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Black Organs of Sunlight
Killing the Janitors

Killing the Janitors

Next entered Alex, Alissa, and Lulululululu, who had finally decided to shed the coarse outerwear binding her tightly for so long, which now hung as a Prussian blue band of a crop top and near-invisible shorts. Raethor let out a long sigh, but finally acknowledged that perhaps letting decorum slide was a good idea, as otherwise the built up pressure might crack someone at an inopportune time.

Lulululu, however, was not in good spirits. Her juvenile face that the others had mocked so many times for being so incongruous with her stated age of 27 (which she had provided documentation for on more than one occasion at Anya or Will or Dio or whoever else’s request) wore an expression of dread. It was the kind of dread you wouldn’t see on a child not because a child is incapable of feeling terror or pain or loss or sorrow, but because the child wouldn’t understand the true gravity and magnitude of the situation. You go through the years and build an expectation for what they should contain. It is therefore impossible for a child to grasp just how rare an event like this truly was. It had been five years since the last Tribulation War, and six before that, but even if she had known their terror and starvation, only Lulululu could understand just what this meant, because only Lulululu was proficient enough in the esoteric and arcane to understand that this time had been prophesied from long before the first or second or third global conflict in the wake of technological revolution.

It didn’t require a background in magic to understand that a flesh monstrosity was going to kill you. It didn’t require living through three devastating wars and their profound and lasting effects on one’s way of life to understand the magnitude of another one. It would not require a detailed explanation to understand that if the living were being contorted to puppets of malformed flesh that there was a higher power at play. But only Lulululu understood that

“We have six hours.”

“Until what?” Peter asked the only question you can.

“Until the sun goes out.”

“What?” It didn’t matter who spoke. They all felt the question hang tightly in the air around their throats.

“We were all there when the Third Tribulation ended, but I think I had the best connection to the pulse of the Imperium when it happened. I won’t say I’m the best, but I’m one of very few that could tell something had changed when we started mass-distributing augmentation pills.”

Anya did a double take at her coat-pocket. Those pills? Lulululu noticed and clarified.

“The ones we gave the industrial workers. The farmers. The grunts. Our supply is different and tightly controlled.”

“And how do you know that?” Peter interrupted.

“Reach out and touch them. It’s plain to see.” Alissa said from Lulululu’s left, still clutching Alex’s shoulder as his equivalent to one of Raethor’s hip-flies.

Peter raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn’t react, so Lulululu went on.

“They’re powerful. It’s not hard to see that. We never could have become the world’s strongest state without them. But poisoning our organs came at a cost. Even with the reduced lifespan the users suffered we went on: stronger, faster, more productive. So what if you live ten fewer years? You’ll be put in the next batch and your soul will live on. It’s no different to drugs or alcohol from the old days. One more coping mechanism to get by. But now we’re all taking them.”

“And?” Raethor motioned for her to continue.

“And that had an effect on our society. Magic doesn’t come from nowhere— it comes directly-tapped from the pulse of the empire. You might not get exactly what I’m saying by that without having used it at a high level, but let me put it this way— if you poison the well of magic power the output you produce will also be poisoned. Lesser. Weaker. It’s not a problem really because we can always use more or adjust to fall in line with the poison’s new direction, but think about it on a global scale.”

She pointed at the fluorescent lights above them in this cold room with no windows.

“Say we kill all the janitors and maintenance workers. What do you think will happen to the lights?”

“They’ll go out.” Yuna half-shouted from the right hallway. Anya was surprised she could hear their conversation at all.

“Yes! Yes they will.” Lulululu answered.

“But what does that have to do with the sun?” Jesús asked. “Are you stupid? The sun is up there and we’re down here.” Alex glared at him, but Raethor said nothing. Lulululu continued.

“The sun isn’t just there as a material reality. It’s there as a reflection of everything we are. The light has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is here. From us. From life.”

“It’s a ball of plasma in the sky. Clearly you have brain-worms.” said Will.

Lulululu sighed and made a show of her stupidity by slapping her forehead with both hands.

“Oh why didn’t I think of that! Maybe it’s because the sun isn’t just a physical object? Whatever. Figure it out if you’re so smart.”

Raethor could have leveraged his command to alleviate the tension, but further explanation was unimportant. The only question that mattered was “And what can we do about it?”

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“Nothing!” Peter mused.

“More or less.” Lulululu continued, but kept speaking after a short pause despite the fact Peter expected her to admit defeat. “But you know, I was thinking about the contorted bodies.”

“That you haven’t heard about yet?” Dio noted.

“Chock it up to magic.” She seamlessly explained with a mischievous grin.

“I don’t have an explanation for them yet, but if they’re related to the sun we might have a thread to pull.”

“I’m not fully convinced of that.” Peter said, but offered an abridged second explanation of the bodies to the new parties despite that.

“Hmm” she noted in response.

“So at least the people near us have lost their organs as though a necrosis bomb struck them.”

“We don’t know that.” Peter objected, pointing to Anya. “She didn’t get a good look.”

