Child of chaos, p.4
Child of Chaos, page 4
part #1 of Child of Chaos Series
“Please don’t kill me, sir,” she whimpered. “Please.”
I felt my throat quiver.
“Destry,” Amethyst said, her voice suddenly a distant echo.
I saw in the young girl’s face everything I still cared for about humanity. Her watery eyes were windows into a soul that knew it didn’t have long to live yet had decided to keep fighting. The anguish of existence. The false hope. The truth behind the facade.
“Please…”
I kept my weapon trained on her.
“I’ll kill myself before I turn, I promise.”
Amethyst snorted. “Destry, step aside and let me handle this. You and I both know she won’t be able to finish the job once she goes.”
“I will,” the girl promised, pulling a dagger from her belt. “I swear to you.”
“Destry…”
I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it.
My hand started trembling and I just knew it.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t fired on someone within a day of infection before.
But something was different about this girl. Something about the way she looked at me, the energy I felt just by seeing her.
“You may go,” I told the girl and the two men behind her. “Now!” I roared, regaining my voice. “GO NOW! Before I change my mind!”
“Destry!”
“Enough, Amethyst—that’s an order.”
The family of three scurried off, Amethyst grumbling as she lowered her weapon.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” she said once they were gone.
She huffed beside me now, tensing her hands.
It was strange to see the beast in her coming out without its catalyst. I knew she couldn’t fully transform without the alcohol, but her twitching face and the way her skin kept tightening on her hands told me she was on the verge.
Which was why I clapped her on the back.
“Dammit,” she hissed at me. Horns bulged from the skin on her forehead and then died back down.
“Relax,” I told her. “What’s done is done.”
“Easy for you to say. She’ll kill them, and then we’ll have to kill her once she becomes a lurker.”
We turned to the building that had just experienced a mini explosion. “There’s nothing we can do about that now. If she doesn’t follow through with the suicide, we’ll get her on our next patrol. I’ll make sure she’s not counted with our numbers until then. I’ll remember that name though, Sarah Green.”
“You say that like it’s a sure thing.”
I gave Amethyst a look that contained within it every patrol we had already been on and every patrol we would likely go on in the future. “Trust me, it’s a sure thing. I bet we’ll have a week or less before they send us back out. Some job.”
“There are worse jobs,” she said with a shrug, cooling off some.
“Worse jobs than hunting Vs?” I snorted with amusement. “I don’t know if I can agree with you there. Sorry. And, um, sorry for all that back there. I just couldn’t do it.”
Amethyst nodded.
I waited for her to say something, but she never did.
.6.
No matter how many patrols I took, it was never easy to survey the damage, to be one with the bedlam.
But I tried.
I tried to just accept that this was here, that there were other places not so far away, safe places, districts without piles of intestines lying on the ground, random eyeballs perched on windowsills, bodies strewn about, random fires—positively post-apocalyptic.
I was here. And when I was here, I was a child of this chaos. When I was there, I was a creature of their comfort.
“Lots of trash on the ground,” Amethyst said as she kicked at a wooden crate. “More than usual.”
“Let’s remember to keep a low profile.”
“Should I dose up?” she asked as we looked up at the building in question, smoke still billowing off the rooftop. More rowhouses, all connected somehow. The Vs would be able to move from home to home, banister to banister, lurkers fitting into small cracks while the older and stronger ones simply made their own doors.
I hated these types of places.
There was no telling what was inside, and they were usually pretty dark.
But if Amethyst took her beast form now, and this was a false alarm, it would prolong our chance to have sex. And I needed sex at that moment. As stupid as I felt by having it on my brain, I needed it.
Just a short form of escape, not very long, a release, a moment to forget.
Just something.
“I think I’ll be able to handle it, Ames.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, her hand on her flask. “I’m supposed to be the heavy engager here.”
“Aware. Put your headgear on and equip both wrist guards. Set one to blade, the other to blast. Be ready to dose if need be. We’ll make this sweep quick. If nothing is there, we’ll get the hell out. We won’t continue into whatever labyrinth the rowhouse may present us, not without a full team. Let’s just investigate the smoke.”
“Roger,” she said as she took her pack off and retrieved the necessary equipment.
We found a side alley to set our packs after she’d geared up.
I quickly set tripwires around them, just for added protection. On occasion, a rat would touch the tripwires and we would find it lying on its back, legs twitching.
The tripwires were mainly for any civilians that came across the pack; the Vs didn’t touch them—not on purpose, anyway.
“Ready?”
Amethyst adjusted her headband and brought the attached goggles down. She didn’t normally wear her headband because it got in the way of her morphing. “Don’t you just love my new sunglasses?”
I stifled a laugh as we approached a large wooden door, which Amethyst opened. I went in first, coming to a small mudroom of sorts.
“Nothing so far,” she whispered as we arrived at another door. She opened it; I moved to the left and Amethyst took the right.
