The Last Human IV - 59 - The Gift of Mortality

< First | < Prev | Next >

Broken scales littered the floor around her. Two of her ribs had cracked. Probably from writhing against the bands that held her fast. Ring-shaped wounds wrapped around her wrists, her shoulders, her waist, and dried blood ran down her torso, soaking into her shredded shirt. And a voice was calling her name.

“Aaags,” it crooned from the shadows. Singing in throaty, avian tones. “A-gra-nei-a.” 

She pretended not to hear him. Pretended she wasn’t awake at all. Sleep was the only release. 

“It knows you’re awake.”

No, she thought, and shook her head, as if she was only tossing in a dream.

“It's watching you, right now. Listening to your heart beat. Your breath. Think you’re getting away with it? Oh, Ags, it wants you to have this little victory. Build yourself up, so that it can—”

Agraneia forced her eyes to snap open. “Get on with it,” she growled into the darkness. 

It wasn’t Eolh who answered. Instead, a great shaggy shape twisted in the shadows. Wires whispered and cables hissed and sensor clusters clinked as the Sovereign’s many eyes flickered to life. Dull and red. 

Its voice did not croon at all. “I wanted to talk.”

“So, you still haven’t found her.” Agraneia chuckled. Coughed. Something rattled in her chest, but the restraints wrapped too tight around her torso, and she couldn’t breathe deep enough to clear it out.  

“No,” the Sovereign said. “We have not found her.” 

Agraneia allowed herself a smile, and sank back, letting the metal bands dig into her scales. Khadam is the key. If she was still out there, there was still hope. 

Not for herself, of course. Her life was over. She had tried to play her part, and the universe had found her lacking. She had gotten Khadam captured. She had even brought Laykis down into the mud with her. The android’s body glinted in the Sovereign’s lights, one mangled arm and a half-torn torso laying at her feet. Core cracked, and glassy liquid still pooled around her.

That should’ve been me, was all Agraneia could think. 

“We have, however,” the Sovereign continued, “Found something much better. A ship has entered our orbit.” 

Agraneia’s blood chilled. The Sovereign’s head reacted instantly. The shaggy mass of wires whispered as limbs unfurled, clicking and scraping around her. “Ah, I see.” Dozens of sensors watched her, dull red eyes in the dark. “You know this ship, don’t you, cyran?” 

Agraneia pressed her lips together.

“It’s in orbit. Do you know what that means, xeno? It’s in my orbit.” 

No. Agraneia only just stopped herself from saying it aloud. It can’t be.

“Do you know what I think?” the Sovereign’s perfect voice trickled down from above, like spiders descending on threads of silk. “You came here to save Khadam. Your people trusted you. And when you failed, they had no choice but to do it themselves. To put themselves in my grasp.” 

“Lies,” Agraneia muttered. 

“Machine’s telling the truth, Ags,” Eolh’s voice croaked in her ear. Some mad part of her mind could almost feel him, standing right behind her. Then, the feeling was swept away as something heavy swooped overhead, shifting the air. Her body tensed, desperate to move out of the way, but the bands held her tight to her chair. 

“You’ve damned them all, xeno.” Metal limbs whispered, and a cold, metal claw slid across her cheek, making her flinch. 

And in the darkness, all the faces of the dead watched her. Their eyes glowing red, just like the Sovereign’s. 

“The Ark is mine,” the Sovereign hissed. “Mine to burn. Mine to crush. And mine to save. You do understand me, don’t you, cyran?” 

The metal claw pressed under her chin, lifting her head. Forcing Agraneia to look into the Sovereign’s red sensors. Agraneia swallowed hard. Her eyes swept across the darkness, at all those faces—hallucinations—staring back at her.  

“You have the power to save them.” 

“How?” Agraneia whispered. 

“That ship—the Ark. It must be piloted by a human. Tell me their name.”

