This substance has a hardness roughly equal to that of high-density carbon ceramic.”

“Gale, what about me?” Cielo asked. He looked half-intrigued, half-afraid.

“Dyaus’ distinguishing feature is the power of flight.”

Cielo let out a little whistle. “I can fly . . .”

“In theory, you can fly at speeds of approximately two hundred kilometers per hour. In addition, you have the power to manipulate electromagnetic waves in the air. Effectively, you can use lightning to attack your opponents.”

Gale continued to scroll through the list, reading from it in his deadpan tone. “Agni is the polar opposite of Varuna, able to raise the surrounding temperature to an extreme level instantaneously. Along with the obvious ability to hurl fireballs as weapons, he can ignite the flesh of nearby opponents and blast them apart.”

Heat’s lips curled into a faint smirk as he made a show of creating a ball of fire in his palm, spinning it around before crushing it in his fist, sending a shower of sparks to the floor.

“My own Atma, Vayu, controls air pressure. In so doing, I am able to compress wind into a usable weapon. I am also able to wield a small, localized vacuum like a knife blade. While I do not possess the same flying capabilities as Dyaus, it appears that Vayu possesses the ability to glide in conjunction with his atmospheric control. Last is Prithvi, who is able to shift gravity. This can chiefly be used to increase an opponent’s mass to the point where it collapses in upon itself, or to focus an extreme gravitational distortion on a single point in order to—”

“Stop!” Argilla shouted, covering her ears.

Gale gazed back at her, expressionless. “Why will you not listen, Argilla? These are the weapons we have been given. As a member of the tribe, you are expected to know their specifications and their usage.”

“I know that,” Argilla said. “I know that, but . . .” She took several breaths and then set her hands back on the table, fingers still trembling slightly. “But what is all this? What is it? I’m hearing you talking about these powers like I’m just supposed to understand and accept all this. What I want to know is what these Atma are and how to get rid of them.”

“Atma are the new powers we have been given. They are what we use to fight. Think of them as new equipment. We must understand them and then master their use. Serph has already explained the new rules that the Church presented us with.”

“The Church can go fuck itself,” Argilla sneered, and then clapped a hand over her mouth in shock at what she’d just said. “Wait, no, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s all right, Argilla. Everyone, listen.” Serph knew that it was time for him to take charge. He held up a hand to stop Gale from saying whatever he was about to say. “Since waking up after our battle with the Vanguards, have any of the rest of you felt some sort of change in yourself? I don’t just mean the Atma. I mean anything about your . . . your feelings.”

He’d had a hard time coming up with the word ‘feelings,’ and when he said it, it sounded strange to his ears.

“Yeah, that’s it!” Cielo called out as he got to his feet. “How did you know, buddy? Ever since then I’ve been so clearheaded. It’s like I can see things so much better now, and it feels like there’s a ton of stuff I’m only just seeing for the first time. So . . . are you all clearheaded like this now?”

“If by ‘clear’ you mean ‘empty,’ I don’t see how anything’s changed,” Heat said.

“Oh, shut up, Red. Why’s everything always gotta be in broad strokes with you?” Cielo snapped. “Anyhow, it’s like there’s a bunch of stuff that I’m able to think about so much easier now. I’d been wondering if there was something weird going on, so I’m glad you felt the same thing, buddy.”

“I’ve felt it, too,” Argilla added quickly. “In my outburst just now, for instance. Like Cielo said, it feels like everything is so much clearer now. Until now, I never doubted the Church, but . . .” She swallowed a lump in her throat, hesitating for a bit before getting up the nerve to continue. “As far as I’m concerned now, the Church can just shove it. They gave us these powers we didn’t ask for, and they’re making us . . . making us eat people. How am I supposed to just be okay with that?”

“I have experienced no particular changes,” Gale said. “I am merely myself.”

“I didn’t figure you’d understand, Gale.”

Gale gave Argilla a cool look, then looked back down at the monitor by his hands.

“What about you, Heat?” Serph asked. “Have you felt anything?”

“Come on, you know that’s a stupid question. I’m always going to be myself. If this power”—he held up a gloved hand blackened with soot from conjuring so many flames—“if this so-called Atma is our true selves, then nothing’s changed. We fight, and we win. That’s all there is to it. There’s nothing strange about that.”

The fireball brand on his right arm glowed the color of blood. A cruel, hungry smile was on his lips, and Serph had to look away.

A puzzled look crossed Argilla’s face. “Did something happen that made you want to ask this, sir?” she asked.

Serph gave a brief overview of his run-in with the member of the Solids at the Temple.

