IV.

The Verdant City – New Houston

Vagari ventured forth at a pace that swore a need for caution and the nagging desire to break it. As he crept forward, he made frequent but brisk stops to listen for any sign of trouble and to remind himself to keep an eye out for the birds’ eerie but welcome glow. An hour had passed before he came upon anything that he recognized in the nature-reclaimed city: a fork in the road. “LEFT: LONGBORROW’S LAKE;” a static voice garbled out from a speaker at the base of a lichen ridden sign as Vagari drew near. “RIGHT: OUR LADY OF RESPITE – MEMORIAL HOSPITAL; EXIT: 15 MILES.”

It came somewhat as a surprise that the city’s A.I. system was still online – or, at very least, its traffic control node was operational. Normally it would have connected to a vehicle’s own A.I. but, curious enough, it seemed to recognize that Vagari was on foot, so it spoke with an external speaker. Most surprising was the fact it recognized him as human enough to talk to, even crouched as he was. That must have meant it had been watching him for quite some time. Vagari couldn’t decide if he found that comforting or worrisome. All the same, he wasn’t about to let such a valuable resource go to waste.

He called out to it but gained no reply. With a frown Vagari made his way to one of the two legs of the overarching sign. The external speaker was probably for emergencies originally, he figured, so the input was likely manual, a closed mic hidden away in a maintenance box. As he suspected, he found a small door at the curbside, just below the speaker. It was marked in faded lettering that read: Maintenance Only – Caution – Dangerous Voltage – Unauthorized Neural Uplinks May Lead to Death or Severe Brain Damage.

It seemed fine at first glance but upon opening it all he found was an abandoned nest, mold, and exposed wiring where the push-to-talk button used to be. Vagari damned his luck and slammed the tiny door shut. “Why do you have to hurt me like that?” He hissed up at the sign. There was no visible eye, but he assumed it was still watching him. “S-h-o-w. M-e. T-h-e. F-a-s-t-e-s-t. R-o-u-t-e,” Vagari articulated, just on the odd chance it could read lips, “please!”

“LE-LE-LEFT: LONGBORROW’S… Run…” the speaker droned in repeat with fits of static, “RIGHT: OUR-OUR-OUR LADY… MEMORIAL HOSPITAL; EXIT… Now!”

Vagari had almost missed it, the other voice veiled in static. The crackle of the ancient speaker had nearly muddled it entirely, but the urgency of the voice broke through. “…LONGBOR… Run,” it pleaded desperately, “LADY O-OF-OF RESPI… Please, run NOW!”

Vagari ran without so much as the hint of question, bursting forward on all four, sprinting down the road like a cheetah on the hunt – or rather, the gazelle it chased. The very second, he took off an eruption of grinding glass replaced all sound in the world above his racing heartbeat. He didn’t look back; he didn’t dare entertain the very thought. No, his eyes were locked straight ahead and upon the emerald birds in the sky there. They were blinking out en masse while they frantically sought out their high-rise shelters. Vagari knew they were screaming, he could see it on their faces, and maybe he was too, but he couldn’t hear it. That sound, that ungodly sharp sound, it was so loud he couldn’t even hear himself think. He felt more than thought now, an urge that screamed – Run! Run! RUN!

As Vagari fled down the road he could feel his side tearing open more and more with each frenzied step, but he couldn’t stop. No, no matter the burning pain, no matter how much blood soaked his clothing, Vagari knew that even the thought of slowing down was courting Death. “OUR LADY OF RESPITE,” the A.I. blared as he bolted past another sign, still nearly a whisper under the clashing sound, “MEM-MEM-MEM… HOSPITAL – FIVE MILES… Hurry! You have to hurry!” Ahead was a fork in the road. “RIGHT: LO…BOR… LAKE… LEFT: LADY… OF… SPITE…” the speaker stammered through a wall of static, “Left, NOW! Go left!”

