Akua had gone back to the village of his birth, Waeyiani. Very few Kahaki lived there. Not since the war kicked off. He preferred solitude so he liked it this way.
He knew his wife would be disgusted by what he had become. She would be horrified by all he had done in her and his children’s name.
He knew he had wronged his own people terribly in his quest to avenge his family. He would never be able to wash his hands of all the blood. His sins were many and stained him too deeply. His desire for vengeance had cost him everything. It cost him his people. It cost him the world he had tried so hard to save. It cost him his soul.
He couldn’t undo what had been done. All he could do now was try and right some wrongs.
For years, Akua had been laying out a treatise on all his grave mistakes, his sins, how to fix all he had broken, and how wrong his creations were.
The enhanced Kahaki were wrong. Very wrong. He actually had to force them to stop killing their own kind along with demons. They saw their own fellow Kahaki as below them, less than them, not their own kind. It was disgusting. That wasn’t what he had wanted. None of this was what he had wanted.
Akua knew where he went wrong in life – he had let hate and his great need for vengeance consume him. Where he went wrong with the enhanced Kahaki wasn’t so easy to pin down.
His secret troops, more than anything else, had to be obedient. They had to follow orders. He didn’t want them to be filled with ambition or to rise up and take over. He wanted them to obey and throw their lives away when ordered to. So, obedience was a key trait to select for in every generation of male experiments.
Since there was such a great need for the experiments to breed so prolifically and quickly, the libidinous of all stock was also an early trait to select for in every generation, even among the females.
And the initial stock were the only ones to receive Akua’s seed. He wasn’t a vain man. He didn’t want his secret troops to be ambitious leaders, but he needed them to be better and more capable than him. Far better and more capable, without any of his flaws. Science would guide the eugenics program, not vanity.
At first, there was only one underground city he used to experiment with stock in. That grew to six. He was a busy man and had many duties so couldn’t spend as much time in charge of the experiments as he wanted. As had always been planned, when the Ele line was capable, they took over.
Akua never informed the Ele that there were six cities breeding enhanced Kahaki. All were conducting different programs with different stock and selecting for different traits.
When certain traits and genetics from one specific city started showing up in new generations of all cities, Akua knew what that meant. There was little he could do about it. The Ele were obedient, but only if obedience didn’t get in the way of their progress. They’d say yes to Akua’s face and then do what they knew was best for the program anyway.
Since the Ele, all the enhanced Kahaki really, practically worshiped him, and the Ele always had the best intentions of the program and Akua’s goals in mind, he stepped aside and allowed it. Then he opened up the program so the Ele of all six cities could work together.
Akua’s role then became that of a producer. Whatever the Ele requested, he would acquire, whether that be items, information, or a teacher from off world.
The Ele line were to be inventors and strategists. The Li were to be the warriors. The Alu were only to be genetically blank breeders and nothing more.
Stock being experimented on didn’t have great lives in these underground cities. Defective or undesirable lines were purged. Akua thought it was mad that the defective stock would just stand there and allow themselves to be slaughtered like cattle, but their obedience was impressive.
The life of most stock was short and brutal. To get the experiments to perform as wanted, they would be rewarded with extra rations, sex, and, on rare occasions, trips to the surface and sunlight.
Akua never thought about the Alu, not since they had become capable of carrying the child of eight different fathers at once. They were exactly what he needed them to be after that – just genetically blank breeders. How they perceived life or their lot in life never once crossed his mind. They didn’t matter. They were just cattle.
To maintain the ruse that he was in charge, when Akua first visited a city and saw Alu being more than just breeders, he didn’t say anything. Not long after, when he visited a city, instead of being greeted by the lead Ele, some Alu would greet him instead.
Akua couldn’t just ask them what had happened. And since the Alu had somehow become his most fanatic followers, he didn’t think it was too harmful. His seed had been used on the initial stock, so the Alu considered him to be their father. They also considered him to be their true husband for some cockamamie reason he never understood.
Akua thought he knew what had happened with the Alu. The breeders decided they wanted to be more, just as their sons were being made into more. For the male experiments, no reward was greater than sex.
Once the Alu realized they controlled the most valuable commodity in the underground cities, they used it to gain and maintain power. They too wanted to be smarter and stronger, and more than that, they wanted to be more beautiful, more desired, increasing the worth of the commodity they controlled.
Unlike the Ele and Li lines, the breeders were never selected for obedience. Like the Li, the Alu weren’t nearly as smart as the Ele, but when it came to arguing, they could run circles around that line.
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The Alu didn’t argue rationally or logically with the Ele. It was better to give them what they demanded to placate them. They had many emotions the Ele didn’t know of or understand, and progress halted when they refused to perform as required.
Little by little, more power and control was handed to the Alu. Their coup was not quick. It was a gradual thing until suddenly they were in complete control.
The culture and society of the underground cities grew stranger and stranger, though Akua was impressed by its adaptability. Once the war commenced with Circle Joyat, the Alu were able to seamlessly shift to what structures, norms, and mores worked best to keep the fight going, no matter how strange or depraved.
And the extreme pride of the enhanced Kahaki wasn’t unwarranted. If Akua’s forces were made of normal Kahaki, the war would’ve been over as soon as it started, but that didn’t excuse the rampant evil and hubris or how his creations viewed their own kind.
He had to make an example. Akua ordered the death of those he caught killing normal Kahaki. He traveled around making it known that such was unacceptable and would result in execution. And his orders weren’t received well. He had hoped he had more control of the Ele and Li. He didn’t. Their loyalty was to their assigned Alu. Nothing would ever change that. No one could ever change that.
