Chapter Twenty One: Hatching

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When the human face on the screen in the soal egg stops talking, he smiles. Then the screen flickers to a column of writing and what must be statistical information. It scrolls for nearly half a minute, but I can't understand any of it. Dizzy, I steady myself against the now-cooled egg. But then I start back. Falling to my knees, I dig my fingers into the black sand in front of me, staring at the little grains. I watch them shift, struggling to keep them in focus as my breathing disconnects from my control and rushes in and out of my lungs faster and faster. 

Soal is not soal. 

My mind balks at the realization, immediately trying to rationalize what I've just discovered and so safely explain it away.

Maybe I just picked up the weirdest and most elaborate computer in the Empire.

Maybe the Guild are testing a new kind of weapon or super-minion.

Maybe it's not connected to anything – anyone, that is. Maybe its... alien?

A laugh flutters out of me.

Aliens, Viridian? Come on.

It's a ridiculous idea, but it calms me. Soal can't be anything like... that. It's explainable. Of course it is. Everything is. 

My breathing grows steadier, and I lift my eyes. The tomb walls around me are still illuminated with fierce yellow-white lines of mirror shrimp in age-old etchings. Like underground constellations, the tales and legends of my ancestors shine down on me: Seekda and the other gods fighting, bringing fire, creating humanity, founding the Empire. 

But those are just myths. I'm not the product of any fiery deity's matchbox, and neither is anybody – anything – else on the continent. The explorations of those like Yearling Swift provide us with fact: the first settlers were not sparks brought to life by Seekda's power up in the sky. They came by boat to the western coast and established a civilization that became the basis of our modern-day empire.

My own eyes, and the data in my visor, provide me with more facts: the soal are not mineral-laced meteorites, as we've been told, but they are not alien, either. They have tech beyond what I've seen, and targeted the ruined base outside of Griswold.

Someone is lying.

The thought pounces on me, unexpected but so obviously true I almost retch. Hundreds of soal fall every year. If Core were with me over the comm link, he'd say it was a statistic improbability that I was the only one to discover the tech imbedded in them. What had happened to those other Fire-keepers, and their Enforcers?

If I wasn't already half numb, sleep deprived, aching in every joint, and hopped up on a wearing-off superdose of drugs, I would probably have gone cold at the thought, like they do in stories. I just set my jaw, eyes darting back and forth over the soal.

The League can't just dispose of them – it would go against every moral ingrained in being a Fire-keeper

From day one at the academy, loyalty was pounded into our every fibre – loyalty to your fellow Fire-keepers and Enforcers, and loyalty to one's country. It was necessary. We are so depended on. We are warming homes, lighting businesses, providing power to countless industries and institutions. We're everyday heroes, the foundation of the empire, and respected as such. Exceptional Fire-keepers and Enforcers are awarded bronze epaulets and early retirement (sometimes as early as twenty-five years of age) with a pension and homes in gaited communities that made many of my extended family's ritzy lifestyles look like grubbing in a gutter.

"Throwing a tantrum in some backwater rubble for ten years is not going to get you anything you couldn't have right now," my mum had said in our first, and last, comm after I ran away to attend the Academy. "And if you really want to kill people, join the Militia, like your cousin did. Being an officer is a respectable profession, if you must have one."

I'd never really understood why she'd said "kill people", before. But after the past few days...

I'd never really thought about how Fire-keepers are paired with Enforcers. It had always seemed to make sense, before: soal was valuable, and the Guild were greedy. But the Guild didn't show any interest in soal until a few years ago, and processing soal requires means and tech that is so complicated and expensive the average imperialist could never build it, let alone learn how to operate it.

I look at my pistol. There's only one bullet left in it, and I've lost track of which stains on my trousers and blazer are my blood, or someone else's.

Long ago, those electricians were hired to go to people's homes. They wore buttoned shirts and goggles and carried little boxes of tools. They worked for family businesses.

I'm not a good shot, yes. But I graduated third in my class for close and hand-to-hand combat.

A weary smolder of anger coils in me.We're not manual laborers. We're an army. 

Of course, the Fire-keepers only have prods to use against threats. Of course. We're the everyday heroes, after all. But who needs prods when you know how to take down a man in five seconds using your thighs and thumb, and you have a bleeding fully-armed Enforcer at your back every single second?

So what are we fighting against, knowingly or not? What secrets have been swept under the woven-silk rugs of gaited retirement communities?

