The Last Human IV - 44 - Easier Ways to Die

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Agraneia ran through the suit’s diagnostics—again. 

Onboard power, hydraulics, oxygen supply. Optimal. Then, she inspected the weapons systems—again. Shoulder-mounted micro-launcher, charge rifle, and reactive plating. Fresh from the printer. Perfect working conditions. Then, she checked her helmet—again. 

She even checked her liquid metal arm, but it never needed maintenance.

Agraneia rumbled a sigh. Nothing else to do but wait. Wait, and dwell on the memory of last night. It kept running through her head. 

Last night, she had stood outside Talya’s door for what felt like hours, trying to work up the courage to knock. To tell the wingmaiden that she was going to find Khadam. To fix what I have broken. 

When she finally did, her knock sounded as slow and ponderous as the tolling of a funeral bell. And when Talya answered the door, and the avian’s face lit up, Agraneia felt a brief moment of weightlessness. A flicker of belief that everything was going to be okay. 

A dream. 

Then, before a word had passed between them, Talya’s face darkened. The joy drained from her eyes, and a cold mask fell over her features. The avian must’ve read Agraneia’s face, because she knew. 

“You’re a fool,” Talya had said.

“I know.”

The avian came forward cautiously, as if at any moment, Agraneia might shatter and break. Then, she wrapped her wings around Agraneia. Her embrace could have lasted an eternity, and it still would’ve been too short. 

Talya pulled back, and she sniffed and wiped her eyes, and looked up at Agraneia.

“I have to do this,” Agraneia said.

“I know.”

“I have to.”

“So you said,” Talya said, calm and quiet. “Doesn’t make it true.”

“I’m a monster.”

“I would have known.”

Agraneia clenched her teeth. It was supposed to be different. They were supposed to fight. Agraneia wanted to scream, to be screamed at. This quiet acceptance was so much worse.

“I killed them,” Agraneia growled. “I lost count of how many.”

“Do you think you’re the only one?”

“I loved it. Every gods damned moment of it. War. And blood. I didn’t care whose blood it was. I was made for spilling blood. I wanted more. I wanted it. I don’t know why. I am… I don’t know who I am.” 

All the strength sapped from her muscles. With a wretched groan, she slumped against Talya’s door, and started to slide to the floor. Talya caught her, and held her head in her wings. And she whispered the words that Agraneia couldn’t get out of her head. 

“Long before you and I were born, long before our people were people, we were animals. We survived only by fighting. Some of us even learned to love it. The fear. The power. Yet, the gods still loved us, despite all our flaws. And they gave us one of their very own gifts. Just one.” 

Feeling sick and lost and empty, Agraneia blinked up at the only woman she had ever truly loved.

“Do you know what it was?” 

Agraneia shook her head.

“Change. An animal can never change. Can only ever be one thing. Hungry, or tired, or scared. Or vengeful. It has no control. But we do. We get to choose, praise the gods, to act how we wish to act. A miracle. At any moment, at every moment, no matter how lost in your own nature you are—within you lies the potential to change. To grow beyond what you have always been.”

“Talya, you know where I’m going.”

“Yes.”

“I‘m going to Earth. To find Khadam.”

“Yes,” her voice was a little quieter. 

“I’m going to die.”

“No,” Talya said, almost inaudible.

“There will be no more change for me. It must be so. How else can I live with what I’ve done?” 

Talya’s feathered fingers lifted Agraneai’s chin, forcing the cyran to look up at her. “There is always another way.” 

And again, the memory of last night played in her thoughts. How she had left Talya. How all the lights in the City had blurred as she stumbled away from Talya’s home. How she had felt so sick, she had to dry heave in the halls of the lower decks. Not caring if anyone saw her. The faces were always watching, anyway. They delighted in her misery.

Agraneia couldn’t stop playing through the memory. And failed to bury herself in her preparations for the last mission she would ever undertake. So, it was a relief when the android finally arrived in the armory. 

Laykis had been preparing herself ever since they arrived on the Ark. No more rust, no more stains from old-growing moss. Her limbs moved with sleek perfection, and new, armored bands wrapped around her midsection and plated her arms and shoulders. She held out a bundled piece of cloth for Agraneia to take. The cloth kept changing color, flickering like candlelight seen through glass. 

“A null cloak,” Laykis explained. “Reflects light. Mimics heat signatures. Emits radiation. It won’t work forever, but it will confuse the Sovereign’s drones.” 

The android spoke like she knew. Like she’d dealt with the Swarm many times before. Maybe this mission had a better chance than Agraneia thought…

Don’t even think about it, the voices whispered. No hope. 

“Cyran?” Laykis’s mechanical voice crackled over the voices. “Are you ready?” 

