The Last Human IV - 63 - The Ninth Hell

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Avians and cyrans both believed in the Eight Hells—one for each of the eight Great Sins. As Agraneia crawled out onto the Earth’s surface, she believed she had found the Ninth.

Clouds of smoke and storms of pollution raged above, swirling and billowing into each other. Agraneia pulled herself to the edge of the huge intake pipe, and gazed down into a wide, machine-covered landscape. Hills and twisted metal towers cast shadows that were sharp against the brightness of the too-bright sky. Flaming shapes tumbled across the gray heavens above. 

A great blue spear of energy pierced the clouds and carved a burning line through a sprawling factory, eradicating pipelines and hoppers and tangled conveyors and long, sloped buildings. In response, enormous metal jaws opened in the ground and missiles as tall as buildings emerged, each one propelled by a single, massive repulsor. They disappeared into the clouds, followed by swarms of drones, some chasing the missiles, some chasing each other, scouring the sky with fiery laser lines and short-range rockets.

Agraneia dropped from the intake pipe. The air itself tasted hot. Warm winds billowed, and heat radiated off the ground into the soles of her feet. Distant, quaking booms sent visible shockwaves through the great expanse below.

Eolh stepped out of the pipe behind her and let out a low, incredulous whistle. The Light, or whatever had birthed him back into this world, had all but faded from his feathers, so that he once again looked like that corvani who had flown into the Scar, five years ago. No, she thought, exactly like that corvani. The wiry thief hadn’t aged a day.

Agraneia held what was left of Laykis in her metal arm, which still tingled from whatever the Sovereign had done to it. But the liquid metal was awake again, and she could feel the connection solidly in her mind. A blessing, and one she would sorely need. Her only fear was that the liquid metal wouldn’t be enough to keep Laykis’s core from leaking out.

“Gods damn, it’s hot,” Eolh croaked. 

“Will the android’s core survive in this?”

“Should,” Eolh said. “But the question is, will we?” He held his wings out, and lifted his feathers, trying to stay cool.

“If they burn out the atmosphere, the heat won’t be a problem.” Agraneia eyed the erratic fleets of drones that swarmed far overhead. There must’ve been thousands of them, dipping in and out of the clouds or weaving between columns of distant smoke. If any caught sight of her and Eolh… “Best if we go fast, and stay low.”

“Do you hear that?” Eolh asked. His beak was turned to the side, one ear cocked to the sky. The other, listening at the entrance of the intake pipe.

A frantic, rapid clattering sound, like a hundred iron fingers clanking on metal, echoed up the pipe. Moving fast.

With her organic hand, Agraneia grabbed Eolh by the back of his neck, and shoved him away from the pipe. Her liquid arm shot out in a cone of rods, forming a web-like grate over the intake pipe. She shoved hard, and still almost lost her footing when something massive slammed into her makeshift grate, but the liquid metal knew what she wanted and dug hooks into the pipe’s metal. Slender titanium claws shot through the gaps in her web, and Agraneia barely dodged back before they impaled her. Then she saw the machines’ mouths. Gaping jaws full of drills grinded against the liquid metal web, filling the air with an unholy shrieking sound as they sheared against the liquid metal.

Agraneia shoved Laykis’s core and mask into Eolh’s hand. “Run,” she said.

“Which way?” 

“Just run!” 

Eolh took off, still cradling Laykis’s core in both wings, he. Agraneia peered into the pipe, and gazed into the glittering sensors of the machines. Already, their oversized centipede bodies wriggled and their legs skittering over each other as they bored into the softer metal of the pipe, filling the air with the scent of burning metal.

Agraneia sent an impulse down the rods of her liquid arm. The rods flexed, and crunched the end of the pipe shut. She ripped her arm out, and sprinted after Eolh. Behind her, the metal screech of the drills rose to a fevered whine. Something heavy dropped to the ground, and all those machine legs came skittering down the rocks after them. 