“Still, let’s assume it’s true—”

“No, that wouldn’t be a fair assumption!”

Raethor put a stop to the argument. “Let her speak.”

“If it is, then we’ve reached a critical mass in our country, and its nature has flipped from a being of organs to a being of pure flesh.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Will objected.

“You’re making no sense.” Jessica added, and the rest of them nodded, for once agreeing unanimously that what she had said was meaningless.

“It means we’re no longer capable of sustaining the sun.”

“There’s other countries on this planet.” Dio said, gyrating his hips as though striking a killing blow’s fist-pumping victory pose.

“And they’ve all corrupted themselves.”

“You don’t know that.” Peter objected, once again pointing to her faulty premise. “You’re assuming there’s a common cause to something we don’t know the first thing about, and you’re asserting the sun will go out without direct evidence.”

“Ugh.” She sighed. “Fine, don’t believe me, but what else are we supposed to think?”

“We don’t have to think at all.” Raethor finally asserted.

“We need actionable intel. That’s what comes next.”

And so the room fell silent as they made their way inside and to the walls holding the arms they would soon wield after a long period of disuse. But more importantly, they now had fourteen minds at their disposal to regard the situation. No matter how elite any one of them was, they were all selected for their particular talents and as such were all valuable wellsprings of tactical information.

Fourteen? Raethor noted Melissa’s absence and looked at the nearest hand-dial. The thumb and two fingers were down, making it 18:00 and change with six hours until midnight. There were better ways of telling the time, but these were cheap and posted everywhere, making them useful at a high level.

“Listen up!” he commanded in a loud baritone.

“I’m sure you’ve all been wondering why this base exists, and why we’re here. I’m sure that you’ve often questioned for what possible reason we could have so much funding despite so few staff. I’ll tell you why: it’s because this base exists for one reason and one reason only. To kill the bastards attacking us tonight!”

The soldiers didn’t seem particularly enthused.

“We’ve trained our whole lives to get here. All those miles you’ve run? To get away from the bastards! All those shooting drills? To pop every last fucking bastard skull open by fucking it with your gender-agnostic rifle projectiles!” He did a little hip thrust to emphasize the point, though Anya was not enthused. “Those pills you’re fond of? To give you the strength to endure and the power to destroy every enemy of this grand Imperial State for the continued existence and majesty of our empire, its children, and your families! And now they’ve claimed one of us? Will you let that stand?”

There was a dull murmuring.

“I said will you let that fucking stand?!”

“Shouldn’t we grab our heavy weapons first?” Peter nearly whispered under his breath.

“What was that?!” Raethor shouted, moving closer to the diminutive child that would dare question his superior’s iron decree.

“If this base was established out of concern for this— if they’re so strong shouldn’t we prepare ourselves to fight at full strength?”

Raethor let him finish, but only to back Peter against the wall of oozing flesh behind him.

“We have one order from command: “Don’t leave anyone behind.” That means anyone! Do you hear?”

“Yes but still—”

“No buts. Did you hear me?!” Raethor’s chest was an inch away from Peter’s face, as though he would motorboat the poor soul.

Peter shut his mouth, perhaps acknowledging it was in the best interest of his continued survival, but he wasn’t the only one with objections.

Luther spoke next, perhaps out of obligation to his superiors. “Shouldn’t we at least call the Most High to report the situation and request orders?” Anya was confused. Why would they care about bumfuck nowhere?

“If what Lulululu and Peter have told us is correct, there’s no point in requesting reinforcements, and we’d only be delayed by asking.” Raethor was strangely calm for how incensed he’d seemed by Peter. Perhaps Luther’s special status as one of his hip-flies was playing a role in mediating his temper.

“It couldn’t hurt?”

“We’ve already been waiting long enough, any further delays could spell disaster!” Jessica added, sensing Raethor’s sentiment and trying to score points with him.

“Has your negro brain been damaged?” Jesús said in between Jessica’s pauses in cadence, unable to resist the opportunity to ridicule such an Uncle Tom as Luther. Didn’t he know his place? Being so close to Raethor was a disgrace to their military’s illustrious history and the tens of thousands of…

The details of the sentiment didn’t really matter. Luther understood the words and their implicit meaning all too well. Jesús hated him for the color of his skin, and Raethor did not comment.

“We have to stay unified!” Anya said in a valley-girl accent, objecting to Jesús as forcefully as possible.

“She’s right, you know.” Alex started. “If we splinter we won’t stand a chance.”

“And they’ll pick us off one by one.” Alissa said, finishing the sentence.

“Grab your weapons!” Raethor ordered. “We need to get moving.”

“But Commander,” Yuna began, only just having gotten strapped into the base.

He knew she wanted to stay and monitor the situation from afar, which ordinarily wouldn’t have been a bad idea, but given the severity of the code and his sole mandate as the base’s commanding officer, he couldn’t leave any of them behind.

“Surely this was a bad idea?” Anya thought, but questioning the mandate did not change it.