Do the Guild know? Is that why they've been trying to get the soal, too? But I think of Griswold, and know they can't be the champions of truth, either. 

I can't waste any more time trying to come to my own answers, though. There isn't time, and I have plenty to worry about right where I am without factoring in the state of the entire empire.

Still shaking, I crawl back to the egg just as the scrolling text and figures end and an emblem appears, instead. It's a solid circle surrounded by a ring, with four upright bars extending out of the circle to spread out like a light-ray at the top. It glows for a moment, then disappears, and the same human face as before returns. 

His throat-apple bobs, and speaks. 

I wave in front of the screen. "Hello?" 

He keeps talking, and I'm about to try again when one of his eyebrows lifts as he pauses momentarily. It's the same movement he made before. I'm watching a recording. If it's anything like the automated help-desks in governmental buildings, it's going to take a lot more than waving hello to move beyond the introductory phase. 

Since I don't understand anything except the word Seekda, I doubt anything I say will register with whatever vocal recognition this thing has. I check to make sure my visor is still recording everything I'm seeing, then pull of one glove and tap the screen in the soal egg. Nothing happens. But perhaps it's like those annoying instructional videos we had to watch before each of our flight simulations in training. You don't have any control until you've heard the rules. 

So I keep my hands to myself, waiting. The human face chats, pauses, sighs. Then he smiles again. This time, however, I realize it doesn't reach his eyes. But then he fades, and the text appears again. As soon as the text scrolls away and the circular emblem reappears, I press my hand against it. A soft note like a chime being tapped resonates through the egg. The emblem turns green. Then the soal shakes.

I leap to my feet, cursing my one remaining bullet, as a feminine, calm voice suddenly bursts from whatever speakers the man's had previously. More cracks appear on the soal, hissing steam and dust, and I sprint back from it as far as the cave will let me. It's like a miniature earthquake. The cracks splinter across the entire egg, then chunks crumble and break off, spilling onto the sand and releasing a wave of heat. Finally, the rough outer shell is entirely shod, a smoking ring surrounding what's left of the soal: a smaller, smoother shell. It's dry, chalky, and white, and jets of steam rise up off it, straight as threads in the undisturbed air of the cave. The soal settles, the steam whistles softly, and then fades away. My back is pressed against a bolder at the cave edge, but my arm trembles from holding the pistol in front of me. But just as I'm about to drop it, that white inner egg cracks, too. It splits right down the middle from top to bottom, the sides fall to the ground, crushing the outer shell, and the metallic clang makes my every nerve seize. Then a stench so beyond-sulfur-rotten hits me through the visor. I gag, eyes watering. This is worse than any nest I've dug around in. Whatever atmospheric entry usually burns up is in this egg, all nice and fresh. 

And it doesn't like waking up.

I have heard bones crack. I have heard my family tell me to leave their sight and never come back. I have heard the man I love cry, and the thud of a body falling from seventeen stories up. I have heard horrible things. But they were nothing like the sound that crashes into these etched walls and pierces my visor and ears and seemingly even right to the core of my chest.

This is agony.

The sonar readings on my visor fritz, spiking off the chart altogether before blanking into a red error code, and I fall to my knees. Tears spring from my eyes and, dropping the pistol, I clamp my hands over my ears.

"Stop!" I scream, but I can hardly feel the vibration of my voice in my throat, let alone hear it.

The wailing washes over me. My skin ripples with goosebumps and my head pounds with each wave of piercing noise. Then, through the blur of tears, I notice movement. Shaking my head to clear my eyes, I'm just in time to witness a dark something lurch out of the soal, teeter for a moment, upright, and then fall to the ground. It thrashes and bucks like a huge landed fish, sand spurts away from it, pelting me and the nearby tombstones. Then it lunges sideways into the water, and the unmistakable crack and fizz of power breaks through the din. The thing gives a last shriek, so piercing my body jerks into a ball, arms clutched around my head. Then all is quiet.

The metallic bitterness of power burn joins the sulphuric rot clogging the air. My ears buzz, and my chest aches from the barrage of noise. But they fade as the last of the ripples from the thing's plunge into the shallows sigh against the sand, and I uncurl to look at it again. It hasn't moved since the strange shock it had upon touching the water, and I can see at least half of it protruding from the waves, dark and smooth. The light of the mirror shrimp slides off it in greens and purples, grease-like. I think it's dead, or inactive, or broken. But, just to be sure, I pick the pistol up from where I dropped it, and keep it ready as I approach the egg's former occupant one hesitant step at a time. 