Oh, gods.

She thought they would have more time. If it was only the crawlers, they might’ve made it. But more drones began to descend from the clouds above. First, it was only ones and twos. Then, they formed into flocks that swayed and gyrated and reached down like the bony, grasping fingers of death. 

Every stride felt like a dagger driving into the top of her thighs. Her lungs screamed for air, even as the air burned her lungs. Agraneia didn’t have the breath to shout at Eolh. Not that it would matter anyway—he was far ahead of her, and all she could do was run after him. But where are we running? There was nowhere to hide in this forgotten waste. Came all this way to die for nothing.

She shook the thoughts off, and put all her effort into catching up to the corvani, who was rounding an outcropping. One of the centipede things clattered past her. With all those pistoning legs it seemed to swim over the rocks before rebounding on a boulder and diving straight at her. 

She thrust out her liquid arm. It formed into an absurdly long and thin blade. The blade curved down the centipedes drill-choked mouth, piercing its core. Whip-fast, she retracted her arm and the dead thing crashed face-first into the rock and scree before tumbling toward Agraneia and the edge of the cliff. She leaped over it, and barely caught herself. Took a chance to look behind her. And immediately wished she hadn’t.

All the denizens of the Ninth Hell were behind her. Drones screamed like banshees, raising their segmented limbs, ready to impale her. Monstrous centipedes clattered over the stones, some crawling down the cliffs and skittering back up the lip to block her in. 

No more running. 

She could stand. She could fight. In death, she could give Eolh time, as he had given it to her. Agraneia raised her arms over her head, and brought them down, bellowing a furious roar that echoed down the cliff sides.

The machines surged in. 

She sent an impulse to her arm, telling it to become a whip tipped with heavy blades that might slice through metal. 

But the arm refused to change. 

In fact, it didn’t move at all. It was nothing more than a stiff slab, a primitive metal prosthetic. No, Agraneia thought. Not now. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to help her friends, as they had helped her. This was the redemption she had fought for, gods damn it. She screamed, slapping her organic hand against her liquid arm, hoping to wake it up.

The flock of drones swooped down. Instinctively, she threw up her arms to block their onslaught. 

But, like a legion of birds hitting an unseen squall, the drones dropped from the sky in a steady stream. And the centipedes that clung to the cliff’s edge simply let go, and tumbled away into the scorching winds. And the other vile constructs simply collapsed to the ground, as if their bodies had grown suddenly heavy.

“Holy shit,” Eolh croaked from somewhere behind her. “We’re alive?”

Agraneia wheeled around, searching for the source of their luck. 

She looked like an angel, floating on blue wings. Tiny repulsors lined her suit, guttering and sparking out as she rose over the cliff and landed on the ledge. Her suit was torn and red with dust. Her long, dark hair was haggard and knotted, her face gaunt and dripping with sweat. Her eyes, severe. 

Khadam. The Key, it seemed, had found them. In one hand, the human held a cube of flowing chrome. Each face shifted into the others effortlessly, like leaves over water. It almost hurt Agraneia’s eyes to look at. She could feel the cube’s power in the deadness of her liquid arm. A wild, warping vibration, not unlike the one the Sovereign’s monster had used to number her arm before. 

Then, the human clicked something on the cube, and its faces went still. Feeling flooded back into Agraneia’s arm. She flexed it, feeling the power once more in her liquid fingers. 

“Cyran.”

“Maker,” Agraneia bowed her head, partially out of respect, but mostly to cover the shame and guilt that crept into her scaled cheeks. I’m sorry, the words wanted to leave her lips, but somehow felt absurdly small. An insult, almost, compared to the magnitude of Agraneia’s mistakes.

Perhaps, instead, she should fall to her knees, and beg Khadam’s forgiveness. 

