Chapter 8 - Unstab my Heart

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Proxis 3 - Before Integration:

For the second time in the night, I was charging headfirst into the wind behind the rest of my party. They were going low and slow this time, which I appreciated. Their sedate, stealthy pace was still enough to have my lungs burning.

It would be a slow dawn, a gradual rise in ambient light levels that would extinguish the weakest of the stars. That gave us some time but not so much that we could take things easy.

The ridge we were on now was more exposed. Dust and small pebbles scoured our skin, forcing us to don our masks and slip on our gloves before we were even close to the enemy camp.

Getting here was a slow, tense process. As I’d suspected, the source of the mist was a river, guarded jealously by plant life, covering the entirety of the water with green. A thick carpet of floating strawlops gave the river the look of a calm oasis in the middle of the desert, but that was an illusion. The greenery wasn’t thick enough to bear any of our weight, and the current was quick. We had to use the meter thick tree roots as bridges, and we had to find them all by feel. By the time we were across and heading up the opposite ridge, we were soaked to the bone and our clothes a few pounds heavier.

We were all uniformly brown with stuck on mud by the time we were up top, camouflaging us as we drew up to the camp. Their lights were mostly extinguished, and all but the lookouts were asleep. There was a slight rise in the terrain in front of us, just a shadow against the night sky unless you knew what you were looking for, but we knew this is where the lookout would be.

Vince held his arm up and gestured to get down. I sank to the ground amongst the bristly scrub, contorting myself to not jostle the plants and give away my position. My arm, stretched out in front of me, was nearly perfect in its camouflage, blending into the rocks and sand like I was made of the stuff. Around me, everyone else disappeared and became one with the mountain as well.

We waited there for a long while, long enough for my heart to slow down and my brain to engage again. If we were spotted by the lookout, we’d be screwed. There would be a mad dash to get away, but the reavers had hover bikes and range and drones and Constance knew what else. Would any of us make it? What was I even doing here? How did I think I could do this?

A whistle, soft in the wind. So soft, I almost thought I’d imagined it. Then the boy next to me rose into a crouch and started forward, up the hill. I followed suit.

Everyone gathered at the top of the hill around Vince and Chris who were hunched over something.

A body.

It had the face of a young man, stubble on his narrow jaw, his mouth open in a silent scream. An acrid taste rose in the back of my throat, and I fought not to be sick.

The dead man was about my height. His choice of thick, dusty leathers and hard armor plating on the torso and shoulders gave him a stocky figure like a yard worker with a penchant for drinking. His eyes seemed comically big thanks to the insect-like spherical goggles he wore. His weapon, still strapped to his shoulder but now angled awkwardly above his head was an oblong shaped lasrifle. Though I didn’t have much experience with Colonial weapons, I thought the chassis appeared manufactured, while the rest was slapdash as hell, sporting a stubby grip and rubber coolant tubes jacked into the weapons guts and secured with tape . On the man’s wrist was some kind of display cuff, smooth and shiny, but the screen was dead.

Chris looked as sick as I felt, goggles off, eyes wide and unfocused, holding his bloody knife in a shaking hand.

Seeing the boy in distress, Vince reached over and put a hand on Chris’ wrist, leaning in to make eye contact. “Hey. You did good,” Vince cooed as he slid his hand forward and got his own grip on the knife. Chris was clutching the weapon hard. Even in the dark, I could see his knuckles were white. “You did your part, Chris. Let’s clean the blade, yeah?”

Chris blinked, refocusing, coming back to us. Slowly, his fingers loosened their death grip on the knife’s handle, allowing Vince to take it and wipe it on the dead man’s clothes. Once the blood was gone, Vince held it there, staring at it for a moment before deciding to give it back. Chris took it without looking, sheathing it again without much conscious thought.

Nodding, Vince got us moving again. “Chris is going to stay here with Brendon on overwatch. Chris, watch Brendon’s back.”

Chris’ head twitched in the slightest of nods, which we would just have to accept as agreement.

“The rest of you, stick to the plan,” Vince continued, turning to each of us one by one. “The generator has to go. It has to go.”