“I…” Agraneia started. A memory, rich with the smell of flowers and feathers bubbled up in her mind. Will I ever know that scent again? Her feathers. The warmth of her touch…

Laykis tilted her head, waiting. The polished dome of her skull gleamed in the light, broken by an old gouge running from eye to the back of her neck. 

Behind Laykis, the faces of the gruesome dead grinned from the shadows.

“Let’s get this over with.” Agraneia growled. She grabbed her helmet—custom-made by Khadam herself—and rammed into place. Her suit hissed as it pressurized with the helmet. 

“You think you are ready?” Laykis’s voice clicked through her helmet.

Agraneia grunted in the affirmative. She could barely hear herself over the growing whispers. Urging her to fail. To die. To live in misery until the very last moment.

“Cyran,” Laykis asked as they walked to the Gate. “Have you heard of the eight hells?” 

“Heard of them?” Out of the corner of her eye, a wall of bloody faces screamed in wretched silence. Enemies. Innocents. Friends. “I’m in one, right now.”

“Ah,” Laykis chirped, “Then you are well prepared for what we’ll find on Earth.” 

Soldiers surrounded the Gate, cyrans and avians in full ceremonial armor. Agraneia could feel their worried eyes upon her. Each one would’ve accepted the honor to hunt for the Divine Maker and die saving her from the Sovereign’s grasp—but each one was relieved they hadn’t been chosen. 

Not Agraneia. She welcomed her fate. Gods, how she longed for it.

So, she stepped onto the Gate, certain of her decision. Standing as tall as the day she first joined the Emperor’s conquering armies. The Queen bowed to her, and to Laykis, and a priest stepped forward to bless them both, muttering holy words as he swung incense over them and around the Gate.

Ags, Ags, a voice croaked in her head. My old friend. This sure feels like the right thing, doesn’t it?

The arms of the Gate began to turn and their rising, thumping howl battered the air.

Take it from someone who knows, Eolh croaked. 

Death will not save you.

“Shut up.” 

You’re wondering, now, a too-familiar voice croaked, if you’re doing the right thing. Well, I can already assure you, Ags, that death will not save you.

“Shut up,” she growled. 

Despite the surging roar of Light and the keening of the Gate’s arms, she could still hear him, as clear as the day they first met in that prison on Thrass.

What did you think would happen? The gods would come down from the heavens, and lift you up? All the dead would sing your praises. We forgive you, Agraneia. We don’t hate you for murdering us— 

“Why are you here?” Agraneia muttered. “I didn’t kill you. I wasn’t even there when you died.”

But if he gave an answer, Agraneia wasn’t there to hear it. The Light devoured her whole, ripping her out of the Ark, and dropping her onto a planet she knew only from myth. The cradle of the gods.

Earth was nothing like they said it would be.

They stood at the bottom of a great valley, walled in by mountains of ancient trash and concrete debris and metal rebar, draped in brittle sheets of plastics and synthetic fibers. Debris flooded the ruins of a once-great city, burying the streets and the lowest floors of broken high-rises. Concrete walls leaned and crumbled against each other, slowly turning into mounds of rubble. Gray water rained from billowing clouds above, dripping from jagged sheets of metal, collecting in ponds of broken glass. The ruined city snaked away between the mountains, shorn-off skyscrapers leaning over hills of asphalt that had been bleached by ages of sunlight. But there was no sun here today, and the steep mountain walls lengthened their shadows as the glow from the Gate faded. 

“This is Earth?” Agraneia asked, her voice sounding muffled and too close inside her helmet.

“This is Earth.”

“It is nothing like the priests said it would be.”

“So much has been lost,” the android said, her voice hushed and somber. 

“How did Yarsi know this Gate was here?”

“How could she not? The lassertane carries the memories of the First Prophet. She built this Gate. The first Gate.” Here, the android’s voice clicked with bitter frustration, “This place should be a shrine. A temple to the works of the Great Makers. Instead, the Sovereign has swept away the great works of the gods, like dust into the cracks.” 

A shadow flitted overhead, and Agraneia instinctively crouched low, trying to merge her body with the surroundings. Far above, a pair of vast, metal wings glided along the length of the canyon. 

“Put on your cloak,” Laykis instructed. “The Sovereign knows the Gate has been opened, and soon this place will be crawling with the Swarm. We must be as swift as the gods.”

They climbed through rubble-filled streets and the rusted skeletons of skyscrapers. Agraneia’s suit pushed her muscles to new limits, and neither android nor cyran talked. Agraneia listened to her own labored breathing, to the whispering motors of her suit. And the voices. Always the voices. The dead and dying lurked in the shadows. Hissing at her when she least expected it.

“Odd,” Laykis remarked. “One would expect the Sovereign to send more drones.”

“Perhaps the gods watch over us.” 

“One certainly does,” Laykis said. “Your lassertane.”

“Yarsi?” Agraneia looked up, as if she might see Yarsi’s face staring down at her from the polluted clouds.