“But Sahasrara is sacred. How could she attack you?” Cielo asked. “That’s just not possible.”

“And yet I was attacked all the same,” Serph said. “If the warrior priest hadn’t intervened, it would have turned into a full-blown battle. The foundations of the laws are starting to crumble. The appearance of the Atma and these new laws that have been put into place are causing chaos on a whole new level.

“We’ve changed; that much is certain. But I think the Junkyard itself is beginning to change as well. In all likelihood, we’re going to see this kind of no-holds-barred fighting happening more and more. Even the powers of Atma that we’ve been given aren’t going to stay the same forever. If what Angel—or whoever it was—said is true, the people who devour others will get stronger. That means the strong are going to rise to the top by preying on the weak.”

“No. Not me.” Argilla shook her head. “I’m not going to kill and eat people. I refuse.”

“Well, if you don’t eat, you’re going to die,” Heat said. “What’s worse, you’ll probably wind up going on a mad rampage first, and then one of us will have to put you down. It’s kill or be killed. The choice is yours.”

“Shut up, Heat,” Cielo grumbled. “This is making me sick to my stomach.”

Argilla groaned under her breath and buried her face in her hands. Silence fell over the room.

“It’ll be all right,” Sera said, her voice confident and dignified. Argilla’s head snapped back up as if she’d been shot. Cielo perked up, too, eyes going wide and round as he turned to look. Sera’s face was flushed as she spoke; she gripped the ball bearing tightly in her hand. “As long as I’m here, none of you will turn into demons. I came here to help everyone. That’s why I’m here. No matter what happens, I will help you.”

“Sera . . .” Argilla rushed over to the black-haired girl, wrapping her in a fond embrace. “That’s right. We have Sera. It’s because of her that we haven’t all eaten each other already—that we haven’t turned on ourselves like the Vanguards and the other tribes have. She’s going to save us.”

“The girl’s capture is one of the requirements for reaching Nirvana,” Gale stated flatly. “It is likely that the other tribes are currently unaware of her presence here; this gives us a distinct advantage. We also have her blood, which is capable of forcibly shutting down another individual’s Atma.”

“Wait, hold on,” Argilla said, turning to glare at Gale. “You make it sound like you’re planning on using Sera’s blood as a weapon.”

“Evidence suggests that it would be feasible.”

“Whoa, hey, no. No way!” Cielo interjected. “We’re not sucking more blood out of her to use as a weapon. If we take more blood from her as frail as she is, she could die!”

“The girl’s survival is a key requirement to entering paradise. If I were to take blood from her, I would not take so much as to adversely affect her health.”

“I don’t care! I am absolutely, one hundred percent against this.” Cielo moved to Sera’s side, opposite Argilla, and put an arm around the girl, shaking his head so emphatically his braids became a blue blur.

Gale stared back blankly at Cielo and Argilla. “I find your objections difficult to comprehend. Prevailing in this conflict is our categorical imperative. Our goal is to survive, and to be victorious, in order to reach Nirvana. We must do so by whatever means are necessary. In the battles to come, the girl’s blood will be an overwhelmingly effective weapon for neutralizing our enemies’ combat capabilities—one that we should use without hesitation. It is the only clear choice.”

“Don’t you think it might be a better tactic to keep the girl’s existence a secret, Gale?” Serph empathized with how Cielo and Argilla felt, so he appealed to the bishop’s logic. “If we use a weapon that’s capable of neutralizing our enemies’ Atma, they’re going to wonder how we managed to develop it. It’ll only be a matter of time before they realize we have Sera. If our goal is to keep her safe until the very end while we work to defeat the other tribes, then we’re still at a disadvantage with our numbers as low as they are. We should avoid any plan of action that needlessly exposes the fact that we’ve managed to fulfill one of the key requirements.”

“Understood,” Gale said after a moment, nodding. “Your reasoning is sound, sir. I rescind my proposal.” Serph felt a moment’s relief before Gale went on. “In that case, we should consider placing the girl under secure confinement. Utmost care will be required to keep her presence here a secret. A gag order must be imposed upon the tribe, and the girl must not be allowed to leave the base. The other tribes have likely already begun searching for a black-haired girl. There is a high risk of her being discovered if she so much as steps outside.”

“We’re not putting Sera in confinement,” Serph said, cutting off both Cielo and Argilla, who had begun to clamor in protest. “Obviously, we won’t let her leave this area, and we’ll make sure she stays indoors as much as possible, but full-on confinement would probably have a detrimental impact on both her psychological and physical well-being. We’ll need to bring her to the Church in as good a condition as possible. We need to avoid anything that’ll negatively affect her, Gale.”