A sudden lightning flash of pain split my skull like an injection of ice water directly into my brain. I bowed my head and collapsed in on myself, curling up like a dying insect and nearly tipping myself forward onto the corpse, but then the moment was gone. The pain seemed to wane, shrinking, diminishing until it was just a dull ache behind my eyes. I came back to myself staring at the dead man’s blank wrist display with little multicolored fractals dancing across my vision.

Not now. What the hell?

When I looked up, the group was already half way down the hill and nearly to the ring of illumination cast by the generator’s running lights. To my side, Brendon was settling down on his stomach and unwrapping the protective furs on his dad’s lasrifle. Chris was next to him. His knife wasn’t in his hand anymore, but his hands shook in his lap as he stared down at the camp, unblinking.

I made to follow the group, getting to one knee, but something made me stop and look down again at the dead man, his gear, specifically the dead wrist cuff. Something about it tickled that special part of my brain that overrode good sense a lot of the time, the one that kept me up at night playing old Earth games or trading for heretical tech on the sly so I could crack it open.

Something was wrong here. I reached down and grabbed the lookout’s arm.

Not a mark on it. Chris took him down fast, probably at the throat or through the heart.

There were no buttons or other visible hardware anywhere on the device. Any panels to access the guts were probably on the inside of the cuff. I resisted the desire to take the thing off the arm, though. If there were some kind of security feature to prevent it from being stolen, that could complicate things.

“Why are you wearing dead tech, buddy?” I whispered.

The dead man didn’t answer. His poker face was impenetrable as well, though I considered the tinted goggles tantamount to cheating.

The seed of something terrifying began to germinate in my brain.

Oh.

With twitching fingers I reached up to the man’s face and removed the goggles.

The night was extremely dark this time of the month. Therefore, before I even flipped the goggles around, the faint glow of a heads up display cast the corpse’s wide eyed expression in a ghoulish blue.

Oh…. shit.

I put the goggles on, slipping them over my own. The world lit up in a cascade of bright blue, so bright it stung my dark attuned eyes. Ambient radiation sparked and swirled in the air like a summer rain. Brendon and Chris stared down at the camp with black eyes, directly into a wall of pulsing blue stretched between strobing pylons, pylons that formed a perimeter fence around the camp.

Beyond that, the camp stood bright in my vision. The tents were a neon sort of white against the dull background of the dirt. Strobing lights trailed up a spindly, wobbling cable tethered to an armored tractor in the center of camp. I followed the cable upward, high into the sky where a glider drone bobbed on the air currents. Previously invisible search lights shone down from the underbelly of the machine, two searching and one fixed directly on the gaggle of boys around the generator.

I sprang to my feet, a wordless cry crawling out of my open mouth. As I took off, I spared a look down at the lookout’s wrist tech again. Through the goggles, the cuff’s screen flashed frantically: BREACH. BREACH. BREACH.

Oh SHIT!

Then I was moving, full sprint down the hill through the infrared security fence. “They know!” I shouted over my shoulder at our overwatch. The wind howled past me drowning out whatever their reply had been.

When I caught up to the group, they were already gathered around the generator’s trailer, grunting and swearing as they tried to realign the angle of the wheels. Vince, along with two others were at the neck of the trailer, arms and backs straining to drag the monster machine into place. The ice pick in my head scraped around in the inside of my skull in time with my steps and seemed to hit something in the part of my brain that housed my volume control, because when I called to the others, my voice was shrill, bordering on panicked.

“They’re coming!” I shouted. “They know!”

All activity stopped for a second as every head turned toward me.

“Shut up. You’re going to get us caught.” Mel growled through clenched teeth. He had a hand underneath the wheel housing closest to me, and he was pulling for all he was worth to try to get the behemoth to move. This close to the generator, I realized how I’d underestimated its size. They must pull this thing with something big.

I got Vince’s attention, which was all I needed. “What is it, Ryan?”

I ran over to stand next to him and tried to get my voice under control “We’re caught. They have a silent alarm and a drone.”