As I predicted, the hallway inside was incredibly dark, the only bit of light in the area coming from a torn-out section of the wall. We were able to see with the tech from the Eastern Province, the Night Vision Display adding a green hue to everything.
I preferred not to use this feature. Using it for too long usually gave me a headache, but in an enclosed space like this, and with a fatal funnel likely in our future, it would be the difference between life and…
Something.
I turned to my counterpart, the beautiful Amethyst, and saw her with her tongue flitting against her bottom lip, looking up the stairs, wrist guard at the ready. As if she were just a random encounter on the dilapidated streets of Overtone Heights, her information appeared before me.
[Amethyst Jayde]
[Age: 23 F]
[Hometown: Ravja]
[Status: Exemplar I, B, enhanced mutation, modified speed, dexterity and healing]
[Time since infection (estimate): N/A]
It wasn’t the first time I had seen her stats, but it had been a while since I had really focused on her while wearing my head unit’s goggles. When it came down to it, we were not much different than the creatures we’d been sent here to destroy, however futile our task. The only thing that really separated us from them was that last line of information:
Time since infection (estimate)…
“Are you going to stare at me, or are we going up?” Amethyst whispered.
“Sorry, just adjusting,” I told her. “Again, we’re not checking each apartment. We only want to see where the smoke is coming from. We also won’t be going into the building next to this if it connects. Worst-case scenario, we tag the building and come back with Orange and Margo, or send in a full patrol.”
Amethyst nodded and stepped aside, allowing me to move up the stairs.
The bones on my left arm began to tear out of my skin as I walked, growing thicker as they pressed through the specially-designed uniform, and hardening into something that resembled a combat gauntlet, each spike a good three to five inches thick.
The best part about my ability was that my bone structures were nearly indestructible. It was practically impossible to break any bone in my body, considering the speed at which I healed. Several had tried, and only a few people could take me down without resorting to telepathy.
Oddly enough, two of these people were exemplars I had grown up with.
Margo could simply animate my bones and shred me apart from the inside. Gruesome, but true. She was rumored to have dismantled a squad of thirty Northern Alliance troops without breaking a sweat.
And she wasn’t the type to brag about it, either; this bit of intel had come to me from Orange, who had read it in a report.
But Orange…
Orange could kill me even faster than Margo could.
“Destry,” Amethyst said as she paused, turning to a door on the left.
We were on the second floor now. There were three doors before the stairwell wrapped back around, moving up.
“Eyes on the prize,” I reminded her.
“I was going to say the same to you,” she quipped, her form various shades of green. A bit of light peeked through the bottom of the door, painting a yellow patch near her feet.
Both of us had learned the hard way what happened when we went prowling around in people’s apartments, especially at the rowhouses, where the poorest citizens of the country lived.
Or had lived.
Everyone was supposed to have evacuated over a year ago, but there were always those who thought they could fight back and didn’t want to lose their property, or those who believed the infestation was part of the natural order. And there were even those who didn’t actually believe vampires had infested their district.
Over the course of the last year, we had run into several families still happily living in the depravity, in basement-like bunkers, ignoring the outside world.
The people Amethyst and I had just encountered, the two men and the young girl with the red bandana—they were likely these types.
And I had to hand it to them.
You couldn’t pay me enough to stay in a place like this, especially if I had a real choice to leave.
Amethyst and I moved on, my heart beating a little faster as we reached the second floor.
I had developed a weird intuition about these things. I sensed when I was going to be attacked, when something was about to happen.
But I wasn’t always right.
And even when part of my brain tried to tell the other part to relax, to pay attention to the signs, to focus, to look for any movement, I still wasn’t able to douse the fear.
I paused.
“Get ready.”
The click of Amethyst’s wrist guard signaled she had turned the safety off. I then heard the silent hiss of her energy blade, which grew from her other arm, illuminating the floorboards.
The spikes jutting out of my arm bent forward. I cringed at the way it sounded, like two rocks grinding against one another.
It didn’t usually hurt, but sometimes it did, especially when I mentally changed the direction in which the bones were growing.
But I wanted to be ready, so I had them grow the other way, eventually moving up my knuckles to form thick dagger-like protrusions.
I would go with my energy weapon first; it was the smartest thing to do and, with my enhanced vision at the moment, the easiest to pull off.
But if whatever was upstairs got close, I would have to handle it the old-fashioned way.
“I should dose.”
“No,” I told Amethyst. “We can handle this.”
We heard the sound of something scraping against the floor above, something big. Then the patter of feet and a low, garbled noise.
The hairs rose on the back of my neck, but after a deep breath in and a shallow breath out, I continued upward.
The light above us suddenly turned on. Amethyst aimed a weapon at it as it flickered off, both of our hearts not yet settled in our chests.
“What do you think that was?”