But before Agraneia could finish her thought, Khadam had wrapped her arms (thinned from hunger) around Agraneia, and squeezed. “Agraneia,” Khadam whispered hoarsely, “I can’t believe its you.” 

Agraneia grunted, taken aback. 

“How did you escape the Sovereign?” Khadam asked.

“These two kept me going. Eolh and Laykis both.” 

Khadam pulled away, searching for the android. “Laykis?”

Eolh unfolded a black wing and held up the cracked core still glowing that pale light. Khadam touched the tips of her fingers to the core. A moment passed, as if she was speaking to the android. Then, she nodded once. “Good.” she said. And that was all. 

“And you—” Khadam regarded the corvani, whose feathers were fringed with dust. “You’re Eolh?”

“Mhm.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“For a minute there, I thought so too.” Eolh cocked a wry smile. Then, he frowned. “Uh, what’s on your back?”

Four tattered straps of cloth fastened a heavy-looking cylinder to Khadam’s back. It almost looked like an artillery canister, only it was made of thicker metal and—despite the heat—cold vapor beaded on its exterior.

Despite her obvious exhaustion, Khadam smirked. Proud and bitter at the same time. “The Sovereign thinks I killed them all.”

“Killed who?” Eolh asked, not understanding. 

But Agraneia understood, and her eyes went wide with awe.

“I only wish I could’ve saved more of them,” Khadam said.

“More of what?” Eolh cocked her head.

“Embryos,” Khadam said. “Human embryos, frozen during the Lightning Wars. The Sovereign cut them out of pregnant women and stored the embryos in cryostasis. We …” Khadam swallowed hard, “We thought they were dead. Diseased. But some might still be…” She swallowed again. “They’re not safe. The Disease might take them anyway. I don’t care, I have to try.”

Eolh blew out a laugh, and both Agraneia and Khadam stared at him. 

“I didn’t believe her,” he said. “Laykis always said that one day, the gods would return.” 

“Yeah, well, not if we don’t get off this planet,” Khadam said. “There’s a Gate down there. Still active.”

Explosions rocked the landscape, shaking shale and scree from the cliffside. In the distance, orbital lasers wandered across the machine-infested landscape, melting metal and turning the sand to glass. 

“We sure about that?” Eolh said. He was holding Laykis’s core aloft, inviting the others to commune with the semi-destroyed android. Agraneia and Khadam brushed her core, and Laykis’s voice floated into their thoughts. “The Gate is destroyed.”

“No,” Khadam said. “I’ve been scouting it for a week. It’s still operational.” 

“It is the wrong path.”

“It’s the only path,” Khadam said, frustration creeping into her voice. “Agra, there isn’t time for this.” 

“I think,” Agraneia clenched her jaw. Afraid to say the wrong thing. But she had to say something. “I think we should listen to Laykis.”

“What?” Khadam said, incredulous. 

“She … she knows.” 

This time, an image flared into their minds. An image of a bright, shining mountain—surrounded by oceans of fire and black maelstroms of smoke.

“Up,” Laykis’ thoughts came through. “Up the mountain.” 

“Listen, I’ve seen the Gate. I know it has power. And you want me to, what, put my life—” Khadam gestured at the canister on her back, “All these lives—in the hands of a machine?” 

“Laykis,” Eolh crowed firmly, “Is not a machine.”

“Then what is she?”

“The only reason we’re here.” 

Khadam and Eolh glared at each other. The corvani’s feathers rose, and Agraneia could see his fear. But he didn’t back away.

Without taking her eyes of Eolh, Khadam said, “Agra?” 

“I wouldn’t be here without Laykis,” Agraneia said. “None of us would.”

Finally, Khadam broke and looked at Agraneia, desperately searching her face. “You’re sure?”

“Mhm,” Agraneia said. Surprised to find that, yes, she was sure. She had never been more convinced of anything in her life.

“Fuck,” Khadam deflated. Sniffed. Rolled her shoulders, and hooked her thumbs into the straps. “Okay, then. We go up. Up the mountain.”