Fear touched Vince’s eyes for an instant, but then the moment passed, the fear giving way to stubborn determination. “We have to finish it. If we run now, they’ll just chase us down.”

“We can steal the bikes.” I turned to four tethered up to the generator, one of which still had its atmo thruster half disassembled.

“Can you do that? How fast?” Vince asked, doubt evident in his tone.

I groaned. He was right. I didn’t know enough about Colonial tech to hotwire four hover bikes before we got shot. I’d be lucky to figure out one if given the rest of the night.

“Fine!” I was back to shouting now. It just felt natural at this point. My headache threatened to split my skull in two. “Fine!” I shouted again, bounding away from Vince and heading to the wheel housing, crouching down and shoving Mel to the side as I felt around next to the wheel.

“Hey! Vince, call your dog before I have to slap him!” Mel shouted from behind me, but I wasn’t listening. My fingers found what I was looking for: the brake line. I pulled it out, so I could see it, then I drew out my multitool, opened the blade with my teeth and severed the hydraulic line. Cold, clear liquid streamed out of the tube and down my hands.

That’s when Mel hauled me up and threw me. I spun around in the air and landed on my stomach, all my air leaving me in a whoosh.

I gasped, pushing myself up to get on my knees, my hand balled into an angry fist. Mel wasn’t paying me any mind, though. He was back in position, pulling hard with the rest. The trailer spun in place slowly, maybe an inch at a time.

It would take time for the fluid to fully drain from the braking system. Until then, I had more to do. I got to my feet and stumbled toward my next goal, sucking in shallow gasps of air as I went. Tough guys didn’t have time to catch their breath.

Got no time to breathe. I’ll breathe when I’m dead.

“Hey! It’s starting to move!” I heard faintly from behind me.

A mad, hysterical giggle bubbled up out of my throat. We were all going to die.

The iron spike in my head chose to reassert itself at that point, but my brain was overloaded. I just didn’t have the capacity to stop and pay any attention to my head or my sore muscles or my wounded pride.

I knew where the firepit was thanks to our scouting earlier, but my shiny new goggles would have let me know regardless. It was a pulsing, flickering beacon for me, the only one at ground level that I could see. The camp was quiet still, quiet enough that one could almost forget the situation. The habs I passed were deathly quiet, like there was no one inside at all. I knew better though. No doubt they were waiting for their chance to spring their trap all at once instead of trickling out of their shelters and alerting their guests before it was time. The thought occurred to me to knock out a few of their supports, but I couldn’t imagine that being more than an inconvenience to the occupants as they shuffled their way to the doors.

No. The only way I was going to create a sufficient distraction was right in front of me. The fire had burned down over the night, but it still gave off plenty of heat, noticeable even in the wind.

They’d used super-dense carbon bricks that lasted for extended amounts of time and didn’t give off more than a few sparks as they burned. Smart if you like your camp not on fire. Unfortunately, their camp needed to be on fire.

I slipped the pack from my shoulders, easing it down into the dirt at my feet right at the edge of the firepit. I needed to time this right. I turned my head to check the others’ progress, but I couldn’t see them from here.

That’s when something hard and cold pressed into the back of my neck.

I froze.

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“Get down on your knees, kid, away from the bag,” A gravelly voice ordered from behind me. “I see you touch it, and I’ll plug you. Nod if you understand.”

Bright blue flooded my vision through the enhanced vision of the goggles, causing a sympathetic reaction from the spikes in my brain. I winced, looking up to see one of the searchlights was pointed directly at me now.

My captor didn’t like me doing that one bit. Faster than I could react, he hit me squarely in the temple with something hard. I flopped bonelessly down onto my knees, just like the guy wanted. Rough hands ripped my goggles off my head, bringing the world back to the appropriate level of light. Spots floated in my vision, and my ears rang.

“Stay down and stay quiet,” the voice ordered.

It sounded like an excellent idea, the way my vision swam. If I’d had anything in my stomach, I might have lost it.