“A … human?” Agraneia furrowed her brow. She wasn’t even trying to be obtuse, but the Sovereign mistook her. A blazing heat coursed through the restraints, and Agraneia gasped and bucked in the chair, her legs kicking as she screamed. The sweet scent of burned scales filled her nostrils. 

“Don’t toy with me, xeno. I know there’s a human on board. None of your kind are capable of piloting such a machine. But how? How did one escape my count?”

Its claw clamped around Agraneia’s cheeks with just enough pressure to hold her steady. A new limb extended from the shadows, embedded with vials of a pale, murky liquid. Two droplets dripped from twin needles. 

“Tell me,” the Sovereign’s smooth tones morphed into a sharp, distorted stab. “Save them, or find out how deep pain truly goes.” 

But the dead faces said nothing. Not even a laugh or a croak. Empty eyes stared at her, waiting for her to act.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Agraneia growled at Eolh and the rotten faces that watched from the shadows. She leaned forward against her restraints. The bands bit into her scales, and half-cauterized wounds oozed as she tugged them open. “Watch me suffer. Isn’t this why you’ve been watching me all these years?”

On hands and knees, they crawled out from the darkness. Rotted clothes and rotted flesh dragging on the metal floor. They reached for her legs, cold fingers dragging over her scales and scarred flesh. Tracing up her calves and thighs, digging their brown, broken nails into her wounds. It should have hurt. It should have made her scream. Instead, their hands only numbed the pain. 

“What do you want from me?” Agraneia said. 

“There is something off about you, isn’t there?” the Sovereign said, unaware of all those cold, caressing fingers dragging across her flesh. “A disease of the mind, or psychoticism, perhaps. Hm.” The Sovereign’s sensors shifted, red lights twisting and pulling away. The needles retracted, too. Unused. “Did you know that I can cure anything, xeno? I can help you. I can make you better than before.” 

“I don’t need help,” Agraneia said.

I don’t deserve it.

A dead hand was draped over her shoulder. Its sharp nails carved lines up the center of her chest. Another plucked at the tattered shreds of her shirt, digging into the gap between her abs, as if asking the machine to slice her right here.

“Agraneia,” he croaked. 

“You’re not real,” she said. “None of you are.”

Not real, she told herself. None of them are real. 

Then how come she could feel them? Before, they had always waited on the edges of her vision. Distant, and watching. But now… this was it. The last threads of her sanity had come undone. Back in the Academy, they had told her that this would happen. Nobody could endure torture forever. 

Agraneia couldn’t hold out much longer. And if she failed—when I fail—she would let them all down again. The Ark had come to Earth. The Sovereign had won. All my fault.

“Oh,” the Sovereign hummed. It extended a long, narrow arm, tipped with metal prongs, and stroked her cheek. “You’re crying. You poor, little thing.” And two icy fingers stroked her other cheek. And still, the faces said nothing. 

Agraneia squeezed her eyes shut. She strained, clenching her teeth together until they creaked. Trying to force the faces, and all her emotions, down into the black pit of her heart. To crush them there. 

“Doesn’t work that way,” Eolh croaked. “Or did no one tell you? Nobody escapes their own heart.”

“I want to make everything better, Agraneia. Please, let me help you.” 

“I should know. I ran from mine for nineteen long years.”

“What do you want?” Agraneia snapped.

“I want Khadam,” the Sovereign spoke, but its voice kept going in and out of hearing, like it was coming from behind a wall. “I want the Ark. I want every last human that ever lived. It's the only way I can save us.”

“Me?” Eolh answered too, clearer than the Sovereign. “Reckon I just missed hearing your lovely voice, old friend.” 

“You’re not real,” Agraneia said, trying to clear her head, “You’re just someone else I failed. You’re not supposed to be here at all.”

“And yet,” Eolh said, and she could almost feel him shrugging those black-feathered shoulders of his. 

“I failed,” Agraneia said. Her chest was heavy. Her words slurred. “Whatever it is you want from me, I can’t do it.”