Gale narrowed his eyes almost imperceptibly. “Understood. However, there are some flaws in your logic, sir . . .”

“Maybe so.” Serph was quickly growing tired of this conversation. “But we’re not putting Sera in confinement. That’s an order. She’ll be allowed to move about freely within our Muladhara headquarters. Naturally, we’ll keep her under observation; and as far as secrecy is concerned, she won’t be allowed into any hazardous areas—Cielo.”

“Yeah, boss?”

“I want you to be in charge of Sera’s protection. Talk with Argilla and pick whatever personnel you need, but don’t mention anything about Sera’s blood to them. That’s something that I want to keep between the five of us here. As for Sera being one of the conditions for reaching Nirvana . . . they’re going to find out sooner or later, so there’s no point in hiding it.”

“Roger that!” Cielo smiled ear to ear, then patted Sera on the cheek as she sat looking perplexed. “Isn’t this great, Sera? That’s the boss for you—so much smarter than Gale!”

“What would the Church want with a girl like you?” Argilla gazed warmly into Sera’s eyes. “This ‘Angel’ really didn’t say what it needed Sera for?”

“As soon as I tried to ask, the transmission broke up.”

“Such a mysterious little girl.” Argilla pulled Sera close and gently kissed her atop her tiny, black-haired head. “It’s odd. Atma is this power given to us by the Church. Sera is able to suppress that Atma. But she doesn’t have an Atma herself. Or any other means of fighting.” She spoke almost dreamily. “Do you think maybe she fell down from Nirvana itself? I bet they don’t have Atma there. Nobody eats anyone, nobody has to fight each other, and everyone is gentle and kindhearted, like Sera is.”

Heat let out a quiet snort, quiet enough that Serph was probably the only one who heard it. Argilla, meanwhile, oblivious to Heat’s contempt, continued to gaze at the girl. “I want to go there, sir. I’ll do whatever it takes. I swear I’ll protect you, Sera. You’re our only hope.”

Sera seemed on the verge of responding, but then her face abruptly turned sad, and she looked away.

“So, then what you’re saying,” Heat said, “is that nothing has changed from before. We’re still trying to get to Nirvana. We have to fight, have to win, in order to take control of the Junkyard and stand supreme over the other tribes. That’s our goal, same as everyone else’s.”

“Seems so,” Serph said as he stood up. He was exhausted. “We’ll leave the detailed discussion of our strategy for tomorrow. Cielo, send me a list of candidates for people to guard Sera once you’ve drawn it up, and Gale, I want you working on that gag order right away.”

Gale nodded and busied himself at his touchpad. Sera, sandwiched between Argilla and Cielo, looked back at Serph with her dark, limpid eyes. She looks like she’s about to cry, Serph thought, then wondered if he was just imagining things.

“We’ll meet again in twelve hours, at 08:30 LT. You’re all off-duty until then. Rest up and get ready for tomorrow. The fighting’s about to get a whole lot different. That’s all. Dismissed.”

Although he’d told the others to get some rest, Serph had found himself unable to do the same. Ever since he’d gotten back to his quarters, all he’d done was lie in bed, tossing and turning. He could hear the sound of his own pulse in his ears as he rested his head against his pillow. The color of blood filled his mind, and while it filled him with disgust, it also triggered an aching desire. He was far from the heat of combat, so the feeling was a subtle one, but it was enough to call back the memory of the hellish things he had seen happen to the Vanguards.

He blinked to call up the time display on his eyeball monitor. He could hardly believe it had only been a day since the last border battle with the Vanguards. It felt like it had happened a year ago or more. It was as if everything he’d ever experienced had simply vanished, leaving him feeling like a Newbie who’d just stepped through the Church gates, powerless and defenseless.

No, Newbies didn’t feel. At least, Newborns up until now hadn’t felt things like this. The word ‘feel’ wasn’t even relevant to them. Now that he thought about it, Serph wasn’t sure he could really explain what words like ‘feel’ or ‘think’ even meant. What did they mean? As Gale would have put it, What behaviors do those words represent? Their definitions are unclear. Please use more precise terminology.

It was all so baffling. The Church’s incomprehensible actions. The intervention of the being that called itself Angel. Atma. The hunger. And of course Sera, the black-haired girl.

He killed the time display and pulled the covers over his head. If he just closed his eyes and rolled over maybe he could at least get a couple hours of sleep. He was just too tired, though, somehow. He didn’t need a medical scan to tell him that he was beyond exhausted, both physically and mentally. And because he was a tribe leader, being exhausted wasn’t just a simple inconvenience for him. It was a drawback for the entire tribe. He needed to get some rest, whatever it took—

—and before he knew it, he was dashing through the battlefield.