“No idea, but whatever it was, just be ready for it.”
“Could be an exemplar up there,” she whispered. “Possibly a Class B, electricity user.”
“Possible. If there is, the best way to take them out will be to do so quickly. Just make sure your blaster is set to lethal.”
“It always is,” Amethyst told me, a slight grin on her face.
God, I loved this woman. Every part about her. If only our shared experience didn’t have to be one of constant calamity.
“I hope it isn’t a hive.”
“We’ll call Margo and Orange if it is,” I told her. “We can have them airdropped onto the rooftop.”
“MM air support just in case.”
“Done,” I said as I fired off a mental message, letting them know to remain on standby and to peg our location.
One of the advantages of being in our elite squad was the ability to use exemplars with teleportation and flying powers to instantly deliver backup resources. We used this sparingly, but it was a last-ditch option always presented to us.
“Here goes.” I took the steps one at a time, barely blinking as I tried to get a picture of what was happening on the floor above us.
Nothing was coming through, just that green hue, but when we finally arrived on the floor, we saw that one of the doors had been blown out and the smoke was coming from the apartment inside.
“I’m going to dose,” said Amethyst.
“No, not yet, we still don’t know…”
“Why don’t you want me to dose?”
“Because…”
“Are you serious right now?” she hissed, and I could tell by the way she was glaring at me that she had totally read my mind.
“Dammit.”
“You’re adorable, but we can’t let that get in the way of what we came here to—”
The creature that came tearing out of the apartment was twice my size.
Hunched over, hair in its face, a terrible mouth full of jagged teeth, dozens of angry eyes glaring at us.
I turned just in time to meet its open maw with my bone claws, enlarging them instantly and tearing through the back of its head. Blood sprayed into the air as they pushed out its back, and it opened its mouth wider. I tossed it to the side just as Amethyst fired, spritzing the wall and ceiling with what was left of its brains.
“Fuck… fuck…” I said as I collapsed.
Amethyst moved over to it. It was still breathing—even without a head it was still alive, the muscles jutting from its neck flapping as it sucked in breaths. She aimed her energy weapon in the center of its back and let off two shots.
“I really want to burn this place to the ground,” I said once I got my bearings. I had already retrieved a small rag from a pocket on my belt, hoping to wipe some of the blood away.
“Tag it,” Amethyst said, catching her breath, “and we will set it on fire in the hallway. If it burns the building down, then so fucking be it. Whatever it was, it was a beast morpher like me.”
“Yeah,” I said as I focused on the monster.
[Emerald Black]
[Age: 30 M]
[Hometown: Korkovin]
[Status: Exemplar II, B, enhanced mutation, enhanced vision]
[Time since infection (estimate): eight days]
“Where is he from?”
“Korkovin.”
“Fucking Korks,” Amethyst said. “Let’s wrap this up and get the hell out of here.”
Part Two: The Before Times
.1.
(Twelve years ago.)
“Show them, boy.”
I was still in shock. My arms were numb, and it felt as if every muscle fiber in my body had been betrayed, torn to shreds. That they could go from loving me unconditionally to this, in a matter of hours, spoke volumes about who they really were.
“But…”
“Do not embarrass us,” my father spat. “Now, Destry!”
“I don’t know how…” I said, bowing my head to the councilmen who sat before me.
They wore dark outfits, most with State medals affixed to their chests. I knew what the medals meant, which battles they had fought in, how brave they had been.
They were all heroes.
“Do it,” my father said, slapping me on the back of the head.
He wasn’t always this harsh—not with me anyway, but he often got rough with others, especially my mother.
She was here too, sitting in one of the pews with my brother and sister next to her, not able to make eye contact with me.
Things would have been different had I known this was the last time I would see them. Maybe I would have gathered up the courage to turn around, to look them dead in the eye.
I had thought of this moment many times since, and I still didn’t know what my response would have been had I actually turned to see them.
Maybe it would have been a whimper. Perhaps I could have summoned up enough courage to look at them and scream, and the image of bones splitting out of my face would have haunted them for the rest of their lives.
But I didn’t look back.
I kept my focus on the councilmen, noticing that the man on the right was starting to grow annoyed. He had dark hair with a short mustache, and there was something strange about his eyes. They weren’t quite catlike, but not far off.
He also had the most medals of any of them.
“Now, dammit,” my father said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Do it, Destry!”
Choking back a sob, I began tensing my arms and legs. I felt the bones tear out of my elbows, forming scythe-like tips, blood dripping off the protrusions as they thickened.
“Please…” I whispered, and the tears started to fall. I swallowed them up just as quickly as they came, not letting a single one actually make its way down my cheek.
“Show them more,” my father said through gritted teeth.
I looked down at my hands, at my fingers, as sharp claws ripped from the space between my knuckles. They formed a spiral made of bone as the protrusions twisted together.