“No,” he agreed. “You can’t.” 

As if a dam broke, waves of exhaustion rushed over her. He was right. He was always right. Worthless. Failure. Murderer. She was everything they said she was. And now, she was so gods-damned tired, she couldn’t even keep her head up—

A needle slid into her neck, injecting a smooth, warm serum into her veins. Her heart started to thump. Every breath filled her lungs with too much air. Suddenly, she couldn’t keep her eyes closed, and her muscles started to twitch. 

“I need you awake,” the Sovereign declared.

“I am,” Agraneia said, before she could stop herself. The serum had loosened her tongue, made her want to talk more than she had ever wanted to talk before. “I am awake.”

“No, you’re not,” Eolh croaked. And the dead faces agreed, a dark crowd, half-unseen, whispering and shuffling in this cavernous torture room.

“Shut up. You’re not fucking real,” Agraneia growled, her voice loud and strong. 

“Agraneia,” the Sovereign said, clearly this time. “I assure you, nothing could be more real than this.” 

“Hey, I was going to say the same thing.”

Sweat pricked her neck and under her arms and her chest grew hot as the lights from the Sovereign’s sensors flared into sharp-pointed stars. She squinted, but couldn’t shut them out. Her limbs wanted to move. Needed to move, but these gods-damned wires…

“Tell me what I need to know, cyran, and you will be free forever. Tell me, and I will save us all.” 

And the faces whispered to her. From the walls, from behind the Sovereign’s dark heads, from the shadows above. You deserve this…

“Did you bring them here?” Agraneia shouted at the Sovereign. “Did you bring them to torment me?” 

Sensor lights smeared across the shadows as the Sovereign swung its heads around, inspecting her. “Bring who here?” It slid through the crowds of whispering faces as if they weren’t real (they’re not, she had to remind herself), haloing them with red light that shone through the gaps in their rotten flesh. Hoots of laughter and a lone howl punctuated their whispering. A cry of agony.

“Stop!” Agraneia shouted. Echoes of her own voice came back to her, sounding like the chop of blades through flesh. “Please,” she begged.

But the faces only surged closer. Sinews popped and cracked as their jaws split wide until all of them, all of them, laughed at her.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” she roared, straining against her bands, heedless of the cuts and her own warm blood dripping down her arms and chest. 

Two wings unfurled across her sight, blocking out the crawling dead and the Sovereign’s light. All she could see was an outline of feathers, so black they were almost blue.

All was silent—no voices, no jeering laughter, no whispering cables as the Sovereign swung its head around her—nothing, but the rustle of feathers, and the slow intake of breath.

His breath.

“I did,” Eolh said.

“You?” Agraneia said, too stunned to complete her thought.

“Me.”

She swallowed hard, couldn’t bear to look down at herself. “Am I dying?” 

“No,” he said. 

“Why, then?”

“To make you listen.” Then, he lifted his beak, black and worn from age. And he smiled. “And you are. Finally.”

“Eolh!”

“What is ‘Eolh’?” the machine asked, but its voice was muffled and too distant for her to care. “Cyran, there is little time. Speak or we will be forced to—” Whatever it was saying, it didn’t seem important to answer.

“I failed,” Agraneia moaned. Her lips were numb from whatever the machine had put in her and she drooled out her words. “I lost her. The key.” 

“You were always so strong,” He clicked his beak, not quite taunting her. “And yet, you never let yourself be enough.” 

“Laykis,” Agraneia said, “Oh, Laykis. She trusted me. I shouldn’t have gone with her, but I did. And the faces—and the voices—”

“And now you’re here,” Eolh stood before her, his feathered hands clasped like a priests demanding contrition. “What would Talya say?”

“Oh gods,” she groaned. Cold shame washed down her. And then, the despair, as she realized she would never see the avian wingmaiden again. “Talya, my love. Forgive me.”

“It gets worse, Ags,” Eolh crowed. His beak lowered to her ear. “You’re going to break.”