“Not now. But long ago. When she was called Emorynn. She foresaw all this. Every step. I’ll show you the video.”

Laykis pressed two metal fingers to Agraneia’s helmet, and bowed her head, as if offering a prayer. Agraneia grunted, surprised, as a tiny screen appeared in the corner of her helmet’s visor. Rubble, and broken buildings, and machine-carved mountains. Nearly identical as that which she saw with her own eyes—except in this video, as Laykis called it, there were no faces.”

“This video was pulled from Yarsi’s memory. These are the First Prophet’s own visions, recorded and handed down through time. It’s possible that, even now, the First Prophet is watching you as you walk across this world.” The android’s eyes were glowing bright now, two beacons of light amid all this shadow and gray. “You are blessed, cyran.” 

“Blessed.” Agraneia snorted. 

“You are. And I feel blessed to be here with you.”

“Android. It is literally pouring acid rain. We are being hunted by the very thing that killed the gods.” 

“Yarsi has given us a vision of the future. And we are meant to be here.” 

“And what does Yarsi’s vision say about our chances of survival?”

“Ah. The Prophet’s memories lead us toward Khadam, but they go dark before we find her.”

“Mmm,” Agraneia grunted, as if to say well, there you go. But the android was undeterred. As they walked and climbed through the debris, snaking like a dead river through a forest of collapsing buildings, the android kept her head held high.  

“I lost a sister on this planet, once,” she said. 

“Machines have sisters?”

“I did. Seven of them. Most of them I never met, but I know they carried out their missions to the greatest of their abilities. It seems I am the last of my kind. To me, it is a wonder and a joy that I am here. We walk where only the gods have seen, toward a purpose in service of all life. I can think of no greater journey. Whether we reach our goal or not—yes, it matters—but we cannot control the outcome. Only our purpose. I know mine. What about yours, cyran?”

“What?”

“Why did you come here?” 

“To fix what I ruined.”

“You came here for redemption?”

Agraneia stopped, her metal boot crunching on concrete rubble. 

“Or did you come here to die?” 

Agraneia swallowed. Avoiding the android’s gaze. And of all the whispering voices floating in the air, one chuckled louder than all the rest. Reckon she’s got you figured out, Eolh said.

“My redemption is here,” Agraneia growled defensively. “Even if it means my death.”

“Do not expect me to judge you,” Laykis held her hands up, surrendering. “I thought that was my path, too, once. Years ago, when I first came to the Cauldron, I believed with every unit in my core that I was walking to my death. The culmination of my life—the ultimate sacrifice, in service of the Savior Divine. It was written. Even the Historians knew of my destiny. But the thing about us mortals is that we are all flawed. We may think and learn and grow wiser. Yet we may never know ourselves in full. Unlike the gods, our future remains incomplete. No matter what words have been written, or what dreams have been seen. For you may prepare yourself for one moment your whole life, only to find that your path twists another way.”

“I know what I deserve,” Agraneia said. 

“Death is not the path to redemption, cyran. Only a higher purpose can bring you the salvation you seek.”

Agraneia was about to mutter some retort, when Eolh’s voice cut her off. 

Truth is, I thought she was mad when I first met her. An android fanatic? She was worse than any priest. And then she told me I was the Guardian from the old prophecies. I laughed. But she believed it. And she made me listen. And I’m glad I did.

“But you’re dead now,” Agranaiea said to herself. “You listened to her, and where did that get you?”

True. But until I met her—and through her, Poire—I don’t think I’d ever been alive. 

Agraneaia grimaced. For the hundredth time, she wanted so desperately for the voices to go away. “You’re not even supposed to be here.”

And yet I am. And I’m telling you to listen to her. See how alone you really are.

Agraneia rumbled a sigh. “Android. What happened to your sister?”

“It was a long time ago. And it was the first time we’d ever met. We were caught by the Sovereign. She died, so that I could live. ”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“I’m… sorry,” Agraneia mumbled awkwardly.

“It was not in vain. I learned much of the Sovereign. I would not have survived for very long, if it had not been for her sacrifice.”

“But the Sovereign knows you now?” 

“Not as well as it would like,” Laykis said proudly. “Tython made us greater than any construct. Our cores are different. Deeper. My sister taught me how to hide my mind away from the Sovereign’s corrupting influence. But when I escaped, the Sovereign did not stop chasing me. Across worlds, through galaxies that do not even have names, I was hunted. I hid among the xenos sprinkled across the stars. Most of them are dead now. I had destroyed so many of them.”

“You?” Agraneia looked up so quickly, her neck popped.

“I shut the Gates behind me. I could have led them from world to world, with the Sovereign close behind. But I didn’t. Instead, I locked them in to give myself a better chance.”