By time the voice had broken through, Vagari had very nearly missed the opportunity – forcing him to pounce forward and ride the divider onto the offramp. “Left to where?” he wondered frantically, having missed the written sign in his flight. He let the thought fade into that horrible noise; he would just have to trust them. There would be no turning back to check where it was the voice was guiding him, only pressing on – running for his life. So, press he did, running so hard his muscles ached and burned with the same heat and intensity of the inferno at his side. Still, the dread-inducing sound was right behind him.

Vagari could feel it, feel a weight at his back, the pressure of its violent intent. Whatever it was, it wanted him dead – it needed it – and it was getting ever closer to fulfilling that desire. It wasn’t an anomaly, that projected malice promised that much, but all the same, fighting it was out of the question – it was too fast, and Vagari was running out of road. The path he traveled had since grown ragged with width-wide cracks and potholes straight to hell, and then, at the end of it all – nothing. The road suddenly came to an abrupt end, cut in two where some immense thing had carved a path through the city, bringing ruin unto man. Solidity was a hundred feet off in any direction – the road beyond, and the chasm below. The choice was an easy one to make: a hundred feet between him and life, against an inch between him and death. Vagari tore off his cloak and jumped.

Four long insectile wings unfurled from the hump of his back. They instantly turned to blurs as he dove into the freefall, fighting against the wind of his descent. However, with the wound at his side retorn and the exhaustion from the escape, Vagari didn’t have the strength to reach the other side of the bisected roadway. The darkness of the chasm broke way to ground as he made a clumsy descent towards it. All Vagari could do was hope desperately that whatever had been chasing him wouldn’t be there waiting for him – or worst yet, could fly as well. The dread of it nagged at him all the way down, even as he watched the birds relight the sky above.

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Vagari landed with an agonizing thud, collapsing to the ground in exhaustion. The asphalt felt cold against his face as he lay there struggling to catch his breath. It definitely wasn’t one of his more graceful landings, but one he was sure he’d walk away from. Not to be lured into a false sense of security, Vagari pushed away from the welcomed chill of the underpass and back onto his feet. He shifted his gaze to the world above, back to the edge he had just leapt from. Thankfully the monster was gone, whatever it was, just as the eerie green glow of the birds had promised. “Gone in an instant…” Vagari uttered with a breathy curse. “Fast, but next time I’ll be ready.”

His attention quickly turned to his side. Blood soaked his clothing – torn shirt and vest, and all the way through ratty cargo pants, pooling at bare feet. He let loose another curse, followed by half a dozen more as he prodded the area. Vagari’s skin wasn’t by any means delicate, but the strange light-rifle made short work of what could dull knives and deflect small arms fire. He looked back to the severed overpass above. There would be no flying back to course bleeding as he was.

Vagari seethed through clenched teeth and let his wings revert to their compact forms. The insectoid wings rolled up and compressed until all that shown were two sets of tightly wound rainbow cylinders, crowning the chitinous mound of his back. Beneath them, that base of it, were four pits of soft red flesh, though only two of them shown it. The other two housed orbs of distressed bronze that pearled at the heart of them.

Vagari pried one of the orbs from their crater and brought it up to eyelevel. “Fix me…” He ordered, instilling his will into it. It pulsed for a moment before bursting to life in the palm of his hand. Something akin to a flatworm crawled out, up his arm and his side – eager to begin its work. Vagari winced in pain as the worm’s began secreting an enzyme that fused it to his flesh. He could feel its thousand legs jittering inside the wound, a churning feeling and, thankfully, one that quickly faded as the spot grew numb. Carefully Vagari did his best to remove the tatters of his vest and shirt without disturbing the symbiotic drone. He tossed them to the ground where they struck wetly, heavy with blood. His head swam and his vision blurred, but he had to press forward, wherever forward was. Figuring that out was step one, Vagari decided. He scanned his surroundings, trying to piece together a familiar answer in an unfamiliar place.