Eolh was nothing more than a dark outline against the red glow of the Sovereign. Agraneia narrowed her eyes at him. And growled, “I am not going to break.”

“You are all alone, held by the being who murdered the Divine Gods. You are going to tell it everything you know—yes you will. You are going to break, and everyone you know will die.”

All your fault, the voices whispered, drowning out the Sovereign’s jagged demands.

“Won’t—” Agraneia choked out. “I can’t.”

“Oh, Ags, my old friend. You’re mortal. You were born to break.” Eolh reached out a feathered hand. When the tips of his fingers grazed her cheek, red lightning ripped her open. Electricity crackled through her restraints, snapping over flesh and burrowing into muscle. Her screams had no words. Vaguely, some part of her mind understood that the Sovereign was hovering over her, shouting above her screams, but the world was a blur of shadows smeared with pinpricks of light.

When the lightning receded, it left a hot, lingering pain. She tasted blood and smelled cooked meat. Her stomach knotted at the scent, and she gagged. 

“Who?” the Sovereign asked, enunciating every word. “Is piloting—that ship?” 

Agraneia heaved, trying to catch her breath. Trying to remind herself. Can’t. Break. Can’t. A needle hung suspended in front of her face. Had the Sovereign already jabbed her with it, or not? She couldn’t remember. A distant rumble seemed to vibrate through the room, and Agraneia couldn’t tell if it was real. 

“I don’t know,” Agraneia answered, her tongue felt swollen in her mouth. “I don’t know anything.” 

The Sovereign’s heads orbited her still, scanning every inch of her face. Searching for the truth. “Unacceptable answer.”

“Then do it.”

Murderer.

“All this can go away, xeno. Tell me what you know.” 

Monster.

“Do it!” Agraneia screamed, pulling against her restraints. In answer, the bands crackled viciously, and her world descended into hot, boiling pain. It felt like her veins were full of knives, sharp and bursting her flesh from the inside.

It stopped. Too soon. Leaving her empty and hollow.

Beg for more.

“More,” Agraneia gasped between breaths. 

“What did you say?” the Sovereign asked. 

“I. Need. More.”

“Liar,” Eolh whispered.

“More, damn you!”

The air around her restraints rippled. Agraneia felt the first brushes of energy, tingling and dancing under her scales. Electricity seared through her, until she was breathing out through clenched teeth and stomping her feet like a caged bull. She felt like her scales were being torn from her flesh. When she opened her jaw to scream, she could feel electricity snapping in her mouth, bolts jumping across her tongue and teeth. Seizing and jerking, she was nothing but a screaming, drooling mess.

Time and thought did not exist. There was only pain.

Not enough.

When the power eased, Agraneia slumped into the wires. She tried to open her mouth, to demand “More,” but her lips trembled, and wouldn’t form the word. Bloody saliva slid from her lips, and one of her eyes wouldn’t open. 

She didn’t know how long she sat there, drooling.

Then, she felt the Sovereign’s orb-shaped heads swiveling around her. She flinched when it hovered in front of her good eye. Is the room shaking, or am I?

“Pain. Is that all you think I have to offer?” the machine whispered, “Let me show you what I used to break your gods.” 

A perfect, white line opened horizontally in the shadows. Blinding. Then, a vertical line bisected it, as an entire wall split open into four corners. Pulling wider and wider, like the crushing mouth of some metal behemoth. It made Laykis’ body look like a doll, a broken toy, left before some celestial door.

Then, as Agraneia’s eyes adjusted, she began to see what was inside the door.

A Scar, twisting and reshaping itself endlessly. Its jagged edges were pinned by some force Agraneia couldn’t comprehend, but its center was just like the one above Cyre. There, Agraneia could see into infinity. Could feel it embracing her with a primal cold. Pulling her in. 

Could hear the voices, growing louder. Calling to her with slavering, hungry voices. Roaring with their animal laughter, because they knew her time had come. 