The android said it so easily, as if it was nothing more than an old fact nobody cared about anymore. But Agraneia’s ears were ringing. Even the voices, even his voice, had gone silent, as if all the hallucinations living in her head were listening with her.

“How many?” Agraneia breathed.

“How many did I kill?” Laykis asked. “I tried to keep a tally, once. It is a poor estimate.”

“Hundreds?”

“Oh. I apologize, I did not mean to mislead you. My actions have caused the deaths of far, far more than that. There was one planet of three warring empires. I hid there for nearly a century. Some of the xenos feared me. Worshiped me. Some became very dear friends. And when the Sovereign found me, they begged me to take them with me. I could not. I did not.” 

“How could you— How are you—”

“How did I continue?” Laykis asked. 

“How are you not broken?” 

Laykis put a hand out, stopping Agraneia. A river of something oozed across their rubble-filled path. A stream of clear, gelatinous liquid that sizzled when the rain struck it. Using her liquid arm, Agraneia sliced through a few nearby pieces of rebar, and together they layed them over the stream, so they could cross. 

“I used to wonder,” Laykis said, once they reached the other side. “If I was whole in the first place. When my Maker made me, the Prophet’s Disease had already begun to eat his brain. I have always feared that I was the least of all my sisters. Less intelligent. Less capable. But I have gone further than any of them. I no longer ask ‘why am I not perfect?’ Now, I only ask, ‘what’s next?’” 

“What’s next?” Agraniea repeated. 

“The past cannot be rewritten. There is no going back. But one can always start again. Even in the final hour.” 

The android stopped. And waited for Agraneia to turn and look at her.

“I did not come here to die, Agraneia.” 

“This is a death world. You think you will survive?”

“I know our chances. But I am alive now, so I go forward. But you…” Laykis tapped a thoughtful finger on her chin, metal clinking against scarred metal. Such an organic gesture, and yet, it did not seem out of place for the android. “What about you, cyran? You hate yourself. You hate what you’ve done. You hate all the years you spent perfecting your blood craft. If you had a death wish, you could have satisfied it anywhere. But you are here. Why?” 

Agraneia ground her teeth together. She was no fanatic. She was only here, because this whole mess was her fault. She was only here, because she deserved to be here. She was only here because… Because…

Yeah, Ags, she could hear the smile in Eolh’s voice. Why?

But Agraneia didn’t get the chance to answer. The distant whine of repulsor engines pulled their attention to the sky. 

“Quickly,” Lakykis gestured. But she didn’t need to say anything—Agraneia was already on the move. The two of them found shelter beneath the hollowed-out foundation of a half-shattered building. With their null cloaks pulled tight, they watched as surging flocks of winged machines soared in overlapping formations. When Agraneia squinted, her helmet’s vision zoomed, and she could pick out bullet-shaped drones carrying heavy payloads, swarming beneath the bellies of massive carriers, half-shrouded in the clouds. One shape writhed higher than the rest. Though she could only see the outline of its shape, its tentacles draped behind it for miles.

“Are they looking for us?” Agraneia asked. 

“I don’t detect a search pattern,” Laykis said, her voice clicking with confusion. “The Swarm moves for another reason.”

Just when Agraneia thought the armada was starting to thin out, the horizon bloomed with more repulsors and new waves of machines carved through the clouds. Rain plinked quietly off her helmet, and made rusted, orange puddles at her feet. Dusk swept over the ruinscape. It would’ve been almost peaceful, if not for the things she saw crawling in the shadows. Whispering cruel truths into her ears. 

“Perhaps you should rest,” Laykis said. 

Agraneia tensed up at the sudden sound of her mechanical voice. 

“No.”

Laykis glanced up at the sky. “This may continue for a long time.” Now and then, the lights of the ships overhead sliced through the gaps in their crumbling shelter. 

“Will the cloaks hide us?”

“If we move carefully.” 

Through the rain, a great spear of rebar had fallen and embedded itself in a hill of broken asphalt. Something hung from its length, twisting in the rain. A body. Its neck, snapped. Eyes, still open. Looking at her. She blinked, and refocused, and saw that it was only a few sheets of synthetic fabric, twisted into a bundle.

“Khadam needs us,” Agraneia said. She stood up, and checked her gear, making sure the cloak covered every inch of her. “Come on.” 

“I knew it.” 

“What?” Agraneia turned to face the android, ready to argue. But the android did not want to challenge her. Instead, her eyes were bright with gladness, bright enough to illuminate the shadows and chase all those faces from the dark. 

“I knew we shared a purpose. By the Divine, it has been such a long time since I’ve had a sister in faith. We will find her, Agraneia. Together, our faith will see us through.” 

But the android was wrong. Faith had nothing to do with it. Agraneia had long ago stopped believing in gods. And without gods, how could one have faith? 

No. Agraneia had come here to find her death. Oh, really? Eolh croaked. Far as I know, there are easier ways to die.

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