This surprised him a little, but not completely. His vision was strangely hazy, and most of what he could see ahead of him was another man’s back. The markings painted on the man’s armor were orange, the color of the Embryon. Whoever he was, he was far more muscular than Serph, and taller as well, with dull red hair tied into braids that fell down to the middle of his back.

Serph himself was holding a handgun as he ran behind the other man. The sounds of a pitched battle echoed faintly in the distance. Land mines went off, and a contingent of tanks that had been coming their way was engulfed in flames. He couldn’t remember where he was, or the objective of the battle, but that wasn’t important right now. All he had to do was follow after the big man in front of him.

Somewhat further ahead, he spotted another man with more vibrant red hair moving about. Serph recognized him as Heat. The shock trooper carried a recoilless launcher slung over his shoulder; he fired a shot at one of the tanks that had avoided the previous explosion. The tank did a half-turn as its drive unit took the hit, and its damaged treads ground to a halt. The man in front of Serph turned his head and flashed a hand sign. Serph ran on ahead, reaching the top of the tank in a single bound.

The tank’s turret pivoted, uselessly seeking its nimble opponent. Serph stuffed a mini grenade down its barrel, then quickly jumped back and flattened himself against the rear of the vehicle. A powerful shockwave shook it from inside. Serph waited, knowing that the heat would build within the thermal-shielded impact armor.

After a few moments the hatch opened and a soldier came tumbling out, on fire from head to toe. Serph sprang up silently and put a single bullet into the back of the man’s skull. He kicked the corpse to the ground, then executed the next soldier who emerged in the same way as he had the first. He used a knife to slit the third-and-final man’s throat. Blood gushed out as if Serph had slashed a hose, and where it splattered onto the exploded gun barrel, it turned black and sizzled. Leaving the nearly decapitated body in the tank, Serph leapt back to the ground.

The tank shuddered and went dead. Across the battlefield, Heat discarded his spent launcher and headed Serph’s way. The other red-haired man had taken up a position in a trench that the enemy had dug off to one side; he took aim with his rifle and began to mow down an incoming group of enemy troops. The command system wasn’t functioning very well. The enemy appeared to be losing, but they were slow to retreat. Since an order for a cease-fire hadn’t come through, that meant that the enemy tribe’s leader hadn’t been taken out yet. It looked as if both sides had been pushed to their limits. The battle could still go either way. Serph dove into the trench and looked to the rifleman for further information.

The man turned to him, lips moving, but Serph couldn’t hear what he said. In fact Serph got the strange impression that his companion was somehow insubstantial. A bizarre sense of impatience welled up within him. What was he saying?

The man’s lips moved once more, but again, Serph could hear nothing. Instead, he felt his head reeling, followed by a certainty that he knew what was going to happen next. The fear that came with it gripped his heart like an icy hand. His companion turned away and began to climb out of the trench. Serph tried to shout for him to stop, but his tongue stayed pressed to the roof of his mouth, and he said nothing. Instead, his body moved on its own, following the man out of cover.

The magenta sky looked sickening, far too bright. There were piles of corpses and pools of blood everywhere. Tanks lay overturned. The scents of scorched metal and burning oil filled the air. And there was the back of that broad-shouldered man, still running ahead of him. They ran forever. Serph couldn’t let him go. Couldn’t let him go any further.

A gunshot rang out. The broad man in front of him lurched forward as if someone had punched him in the stomach. Serph saw him fall with unbelievable clarity, as if time had stopped, the scene advancing frame by frame, instant by instant.

Heat shouted something. Someone let out a horrific scream. It wasn’t until he woke up a moment later that Serph realized the scream had been his own.

Serph didn’t feel like staying in bed anymore. The automatic health monitor in his quarters recommended that he take a dose of sleeping pills, but he didn’t think that would count as actual rest. Sick of looking at the flashing, flickering display, Serph put his jacket on and left his room to wander aimlessly through the base during the quiet that came with Shade Time.

With the exception of the sentries on duty, everyone else appeared to be getting the rest that their leader had ordered. Occasionally he would pass by another soldier and exchange a nod, and it made him think about just how long he had been here. Back when the Embryon had established this as their base, they had been a tribe of only two. Just Serph as the leader and Heat as his sole follower, his right hand. And now they controlled both Muladhara and Svadhisthana, which meant that, in addition to having a lot more followers, they controlled two whole areas; it put them up in the mid-leagues alongside the Maribel and the Solids.

