ARCHE
[English]
image [https://i.imgur.com/sw5jQm3.png]
Snowfall (cont.)
10-11-103 P.I. 11:56 PM
“I can't remember the last time we sat like this,” her mother spoke out across their minds with an inkling of sadness in her voice. “Gah…” she then sighed out loud. “What a mess.”
It’d been three hundred and eighty-three days and a quarter to be exact. Even while important, such a distinct piece of information was beyond human capability to keep track of with memory alone. It was simply their biology, as the apes’ chronological ineptitude blurred their recollection of time. Even for the smart ones—such as her mother—it was inevitable for them to conflate the past.
And yet, despite knowing this, Hyperfania couldn’t help but feel bitterness at her parent’s words.
“And whose fault is that? Or should I be the one apologizing for not being as worthy of your time as your precious research?”
“I’d say that’s unlikely, dear child. The fault is mine to be sure,” admitted her mother, her lips pursing as she stared into the fire, her weight never fully leaning into the supporting wing behind her. “But let’s not pretend you haven’t been avoiding me either.”
“I haven’t—”
Her mother cut her off, “Darling, of the last three times you have visited me, it was barely an hour the first, a conversation the second, and the third? Well! You came and left without a word! This old woman couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to that wide eyed girl who followed me everywhere. You’ve always made your intentions quite obvious, even considering Demarcus.”
“Don’t say his name!” Hyperfania's voice filled the connection as it rose with her anger. “Don’t even try. You don’t get to play dumb, and you definitely don’t get to pretend you care! Not after I begged and begged for you to do something—anything—to help him while you sat by and twiddled your thumbs!” A gentle hand caressed the surface of her wing, but Hyperfania shook it off. “Stop it!” she demanded as the pain from mourning came crashing back in as if the snowstorm itself were striking her heart. “I can’t handle the caring parent routine and that… that thing… at the same time! Please. I’m begging you, Mother. Let me focus on killing it. We’ll talk after.”
The gentle hand returned, undeterred. “You say that like he’s already dead.”
“ISN’T HE?!” Hyperfania bellowed, her shrill shriek cutting through the night, only to be answered in return by the frightened cries of those boarding on the distant landing pad. Curving her neck around to face her properly, Hyperfania looked down at her small, human mother, her words accompanied by a low growl. “It may be alive, and it may have his Core, but it does NOT have his soul.”
The features of her mother’s face darkened. “Fania.”
It was sickening.
The sadness in her voice.
The way her eyes glistened.
The tremble in her hands as she stroked the fur-like-feathers of Hyperfania’s wing-arm.
What right did her mother have to feel such a way?! After what she’d done? After breathing life into that malformed atrocity?
The presence of her mother’s mind, faint and cautious, reached out to hers, but Hyperfania cut off the connection. She didn’t want to know. Not yet. Talking to her was hard enough as it was, and this wasn’t the time to argue.
Quickly reverting to her resting position, Hyperfania shut her eyes and erased any images of her distraught mother. At the edges of her mind, she continued to ignore her mother’s entreaties to enter. She didn’t care if she was too harsh, or if her mother’s actions were justified. It had to end. All of it. Now and forever.
She returned her attention to what truly mattered.
It.
The abomination on the horizon of her perceptions.
The false creation.
The murderer.
Kilometers away, she tracked its location by the static of its broken Core as it stalked the snowfields amidst the storm. Slowly but surely, it was drifting back to resume the slaughter, compulsively seeking the source of its bloodlust. And once it returned from the vale of darkness, bioweapon Fovos would find it. It would find her. For it felt her presence, as she felt its. And with their accursed bond came the inevitable. For all bioweapons, no matter their genome, were doomed to obey the primal law for those who sat at the pinnacle of their realms—evolved or created.
There could only be one.
The small weight resting against her wing lifted, followed by the crunch of snow underfoot. The exasperated sigh announced her mother’s presence just shy of her face. Yet as the words she did not wish to hear came regardless, Hyperfania upheld her facade of apathy.
“I…” spoke her mother aloud, pausing as the single word was left to fade into the past. “I don’t know what to say. Everything’s gone terribly, my hand playing no small role in that. For that much, I am certain. If you hate me for what I did, or what I’ve condemned you to, I am sorry, my Skyfire. I really am. But I need you to know that I tried, and that I know of his loss. The weight of my failure will forever be engraved upon my soul. Truly. But this… this madness?! This grief?! It must end with us, or we will have nothing! Not even each other. So please… I am begging you, talk to me.”