***

Khadam’s stomach was a withered knot. She’d eaten the last pouch of protein paste days ago, and her filtered water ran out soon after. Acidic rainwater was the only thing she drank, but the taste made her gag and her kidney implants were shutting down, so she tried not to drink too much. Tired wasn’t even close to the right word for what her legs felt, but it took more energy to stand still than to keep walking. So, she stumbled on.  

Agraneia sidled up beside her, and hefted a muscled arm under Khadam’s shoulder. The cyran’s scales slid smoothly against Khadam’s skin, too warm in this sweltering heat. Khadam tried to thank her friend, but Agraneia hushed her. “Save your breath for climbing.”

The only problem was they didn’t really know where they were climbing to. They were only following the android’s memory. Up the mountain.

At least the negation cube still worked. Even though they walked out in the open—across boulders and through crags and on narrow paths that hung over sickening drops—the veil of the cube kept them hidden from the Swarm’s sensors. Drones circled aimlessly in the sky, sometimes tearing each other to pieces.

They climbed, and the heat climbed with them. In the flat lands below, the air wavered. Shockwaves rippled out from distant explosions, leaving new craters on the face of the Earth. But the factory-city Khadam had scouted—that was still intact. If we had gone down there, we might’ve reached the Gate by now. She could see it from up here, a clean, flat disc in the tangle of all that infrastructure. And every step, took them further away… 

“How much further?” Khadam asked, her voice a dry and dusty croak. 

“Don’t know,” Agraneia grunted, “The mountain is the last thing in Laykis’s memory. After that, the future is dark.”

“What are we looking for, then?”

“A light,” Laykis voice pressed into her thoughts. “A light in the dark.”

“How do you know?”

“It is the word of the Savior Divine.” 

But nothing was dark on the mountainside. Fires raged from horizon to horizon. Columns of energy ripped through toxic clouds and scoured the land. And above, the Swarm warred with itself. 

In fact…

Was that a light, breaking through the clouds? Judging by the angle, it would be above them soon. Directly over the mountain. Khadam’s heart leaped into her throat. Could it be?

The light separated into two glowing blue circles. And then, into eight. Then, Khadam’s skin started to itch.

Eolh crowed a concerned, “Uh?” She followed his gaze to the pebbles and stones, gently lifting from the ground. Trembling. 

“Shit,” Khadam said.

“What is it?”

“Run.”

A screech, just on the edge of hearing, gathered in the air. Pure energy pulsed in the clouds. Burning a hole as a new orbital laser pierced the atmosphere. It stabbed next to the mountain, boiling the rock to magma, sinking a spear of pure energy into the crust. The laser column was too close and too wide for Khadam to see which direction it was moving, but she had a feeling she already knew.

Logistics wants me alive. But Domination doesn’t know I’m down here.

It just wants to burn.

“RUN!” 

Another column shot down on the other side of the mountain. Energy crackled in the air, and little bolts of static snapped between Khadam’s fingers and the tips of her hair. That electric screeching sound amplified until she couldn’t even hear herself shouting. Warm blood trickled from her ears—the droplets falling out, not down. And at the edge of the orbital laser, the stone ground boiled.

Then, another column shot down. And another. And all the rest, until the mountain was surrounded by a blue, blinding light. She could see the veins through her fingers. Lightning walked up and down her body, and snapped from Agraneia’s liquid arm to Eolh’s wings.

The columns gyrated and liquefied the foothills, drawing toward the mountain side, when a shadow cut across the sky. Narrow and huge and as sharp as a spear. It descended from the clouds like a shark emerging from the sea, and it plowed beneath the laser columns. Blocking them from touching the ground.

A dark shadow spread over the mountainside. And high above in the Ark’s vast hull a circle of light opened. A flock of birds flew out. No, not birds, Khadam thought. Avians.

The children of the gods had come.

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