And the name, Embryon. When Serph remembered its origin, he felt a pang of solemn nostalgia. It had been chosen by someone who, for quite some time, had done something unusual for a denizen of the Junkyard: he had acted alone, as a wandering soldier, moving from battlefield to battlefield, owing no allegiance to any tribe. He’d never had any need of tribal names, but then, when he’d decided to take Serph and Heat, still Newborns, under his wing as his subordinates, Church law had required some sort of code name to go with the announcement of the formation of their tribe.

The rule was that if more than two people made a point to team up and fight alongside one another on a regular basis, they were automatically considered to have formed a tribe. The man who named the Embryon had spent his whole life acting as a freelancer for any number of tribes, until, for the first time, he decided to form a tribe of his own out of a mere three-man squad. Now all that was left of what he’d given to Serph and Heat were the orange accents on their uniform and the name Embryon itself. That, and the skills and the tactical know-how he had thoroughly pounded into them, which had allowed them to survive on the battlefield.

Serph’s thoughts weighed heavily upon him as he rode a series of elevators up through the slanted buildings to the very top of his headquarters.

From there he could see the Temple clearly. He stared out at the dark gray of the Shade Time sky, shot through with flickering twinkles of emerald light that seemed to wander through the distance. The disorderly silhouettes of the Junkyard’s ruins jutted up against the faint curve of the horizon, which was blurry with green light tinged with blue. In the middle of it all was the Temple, bathed in the bright white of its searchlights. Even at this distance the tiered lower levels glittered with bewitching beauty. The top of the long, slender spire, however, was lost in the darkness above—unnerving, if one considered that it was the way to paradise.

The silver rain was falling. The rain of the dead. Serph stepped out of the elevator and surveyed the rooftop. There was a half-demolished lump of concrete nearby, and he spotted someone huddled up tightly behind it. Only the tips of two boots jutted out into view.

“Who’s there?” he called.

The boots quivered and retracted from sight. For a moment, Serph could see nothing in the shadows. Then a head and face came into view, looking back at him—fearful eyes, and black bangs matted wetly to a small pale forehead.

“Sera?” Serph asked, surprised. “Why aren’t you in bed? Didn’t Argilla prepare a room for you?”

Sera hung her head, muttered something about not being able to sleep, and then wrapped her arms around her knees, huddling up behind the concrete again. Serph jogged briskly to avoid the rain and slipped in underneath the piece of rubble, which acted as a makeshift roof. Sera started uneasily when he sat down next to her, as if she expected some kind of reprimand, but when he merely sat there with one knee drawn up, looking at her in silence, she let out a tiny sigh and allowed the tension to slip from her body. For a while, the two sat in silence.

The rain kept falling, pooling into silver streams that flowed towards the drainage ditch like wiggling tendrils of mercury. The ashen sky and the emerald points of light that danced within it were reflected in its metallic sheen.

“You must like that,” Serph said, seeing that Sera was still holding onto the bearing she’d acquired earlier.

It was a just a black carbon sphere she’d picked up down in the basement. It would have fit easily in one palm, but she clutched it reverently with both hands.

“The world’s the ball,” she replied, passing the sphere back and forth from hand to hand, left to right and right to left. She began to mutter in a quiet, singsong voice:

The world’s the ball:

Doth rise and fall,

And roll incessant;

Like glass doth ring,

A hollow thing,—

How soon will’t spring,

And drop, quiescent?

Here bright it gleams,

Here brighter seems:

I live at present!

Dear son, I say,

Keep thou away!

Thy doom is spoken!

‘Tis made of clay,

And will be broken.

“What’s that from?”

“Goethe’s Faust.”

The girl’s face was strangely expressionless as she spoke, as if her mind were utterly still. She stared ahead blankly, eyes unfocused. If it weren’t for her quiet answer, Serph would have sworn she hadn’t heard his question. Then her fingers went slack, and the ball rolled out of her hand. It clattered onto the ground and rolled off into some corner, out of sight. Sera showed no interest in retrieving it; she merely let her hands hang loose and languid.

“There’s no sun here, is there?” she sighed.

“You mean like some kind of solar body?”

“There’s no moon, either,” she went on, ignoring Serph’s question. “But I wonder if those shining things might be stars?”

Serph had no idea what she was talking about. “I don’t know what ‘stars’ are, but people say that those green gleams during Shade Time are just light given off by the dead who’ve risen to the heavens as rain.”