“You should have told me!” Hyperfania snapped as she re-opened the link just enough for her thoughts to be heard.
“You’re right," her mother conceded, relief evident in her words. "And I considered it. Longer than you know. But... Demarcus thought it best to keep it a secret. And even after everything that has and has yet to happen, I’m afraid I still concur with his course of judgment.”
“DON’T YOU DARE LIE! Demarcus would've never hidden something like that from me!"
But it seemed her outburst would do nothing to sway her parent's conviction.
“Come now, you don’t really believe this was all my idea, do you?” her mother sighed. “I talked to him the day before you last saw him. He was… struggling. When the topic of telling you came up, he made the decision on his own, and I quote, ‘I don’t want her last memories to be of me dying as I’m connected to machines and my body is slowly ripped apart.’”
For a brief moment, Hyperfania felt her mother’s sorrow as the barrier isolating her mind faltered. From it came a single truth. One she’d so desperately wanted to have been wrong.
There was no culprit to point to for this disaster. No enemy whom she could punish for her tragedy. Her mother, despite her shortcomings, had loved Demarcus dearly, each having been the other’s only family aside from Hyperfania herself. And that pain? That grief? One too akin to Hyperfania’s own? There was no faking such things. Not when her very Core could bear witness and feel its sincerity for herself.
So why?
Why had it come to this?
A million questions swirled inside her Core as Hyperfania gave in. Unlike her human form, her true body shed no tears. Nurture overruled nature as a new layer of grief was added to the stack—a slow, uncontrolled rumble taking her as it wavered to the rhythm of her aching heart. She would have given anything to be with him again, if for no other reason than to smack the moron across his stupid face.
The embrace came without words, only tears, as the softness of her mother’s plush coat shielded the bridge of Hyperfania’s scaly beak from the cold. Trembling gloved fingers, gripping but never pulling, entangled themselves in her feathers as the old woman’s slender arms failed to wrap themselves all the way around the circumference of her muscular head.
“I’m sorry! I can’t lose you too! I’m sorry!” her mother wailed in croaked whispers, “Not you… not you, my Skyfire… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
Under the echoes of lifting blades beating against the wind and the calls to those whose jobs had been left unfinished, Hyperfania bent under the weight of the familiar touch and lifted a single hesitant eyelid.
Her mother wore a solemn expression, her watery emerald eyes reflecting the waning light of their mountain home. From their proximity, Hyperfania could make out the individual wrinkles, some from age, some from cold, some from grief, guiding each rolling tear as it fell from warm, quivering cheeks and onto smooth keratin scale.
The presence at the edge of Hyperfania’s mind grew, spiraling in on itself over and over, shifting in color as it did form, simply waiting. Waiting for what lay on the other side to open. Waiting to comfort. Waiting to love.
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Sparing a moment, Hyperfania turned her attention back towards the approaching bioweapon in the storm. There wasn’t much time left before it arrived.
Suddenly, a harsh gust pushed from the north, battering without remorse. Throwing her mother off balance, it sent her dangerously stumbling away. And there, on the brink of winter, atop the crown of the world, forgiveness was found. Abandoning the fire without a second thought, Hyperfania shifted to reform the barrier against the wind as a winged forelimb unfolded just enough to catch her falling mother. In the darkness of the smothered campsite, she reembraced her only remaining family with all her heart.
“You won’t lose me,” said daughter unto mother, the walls of her mind crumbling away.
Within a bond only they knew, their final moments were not of agony and strife, but kinship and understanding. Leaning back to properly face her, the mother held her giant bioweapon’s face as if it were a small child’s. Tears streaming, hearts sharing in the pain of the other, her lips quivered as if about to speak, yet the words came from somewhere far deeper.
“You need to save him—”
“Mother…”
The hug tightened. “No protesting. Listen, my Skyfire.”
“Mother! I saw the bodies, too. That level of needless carnage, no amount of feral instinct can excuse what happened to those Frumsvalinn. Hell, even now I can feel it, wherever it is out there. There is no drive, no end goal, just code looping in endless execution inside its broken Core. Demarcus…” even saying his name hurt “…is gone, and now, I must kill what’s left.”