Eolh’s voice drowned out all others, “You’re not the first to break, Ags.”

“C-can’t—” her teeth chattered, “Don’t want to.” 

“Don’t have a choice, do you?” Eolh’s feathered form stepped in front of her good eye, blocking her view of the Scar. 

“What—do you—want?” She shivered uncontrollably. 

“How many times have you broken?” 

“Too—many.”

“But look where it’s gotten you. You had a deathwish when I met you. Yet, which one of us is still alive and kicking?”

As if to enunciate the point, the Sovereign’s muffled voice shouted at her, and a bolt of lightning made Agraneia’s whole body kick. 

“Every time you break is another chance to make yourself into something better. Embrace it, Ags. You are mortal. A child of the gods. You were born to break—and to make yourself anew. Embrace your endless destruction, for it is the gift of the Divine.”

“What must I do?” she choked out.

“Do you want to be forgiven?”

“I can’t be,” She squeezed her eyes shut, but she could still see him. Black feathers, black beak, eyes glinting with all the twisted colors of the Scar.

“Do you want to be redeemed?”

“I can’t!” she screamed, tears sliding down her cheeks.

“Do you want to change what you are?”

“Yes—” she sobbed, “More than anything.”

“You can’t do it alone.”

“There is no one else. Laykis. Talya.” Her eyes went wide. She stared at him. “You.”

“Me?” Eolh said. 

Her body bucked again. Vaguely, she was aware that her limbs were dancing, that the lightning was carving black pathways through her muscles and into her brain. Cutting her body nerve by nerve.

“Please,” she whispered. “Help me, Eolh.”

“What am I supposed to do? I’m not even here.”

“There is no one else.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Eolh asked.

Eolh crooked his beak toward the Scar. And all the faces were drawn to it, to the place where there were no machines. Only streaks of stars, and oceans of twisting Light. 

“Ask him,” the corvani crowed. 

“Poire?”

“The Savior himself. Or so they say.”

“But you said…”

“I said, I said. I was wrong. And now it's your turn, Ags. Say it.” 

“Can he … can he hear me?”

“Only one way to find out.”

In the distance, she could hear the Sovereign barking at her. Who can hear you? It asked. Who is on that ship? But Agraneia could not hear it, nor did she heed the cries of the dead. Only the infinite expanse of the Light…

“Help,” she whispered. Weak. Small and nothing and worthless. The Sovereign’s voice boomed and echoed, piercing her eardrums as it screamed at her. Drowning out her pathetic voice. Lost. She was lost. But…

Eolh was right there, with her. She could feel his shoulder, brushing hers. Feel the warmth of him, even as unspeakable agony crawled into her heart and ripped her body into pieces.

“Again,” Eolh crowed in her ear. 

“Help me,” she said. 

Red. Everything was red. Time and space and agony and lightning coursed out of her flesh.

“You’re alive, Ags. You deserve to be alive. You are broken, and you deserve to be made anew. You need help, and if you ask for it, you deserve it. So ask.” 

“Help me,” she whimpered. 

“Again.” 

“Help—”

“Again!”

“GODS, HELP ME!”

When she screamed, lightning erupted from her lips. She could barely hear her own voice, over the cracking and snapping of her own flesh.

“Devote your life to this moment,” Eolh growled. “Devote your life to change. Ask and ask again and keep asking until you’re heard.”

There was nothing but pure, wretched pain. Drooling blood and spit, she whispered her prayer, her numb lips barely slurring out the words. “Divine Gods, I beg you, hear my prayer. I don’t want to hurt them. I never wanted to hurt them. Poire, I beg you. Help me—”

“No one,” the Sovereign’s amplified voice answered, “Is ever coming to help you, cyran. You are all alone.”

But the machine god was wrong. Eolh was here. And Laykis. Her old squads, her old comrades, and all the dead who still spoke to her. No, she was not alone. She had not been alone in a very long time.

Next >