“It’s not Shade Time. It’s night. The word is night.” Sera said firmly. “And there’s no Light Time, either. It’s daytime. At night, the moon comes out and the stars shine. Then in the morning, the sun rises, and clouds drift across the blue sky. Sometimes it rains, but afterward there are rainbows. Morning, noon, night, then morning again.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Serph wondered where the girl had gotten all her strange ideas. “There’s Shade Time and Light Time. That’s all I know. What are these ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ things of yours?”

“They both hang up in the sky. They’re bright and they’re beautiful. And they’re warm, and they shine and—” She stopped, then, as if at a sudden loss for words. She shut her eyes tight, and after a few moments, she let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Sera,” Serph asked on a sudden impulse, “do you ever see things happening while you’re asleep? Like memories of the past, from a long, long time ago . . . or images of people who have already been lost?”

“Those are dreams,” Sera said at once. “While you’re sleeping, things that have built up in your deep consciousness, like memories, worries, and anxieties will play themselves out as if they were real, either concretely or as more abstract symbols. It’s a normal thing that the mind does.” Sera looked up at Serph. “Why, did you have a dream?”

Serph looked down at his open hands. They were shaking slightly. With conscious effort, he made them close and steady. The word ‘dream’ crumbled to dust, mixing together with the tiny fragments of the images he’d seen before he woke. Yes, a dream. A dream about him. A dream about the day he died . . .

“What sort of dream was it?” Those big, black eyes gazed back at him. “Was it a dream about a person? About someone who’s already dead?”

“It was our former leader—mine and Heat’s.” Anxiously, he opened his fist, then tightened it again as he forced himself to speak. In the back of his head, there was a faint but unpleasant twinge, and he felt a cold weight in the pit of his stomach. “Back when Heat and I were still Newbies, he was the one who took us in and trained us. Until then, he had never been part of any particular tribe, and hadn’t ever formed one of his own. He probably could have put together a force powerful enough to rival even the Brutes, but all he wanted to do was fight for hire when he needed food or supplies, never favoring one tribe over another. Until he picked up me and Heat.”

Sera opened her eyes wider. “Isn’t that strange? Fighting all one one’s own, I mean.”

“The people of the Junkyard fight in order to reach paradise. To reach Nirvana, via the path of salvation put forth by the Church. The gates to Nirvana shall only be opened to the tribe that controls the entire Junkyard. Nobody could ever control the whole thing on their own without belonging to a tribe. Fighting alone without the goal of conquering anything is tantamount to turning one’s back on the salvation offered by the Church. A pointless exercise that does nothing but accumulate more karma.”

“Do you think it was pointless?” Her voice was strangely flat, which served only to make it that much more authoritative. “What he—your former leader—was doing, fighting on his own like that?”

“No.” It was an answer born of reflex. Serph was surprised by the sheer force and decisiveness of his voice. Only after the word was out of his mouth did he realize his own conviction. “No,” he repeated, through gritted teeth. “As far as the Junkyard would see it, sure, what he did was meaningless, but it wasn’t meaningless to him. To him, I think it was the Church and the promise of Nirvana that were meaningless. All that mattered to him was fighting and surviving.”

“Then why did he take you and Heat on as his companions?”

Serph shook his head. If only he were still alive, he thought to himself. Back when Serph and Heat were Newborns, they’d spent countless hours in the company of their mentor, but Serph had never learned why the man had taken them in after getting by for so long on his own. Why, out of all the Newborns he could have chosen, had he picked Serph and Heat?

After his death, his body and his karma had been taken up with the rain, where it would have long since mixed with the karma of others to form another fresh-faced Newborn, just like Serph and Heat had been when he’d taken them under his wing. Thinking about it made Serph’s throat feel tight.

Sera leaned in and stroked his cheek. “Are you crying?”

“Crying?” It was another word he’d never heard before.

“When you shed tears because you’re sad, or because you’re happy. Sometimes you’ll make noise, too, but not always.” Her fingers were smooth and cool against his cheek. “But tears come out of your eyes, and they help release your pent-up emotions. It’s another way people express what they’re feeling. Did you cry when he died, Serph?”

“I don’t remember. Probably not. There wouldn’t have been time to, anyway.” The battle had still been in full swing—two larger tribes at each others’ throats, with the finer distinctions of friend and foe lost amidst the chaos. In the dream, Serph had screamed, but that had probably just been something he’d added after the fact. All he could dig up from his distant memories was the image of himself kneeling next to the body, and Heat grabbing him by the arm, trying his damnedest to pull him away.