If they won the war, Akua truly feared and believed his creations would eventually ignore his order and slaughter all remaining Kahaki.
Akua may have doomed his people to a fate far worse than that which Circle Joyat inflicted upon them. In trying to save his people and free them of demons, Akua seemed to have damned them instead.
And if he was being truthful, his goal had never been to free his people. That would’ve been noble and altruistic. His goal had always been vengeance. The demons destroyed his life and took from him what he cared most about. He had sworn to destroy them regardless of the price.
But now that he knew the actual price, he was horrified by it.
He had to fix things. He had to try. He had to.
Later that night, Akua went to soak his old and tired bones in the warm pond close to his hut. He knew he didn’t have long to live. He had lived far longer than anyone his tier had any right to. His hate had sustained him for so long that now, with all the hate gone, he felt empty, depleted.
His treatise was almost done. He was ready. Ready to face his maker and pay for all his sins. He just hoped his treatise undid some of the damage and lightened the burden his soul carried. He hoped it saved his people.
Akua’s soak was disturbed by giggling. He opened his eyes and saw a dozen beautiful women enter the pool with him. “Hello, Father-Husband,” they all chimed out in their sweet and beautiful voices, bright smiles beaming from their gorgeous faces.
“I’m not either of those things. I wish you’d all stop with that nonsense. It’s sick.”
The women just giggled. Akua sighed and said, “What do you want? Can’t you all just leave me alone. I’ll be dead soon enough.”
The women replied with more giggles. One of them, young, but the oldest looking of the ladies, said, “It’s still part of the ceremony when we come of age, Father-Husband. We’re all your wives still, your Alii. And did you not create us? Are you not the father of us all?”
Before Akua could reply, the same woman continued. “Would you like one of us to whip you, Father-Husband? As we used to. To purge you of your desire.”
“No. I haven’t…I can’t…you all know I can’t. My only desire now is to fix all that I messed up. Why are you here?”
That was met with more giggles. The spokeswoman said, “We’ve read your treatise, Father-Husband. It’s very well written. You make many compelling arguments for change.”
Akua was taken aback. “Really? I don’t like that you’ve looked through my stuff, but if you liked it and think it’ll work, I guess it’s for the best. Do you really think it’ll work? Do you think it’ll fix everything I messed up?
The women all giggled again, but this time it had a much more seductive note to it. “Yes, Father-Husband. It’ll fix everything you’ve messed up, but not as you’ve written it.”
The women all crowded around Akua. He couldn’t tell what manifestations they used, but when they were done, there was nothing left of him. Akua had become one with the pools of Waeyiani.
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Xutn Yaia smiled as she disconnected from the Nano Control System Decision Matrix.
She believed she knew what was going on now. She had no idea why Betrayal would give one of his experiments forbidden knowledge, and not once, but twice. At least, she had assumed it was Betrayal that had done so.
That wasn’t all that important. The experiment called John would never be strong enough to matter, regardless of how much forbidden knowledge he was given. But she did have to worry about him spreading knowledge only certain entities of the core could know of.
Or she had to worry about it before, but no longer.
Not since the fourth cycle had an ancient old one successfully taken a Natural as a vessel, mostly thanks to Xutn Yaia herself. These two new vessels weren’t Naturals. She didn’t know how it was done, or how the experiment named John had his body taken as a vessel, but she was sure that was what happened. And that was one problem off her plate.
In fact, all her problems were now off her plate.
An ancient old one in a vessel could wreak a lot of havoc but not nearly to the extent an ancient old one not in a vessel could. Of course, only part of them was used to control their new bodies. The real them were still out there, but their focus would be on their vessel.
There was no way of knowing which ancient old one had taken over which vessel, but she was certain one was Betrayal. The second vessel was somehow kept a secret from the NCS. Deceit, Treachery, or Guile could’ve done that, but not one of them had previously ever shown much interest in getting in the game. Not that she knew of.
And Xutn Yaia knew a lot. Not everything, but enough.
Since there was no NCS during the fourth cycle, she had only suspected an ancient old one taking over a vessel would be able to block all nanites from reporting its activity. The size of the area, and how thoroughly all nanite transmissions were blocked was a surprise to her.
She literally knew nothing about what the two vessels were up to until days had passed. She wasn’t all that able to piece things together after the nanites started to report true information again either. One vessel was making it hard by having nanites report false information long after it left an area, including that gained from memory dives. She had completely lost track of that one.
And the other, the one in John’s old body too. But the nanites in that area were sending information as they should now. That vessel either escaped to somewhere unknown or was dead. Reports were conflicting.
But that didn’t matter now. She didn’t need to know what the vessels were doing. She didn’t care, and it felt wonderful not to care. To finally not care. Finally.
Xutn Yaia was smiling because if Betrayal was wrapped up in some game with another ancient old one, he’d be too busy to interfere. Or so she hoped. Betrayal had to be controlling one of the vessels. He had to be. She was certain.
Either way, her long watch was almost over. She would start moving forward with her own plans.
Soon, she would be forgiven for all the sacrifices she had made, all her many and great sins, every one of them necessary for the greater good. If she wasn’t forgiven and rewarded with Heaven, and her fate was to suffer in the Beyond for eternity, she’d be going with a lot of company.
If the Beyond was to be her fate, the eighteenth cycle would be the last. She’d either get what she wanted or there’d be nothing left.