As I get closer, I realize the  water is darkening with some liquid spilling from what look like veins protruding from all over the thing, mostly in its chest and under its chin. Then it hits me. 

That's a chest, and those are limbs. This isn't a machine. 

The form is noticeably either a bipod or quadruped, but grotesque with the severed veins, which are of all different circumferences. There are no identifying features on what must be its head save a blunt snout and a short trunk like growth. I can't see anything else recognizable on the body, either, the entire thing covered with a thick, web-like substance that looks like burn scaring. It's blue-black instead of red, though, and wet, too. The stench is so strong I turn my visor's vapour-filters on as I cross the final few metres to stand beside it.

That's when I realize it's still moving. Not much, just the chest lifting and shuddering down again, creating tiny ripples in the clouding water around it. But enough. It's still alive. 

My stomach turns to a hard, cold knot. I breathe out slowly, raise the pistol.

"Hello?"

The thing twitches at the sound of my voice, and I flinch and almost scream. But it doesn't make any move to get up. The water is almost black around it, now. If that's blood, I doubt this thing's got much time left. Whatever caused the burst of energy when it touched the water must have just about done it in. 

What had caused that burst, though? It was like electrocution – we learned about that in the history seminars back in the Academy. But no animal I've ever heard of could produce enough of a charge as to kill itself upon contact with water. 

Focusing hard on not retching, I ease back on my ankles in the stained sand, pistol still primed, and lean down to get a closer look. 

Pretend it's a plant, Viridian, pretend it's a really, really weird plant, and you'll be fine.

The thing is lying on what I think is it's side with the head pointed inland, towards the tombstones, and the lower limbs disappearing into the water about halfway down. The skin is different textures in different areas. Under the overall slimy scabbiness coating it, I noice large solid patches on the chest and head that must be some sort of large scales. The whole thing rather looks like a rotting cocoon with a half-formed beetle stuck inside. 

I lean over the head, trying to make out anything else under the scabbiness, and the body twitches again. A gurgle bubbles out of the trunk sticking from the face, and the head rocks feebly towards me. I recoil, instinct and disgust clawing me back, then stiffen. My headlamp had reflected off the thing when it faced me. Slowly, I reach out with my pistol and tap the head.  Something glows inside in response, faded streaks of color that pulse underneath the scabbiness. My visor leaps onto this new data, filters flickering back and forth in my vision to check for ultraviolet rays, heat signatures, and possible light-pattern signals. 

This time, I really do go cold. My heartbeat slows to a drum: loud, slow, and violent, each beat feeling like an attempt at leaping up out of my throat. Shaking, I reach out and dig my gloved fingers into the scab over the thing's head. It's thick, tar-like and resistant. Another gurgle slips out of the trunk as I brace myself and tug harder, but the thing doesn't move. Slowly, I peel back that oozing, burnt skin. 

Underneath is no beetle.

It's a visor. 

Yes, it's fuzzy with static, and heavy with outdated drives. Yes, it's half-hidden by the ventilator I'd mistaken for a trunk, from which a faint gurgle is still escaping. But it's unmistakable. Icons and screens flicker dimly through the murky glass, just like on my own visor as it scans my new discovery. 

The results are still processing, however, as I wipe away remaining slime from the visor's front, and uncover the same circular emblem on the forehead as on the egg's outer screen. There are several medallions and colored bars on either side of it, as well. They're familiar. I run my finger over them slowly, the video of the speaking man replaying in my mind. 

Tears start to my eyes again as heat-signature, the first of my visor's scanners, finishes assessing the form before me. It's a body. Barely. More scanners pop up with more information, but I shut them down. I shut everything down in my visor but the air filters, methodically closing them all, counting each one and taking care to breathe slowly and evenly. I will think later, when I have the luxury of being able to feel. Now is not that time. 

Finally, my vision is clear, and I turn the opacity of my visor to transparent. My face appears in the reflection of the visor beneath me. I clear my throat.

"Sir? Can you hear me?"

A moan escapes the ventilator. 

Bloody hell. I close my eyes and bite my tongue. 

I know what I should do. It's wrong, though. The whole thing is perverted, twisted. Then he moans again, and I shoot him in the head through the visor with my last bullet. 

It was merciful, I tell myself. 
















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