“Get up! They haven’t announced that the battle is over yet.” Heat’s voice had finally cut through the cacophony. “Their leader is still alive. I’ve detected a leader unit close by. It doesn’t matter if it’s friend or foe—if we kill either one, the battle’s over.”

They left the body there, just like the countless other corpses. The Church monitored the vital signs of all units, and as soon as someone’s life signs faded, they were counted as a casualty on the spot. It worked the same for leaders. A leader’s death might mean the dissolution of the tribe, but that was the only thing that separated him from the rank-and-file. Once he was dead, he was left there on the battlefield for his flesh to dissolve into the silver rain, just like any other soldier.

One more who fell short of Nirvana.

He had lived his life to the last with his back turned to paradise and salvation.

“Do you—do you come from Nirvana? From paradise?”

Sera shook her head silently.

Exasperated, Serph set his hands on her shoulders and let the questions come pouring out. “What does this thing calling itself Angel know about you? What does the Church want with you? Why do you have the power to keep Atma from going berserk? Why did you suddenly appear to us when you did?”

A pained look crossed Sera’s face as she shook her head again.

Realizing that he’d lost any sense of restraint, Serph forced himself to take a deep breath. “You say that you’ve come to save us. But save us from what? From our Atma? Or something else?”

Sera wrested herself away from Serph. She curled into a ball and pressed her face against her knees as if by sheer force of will she could vanish completely.

But Serph went on. “What is a god? What is a demon? Angel called us demons, but you said that our Atma were gods. What in the world are gods and demons? What do they represent? What do those things mean?”

Sera gave no answer—she only pressed her forehead harder against her knees. Serph saw a single droplet of liquid fall from between her fingers and form a little spot on the concrete. Unlike the rain, it was true moisture, soaking into the ground. Serph was astonished to realize it was one of Sera’s tears.

Sera was crying.

“I don’t know,” she muttered at last with a quiet sob. “I’ve been trying to figure that out since I got here, but I just don’t know. Things I don’t even care about just come to mind, one thing after another, but not the things I want to know the most. Who am I? Where did I come from? What am I supposed to do here? All I know is that I came here to help. But I can’t even do anything. I didn’t come here so that other people would have to protect me. I came here to protect them, to help them, but I . . .”

Her words dissolved into heavy, choking sobs. Still curled up, she rocked back and forth as she wept. This didn’t seem to Serph like something as simple as a “release of emotions.” She looked like she was ready to rip her own heart out, or cry her entire body away with her tears.

“Don’t cry,” Serph said after a long while. He was sure there was a more appropriate way of comforting her, but he didn’t know what it was. He felt a depressing sense of uselessness. He was a soldier of the Junkyard, a leader who knew how to command troops on the battlefield, and yet he couldn’t stop the girl sitting next to him from crying. What would the old boss have done? As he wondered that, it made him remember the scene that had yanked him out of his dream, and he felt a sharp, stabbing pressure behind his eyes.

After a while, Sera wiped her own tears away, took a tiny breath, and muttered a quick apology.

“Don’t worry too much about the stuff I say, Serph,” she added after a moment. “I don’t even really understand what I’m talking about myself. If you smack your hand against something, it’ll make a noise, and if you ask me something, words will come out of my mouth. You’re better off just ignoring me.”

“Don’t say that.”

At the very least, tears didn’t seem to be things that came out on their own, Serph thought. For tears to actually be shed from one’s eyes, it appeared that there needed to be something welling up within you that you couldn’t hold back anymore. A release of emotions.

This must have been the reason the girl had looked like she was about to cry in the briefing room. She knew that she was here to help; as far as she was aware, that was her very reason for being. In a way, it was no different than Serph and the others existing solely to fight and conquer the Junkyard. So for her to be in a position where she was the one who was powerless, the one who needed protecting, must have been extremely painful.

“Serph?” Sera began. “Demons are wicked, evil creatures that tempt humans into doing bad things, and who hurt them and kill them. Gods are transcendental beings who greatly surpass humans and demons. They protect people, answer prayers, and are the subject of worship.” Sera forced a smile. “But you saved me—you and Argilla and Cielo and Gale and Heat—so you can’t be demons. Maybe you’re not gods, either, but you’re at least human. Like me.”

For a while, Serph was quiet, just looking out at the rain and at the glittering emerald lights up in the dark sky. Sera dropped her head again, staring down at the rooftop between her knees.

“Sera,” Serph said. She looked back up. “I want to ask you just one last thing: do you want to be here with the Embryon?”