He found himself in a marsh of sorts. Tall patches of grass grew thick around him, broken up only by the fractured chunks of asphalt in-between. There, acrid water pooled in weatherworn pores. The sourness of the scent alone was warning enough that it was poison, unfit to slake his growing thirst. Vagari seethed as he stared down into one of the pools, glaring at the truth it reflected. It was one he loathed to admit: that he too was an abomination, one of those monstrous things he so desperately wished to save the world from. Without his cloak it was plain to see he was more monster than man: a twist of mottled white skin and umber chitin. He wore that insectoid scale across his arms and legs, up his back and the grotesque mound there. Only the core of him – his groin, chest, and face – showed soft with the ashen skin – the only semblance of mammalian humanity left to his exaggerated form.

Vagari stared with hateful eyes marred with regret, reminded by the symmetries and boons his mutations afforded him that he, unlike most of the twisted kinds born to GOD’s forgotten children, wasn’t born from chaos. He wasn’t a mutant in the traditional sense. He hadn’t been birthed from radiation, or a demon corrupted womb, no. Vagari had chosen his form, willed it to be, struggled and strived for it. He had been gifted his curse for the hand he played in the blasphemous deeds that had brought humanity to its knees. For what he had done, he had been granted that monstrous form and hands forever stained red with the blood of the world.

Vagari swiped at the water, muddying the image with a raking of claws. No, he thought, he couldn’t get lost in that now, he had to keep moving. Vagari pressed forward, stepping lightly and quickly as he pushed through the grass. The long blades lashed at him as he drove them apart. Sharp and lagging, they stuck to him, seemingly leaning in as if they wished to halt his progress. If his skin was any softer, he was sure the blades would cut as well. If the stalking thing hadn’t been bad enough, it seemed like even the plants had designs on eating him alive.

Vagari’s first move was to escape the shadow of the overpass, but as he drudged forward his options were looking slim. Behind him was the tracks of whatever giant thing had divided the roadway – cold depths he wasn’t about to brave. North would take him deeper into the city, into an unknown as dangerous, if not more, than the crevice. Height was the answer, Vagari decided. He needed to return to the road above and reconnect to the A.I. system to find the fastest way out. He had to follow the road, he had to make haste. Soprano was waiting for him, and he couldn’t waste any more time getting lost.

Vagari wondered quietly as he made his way, if it had been the creature that had put an end to previous explorers, or if something worse laid just around the corner. He pushed the dread-inducing thought out of his mind in lieu of thoughts of more pleasant times, times before that fateful night two-hundred years ago when the black helicopter spirited him away from pleasant times all together.

There had been a deli around there, he vaguely recalled, one that he and her had frequented every other weekend when he had worked at the college. They made a bread there with honey and sunflower seeds that was her favorite. Her, how his heart still ached for her, even though he had long since forgotten her name. Vagari remembered that he loved her though, deeply, and truly. And he remembered how painful it had been, leaving her behind, how he had loved his work more than he loved her. She had been his world, his whole world, but he had always needed more than what the world had afforded him, and so he brought an end to that world too.

The strange wound at his side numbly reminded him that he hadn’t acted alone. He had been key to it, but one part of a hundred or so men and women working alongside him. Some of them still lived as he did. He was sure of it, as sure now as he was that the Tall-Man before was one of them or, at very least, connected to them in some way. The more Vagari thought about it the surer he became, that it had to be. Only a handful of people ever knew the book had even existed – a secret that most had taken to their graves. If he knew of it and sought it out, the answer was clear: it could be no one else. But who? Why? Like his forgotten love, their faces were but blurs lost to time. Which one? Vagari could almost see them in his mind, almost feel them even. It didn’t matter in the end, Vagari decided, just like, ultimately, she didn’t matter – that faceless love of lives past. The past had passed, and everything he was had died with it. It only mattered now in how it could help him free hope from Pandora’s Box. No matter what, no matter who stands in his way, he had to reach Soprano and the book. They were the future, a future he wouldn’t let the past catch up with. He would die first, he swore it, and so would they.