A flash of anger spread through the connection from her mother as they embraced once more. “Don’t you even think like that! You hear me? I understand you believe all is lost, but I am the one who built him. I am the one who built you. And I am saying there is no way of knowing what is about to happen, as it has never happened. Cores are fickle things that even I, after a century of study, do not fully understand. Do not presume to know that which you cannot. You simply must save him.”
“And how do you suppose I do that?” Hyperfania responded, her words more plea than contradiction.
“With patience and acceptance. What you find in that creature’s broken mind, whether it be jumbled code, Demarcus, or something else entirely, I believe it will show itself to you if you give it the space to do so.”
“And if it isn’t him?”
Her mother’s expression stiffened. “Kill it. For both our sakes.” And with those words, she slowly began to withdraw from Hyperfania’s mind, saying, “I think we’ve kept our guests waiting long enough,” before her presence vanished entirely.
Guests?
Returning her attention to the visual realm, Hyperfania looked back towards Fafnir Base.
Between the relative safety of the buildings, nine Frumsvalinn stood at the ready. Their polished plates of steel and carbon fiber shining under the buzzing spotlights, not a single inch of their armored forms was left uncovered. Even their faces were obscured, with a bulbous strip of black lens the only feature of their angled faceplates. They wore military gear above their armor, the various vests and straps adding to their impressive bulk.
But it would do little to protect them.
Standing in three groups of two, one partner held a massive rectangular carbon fiber shield, a pavise atlanticus, the other a portable flamethrower with the reservoir strapped to their back. There was also a final group of three Frumsvalinn, two holding pavises, the third a BOCS, the cylindrical container carefully secured within his armored gauntlets.
Two more Frumsvalinn, armor protecting only their heads, chests, and shins with white padded tactical gear left to cover the rest, stood closer to the mother and daughter’s now extinguished campfire. Norpas billowed behind them as they stood at attention on either side of a single man, hands resting on their pistols, ready to intercept.
Ezekiel Fridman, head of all bioweapon operations, Master Handler, and Colonel in the grand military of the Atlantic Trade Union, stood a head shorter at the forefront of his Frumsvalinn entourage. Hands held behind his back, his navy-blue uniform was pressed to one side against his slim stature by the winter storm. His black-peppered beard was clean cut and short, nestled below a flushed red nose and pair of protective goggles. Aside from his heavy-duty boots—pant legs tucked in their cuffs and covered in mud and snow—his presentation was as proper as ever.
It was time.
Her mother was already leaving her side and heading towards the gathered soldiers. Giving her coat of feathers a quick shake, Hyperfania rose back to all fours and followed suit. As she approached, some of the Frumsvalinn raised their shields, and one the Col’s bodyguards pulled his pistol, which was only to be steadied by his commanding officer's halting hand.
It was pathetic.
The civilized world’s greatest warriors left shaking in their boots, but at least there was comfort in knowing that even with all their clever gadgets, the little humans knew their place.
In a few strides she stood before the Colonel, whom she gave only the briefest of acknowledging glances as she waited for her mother.
“Doctor Botha,” spoke Colonel Fridman as she joined them. “Model F is in route and I’m afraid the next transport won’t be reaching us in time. Effective immediately, I will be resuming duty as Temporary Handler to Model H. Fimgur Eosin McNealy,” he gestured to his half-armored Frumsvalinn bodyguard on his right, “will escort you to the nearest bunker.”
Hyperfania’s mother gave a slight nod to both the Colonel and the Frumsvalinn, “That is appreciated,” she said in the performative manner she always assumed when addressing her superiors. Reaching into the inner pocket of her coat, she pulled out what looked to be a small earpiece, Hyperfania’s very own tether, and handed it over to the commanding officer. “Stay strong, my Skyfire… and save him,” echoed her final words before speaking again out loud, “Fower, Eight, Romeo, Kilo, Niner, Fower, Zulu, Unifrom, Model H Temporary Handler Leto Botha recognizes transfer of authority to Master Handler Colonel Ezekiel Fridman.”
And so, too, in an instant, did Hyperfania’s Core.
With that, the Frumsvalinn to the right of the Colonel moved from one side to the other, and placing his free hand across her mother’s back, quickly guided her to the entrance of the nearest building, and then… they vanished.
The Colonel turned his sights back to Hyperfania, his expression blank as he inserted the tether he had been handed into his ear. “Fower, Eight, Sierra, November, Niner, Fower, Kilo, Lima, Master Handler Colonel Ezekiel Fridman; pending authority?”