Sera looked totally bewildered, like the words had been uttered in a language she didn’t understand. Her eyes flit about restlessly. “If this is about how Gale said he wanted to use my blood as a weapon, I don’t mind. I’ll do it if it’ll help. I just—”

“It’s not about that.” Serph recalled the irritation he’d felt when talking to Gale earlier. He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder; she flinched at the sudden warmth of his touch, but she didn’t look away. “It’s not about whether it will help or not. Do you want to be here right now? Would you rather go someplace else? The Church is looking for you. Maybe if you go to them, there’s a chance you’ll be able to get the answers you’re looking for. If nothing else, you’ll probably be safer than you are here.”

He knew how illogical he was being. If Gale were to hear the things he was saying, the bishop would furrow his brow in disapproval. No, he’d just keep the same expressionless face as always, and say something like, “You are being highly illogical, sir.” But Serph took a kind of pleasure in going against reason. In being illogical.

“Everyone is looking for you, Sera, including tribes much larger than ours. And there’s no reason to expect they’ll treat you the same way we have. They’ll probably figure that they just need to not kill you, and maybe do something like Gale suggested before. They might keep you tied up in confinement somewhere. Right now, you’re the most important thing in the Junkyard. Not even a person, to most of them.

“You’re something that’ll get people into paradise, Sera. That’s why you’re so valuable to us. And because you’re a useful tool in stopping our Atma from going out of control. There’s even a chance that, if we do hand you over to the Church, we’ll be released from our Atma. Who knows? They’re the ones who went and stuck these Atma inside us in the first place. So they should be able to take them out, too.”

Serph looked into Sera’s wide eyes, his face reflected in their jet-black mirrors. “Think about it, Sera. Knowing what I just told you, do you still want to be here? With us? Not with the Church or one of the other tribes?”

She didn’t respond right away. Then, she turned her gaze toward the Temple, radiant and majestic, backlit by the green glow of the horizon. “I don’t want to go there,” she whispered. “Not to that place. It scares me. Something about it doesn’t feel right. Just looking at it gives me goose bumps and makes me feel sick. No, I don’t want to go to the Church.”

Her body trembled briefly, and in that moment, panic showed unmistakably in her eyes. “I don’t want to go to one of the other tribes, either. I want to stay with you and the others, here.” She seemed startled by her own words. She turned back to Serph. “Can I stay here? Even though I can’t do anything for you?”

Suddenly she threw herself on him, trembling hands clutching his shoulders, her slender frame pressing against his chest. “Even though you don’t know who I am or what I’m doing here, and even though all I do is remember things that don’t make any sense. Can I stay here with you?” Sera looked up at him and held her breath.

Serph gave a slow, affirming nod. She looked back at him for a while, as if in a daze, and then she began to shake with heaving sobs again.

“Don’t cry,” Serph said, feeling like he’d said it a little better this time. “You can stay here with us if that’s what you want. We won’t hand you over to the Church or any of the other tribes. We’ll do whatever we can to protect you. And you’re already a great help to us just by being here, Sera. So please, don’t cry.”

Her steady sobbing didn’t seem like it was going to stop, though. Tucking her against his shoulder, Serph looked up at the twinkling lights in the dark sky. The silver rain continued to fall in silence.

Just what were stars, he wondered? Maybe he’d ask Sera some other time. They had to be something beautiful, though—something far more beautiful than those flickering points of light made from the dead. He could tell that much from the wistful look she’d gotten in her eyes when she said the word. He’d see them someday, Serph told himself. He’d see these stars he’d never seen before. And then he’d see the sun and the moon, too. And the sky.

The sky of the Junkyard was either a dull magenta, or a gray flecked with emerald sparkles. There was no such thing as a blue sky. But somehow, Serph was certain that was something real.

Would the sky he gazed up at in Nirvana be blue? Would it have stars?

He’d have to go and see for himself. For the first time in his life, he knew for sure that he wanted to go there.

“Come on, let’s get some rest,” Serph said. Sera’s sobbing was beginning to lessen. It was getting late. The next patrol would be swinging by Sera’s room pretty soon, and once they discovered she wasn’t there, there would be a huge fuss.

“We’re going to make some new plans tomorrow. Now that we have our Atma, the way that we fight has changed. We need to adapt to that.”

Sera nodded, rubbing her eyes before looking up. Serph stood and reached down with a hand to help her to her feet. Her fingers were so tiny and cold.

“Go back to your room and get some sleep. I’ll go rest up, too. I’m finally starting to get sleepy.”

He led the little black-haired girl by the hand to the elevator. The doors closed, and the elevator began to descend. Rain kept falling on the empty concrete roof.

From the shadows appeared an animal with silver eyes and a long tail. It watched the elevator as it dropped out of sight.