“Authority; Recognized,” Hyperfania immediately and plainly responded directly to the earpiece, through no volition of her own.
Satisfied, the Colonel turned halfway, casually exposing his back to her as he looked in the direction of the Frumsvalinn in the group of three holding the BOCS. “Model H; Thrigur Neutro Gartenberg and his men will be accompanying you. They’ve been instructed to stay out of your way until you dispose of Model F. You will be leaving clean up to them.” The Colonel looked back to Hyperfania, his upturned gaze unflinching even when dwarfed by a full three bodies in height. “If they die, they die,” he said, paying no mind to the fidget of his remaining bodyguard. “But I want it alive.”
His words became her law as Hyperfania’s Core ingrained them into her very being.
“Orders; Recognized.”
A new problem, but one she would deal with later as she opted instead to ask, “And the other models?”
At first, it didn’t seem the man would answer, his usual cold demeanor on full display as he pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose.
“Gone,” he spoke blandly, his voice rising with the howling winds.
Without another word, Colonel Fridman left with his remaining bodyguard through the same pair of doors Hyperfania’s mother had.
The squad of Frumsvalinn left behind took cover along the edges of the buildings, pavise wielding protectors standing guard over their armed brethren. The gales of winter were now in full swing as the harsh weather shifted in their direction, further oppressing those doomed to remain in its midst.
The rogue bioweapon was now less than a few hundred meters away, the link between its Core and Hyperfania’s growing with every second. Her instincts flared in response, wanting nothing more than to find the intruder and destroy it.
“Patience,” her mother’s words reminded.
Against her desires, Hyperfania moved back towards the light, positioning herself in front of the squad. To her right and behind her, the many buildings of Fafnir Base offered protection, and to her left, the cliff face of the bordering mountain peaks shielded her.
Hyperfania readied her Core.
Sirens rang out, warning of the impending threat.
Then, all fell silent.
Surrounded by storm and night, instinct was strung tight like a fine wire, as both bioweapon and Frumsvalinn waited for the slightest indication that they were no longer alone.
It began with the unmistakable scent of a bioweapon being carried on the currents. The toxic fragrance burned like that of vinegar and Hyperfania dug her talons into the earth as she braced against the calling. Steadying herself as she adapted to the new sensation, Hyperfania emitted a low rumble to inform all those present it had arrived.
And oh, did it call to her.
To hunt.
To kill.
But also, to breed, and to join.
It was a strange concoction like no other bioweapon’s before it, tempting her most feral needs.
And it grew closer still.
Muscles twitched. Adrenaline heightened. Her Core wavered on the precipice of self-control. Then… the scent vanished as the storm changed directions once more.
Her body calmed.
She held her breath.
Azure lights emerged from the distant black. Like fallen stars, they glowed in slow patterns as they approached from afar. And they grew… and grew… and grew until their centers fell dim and the spaces within swelled as their true nature revealed itself. Rings. Luminous blue rings. Strange and haunting like the remnants of some unknown leviathan pulled from the deepest reaches of the abyss. Then the rings shifted form, falling in one behind the other as the light of the closest shone like a beacon, rhythmically swaying in its vertical motion.
The strange scent returned, now more potent than ever, and Hyperfania’s leg took a step before she realized it. Two steps back and restraining her instincts yet again, she cleared her head with a shake, relocking onto the lights nearly upon them. Then, over the howls of the gale came the crunching of snow, steady and heavy, playing in sequence to the movements of the floating rings.
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Pavise Atlanticus: A giant rectangular shield made of carbon nanotubing, steel, and poly-para-phenylene terephthalamide. Its original design and implementation reside with the Order of Fumsvalinn during the first half of the first century P.I.
BOCS: Acronym standing for Bioweapon Operation Containment System. This device was a means to isolate a bioweapon’s Core and prevent further weaponization, come worst case scenario.
Norpa: A three-quarter knee length skirt worn above a Frumsvalinn’s armor that signified the rank of the individual within the order, usually of the fourth ring or higher.
Fimgur Eosin: When addressing a Frumsvalinn formally, it was customary to always specify their ring and branch within the Order before their last names. First names were seldom if ever used even in private as Frumsvalinn culture placed high value on that which was earned rather than inherited.