The sound of metal scraping on gravel saved me. The trailer the other boys had been trying to roll toward the cliff must have hit something on the way over, making the most horrific screeching sound, the kind that sounded expensive and painful even if the thing in question wasn’t yours. Then that screech was followed by an echoing *BOOM* that filled the valley and rattled my teeth.

“What th-”

I shot to my feet, dizzy and nauseous, but I had the wherewithal to pause and do my best mule kick back into my captor. I hit something and heard a sort of squawk from the man, but I didn’t pause to see what I’d done. I kicked my pack into the fire. Sparks blazed up out of the pit and shot off into the wind. Then I was running into the dark.

My night vision was shot thanks to the goggles that I’d now lost, but I knew I couldn’t stay where I was. I sprinted forward, just hoping to get some distance and space to figure out the next part of my plan.

*CRACK* *CRACK* Two lasrounds flew past me to burn ugly, smoking holes into the hab I was about to use as cover. Voices cried out in alarm from inside. I changed course but never broke stride, bounding, gazelle-like, over hab anchors and diving past opening hab doors. Without my pack I was much faster. I might even be able to make it to-

*CRACK* *CRACK* More lasrounds, their tempo slower this time, more deliberate. The first two went wide into the dark.

*CRACK*

They say when you’re hit by laser type weapons, the heat boils the blood and sears the nerves too quickly for the trauma to be truly appreciated. I disagree.

One second, I was running for my life, pumping my legs and dodging lasfire, then suddenly my right leg collapsed, and my body did a sort of involuntary flop and roll maneuver. When I came to a stop, my leg felt like it was dissolving from the inside out. I held onto the sizzling holes in my quadricep and stifled a scream.

Back the way I’d come, armed and armored reavers were pouring from their habs, their need for subterfuge gone now that gunfire had been exchanged.

*FWOOSH* *BOOM* A massive ball of liquid fire erupted from the center of the camp, blown high into the air by the long-awaited explosion of my promegel pack. Proxis’ energetic wind currents took it from there, providing the flames with oxygen and sweeping the sticky yellow gel to cover half of the camp, specifically, the half that was down wind. It was a tidal wave of conflagration, one that I was hoping to be much farther away from before it went off.

The wall of fire swept in my general direction, luckily not directly towards me. Though it hurt my wounded body, I curled into a ball and rolled, doing my best to shield myself behind one of the nearby habs. Blistering heat blew across my back and stole the oxygen from the air with a *woosh* Then the initial wave was past.

Around me, little globs of unignited gel splatted onto the roofs of habs or down into the dirt with weighty plops.

Everything was on fire. People were shouting.

Lasfire echoed in the night in fits and starts, mingled with the sound of steel ringing on steel. Vince and the others were fighting. Battle cries replaced the screams of the burned. Shouts and orders I didn’t understand.

A pair of reavers found me sometime after things quieted down, and I was forced to hobble between the two of them until we came back to the center of camp, where the other boys knelt in the blackened dirt, hands bound and under guard. Several were in the process of being beaten and cursed even as they sat there silently. There were too few of us here. As they dragged me past, I frantically searched for Vince in the group of bruised and bloody faces.

Please let him be alive.

My two escorts lined me up next to the rest and kicked my good knee out from under me to force me down. I wasn’t bound like the rest.

The reavers hurled curses at us and rained blows down on those of us that showed even a spark of defiance. Some of us cried out. Others wept.

Then the atmosphere changed. All voices went silent, even those of the reavers.

Heavy footsteps clomped through the gravel behind us accompanied by the clank of metal. What came into the circle of firelight was a hulking, black figure, clad from head to toe in thick plated armor. Its pace was slow, methodical, almost lazy, its boots thunking down onto the gravel and crushing the pebbles into dust. Its arms and legs were thick as tree trunks, the plates of its segmented armor making grinding, scraping sounds that set my teeth on edge. The figure’s broad shoulders and deep barrel chest gave it the look of a walking tank instead of a man. Its gauntleted hand hung on the handle of an automatic with a barrel as thick as my thumb. The black winged helmet it wore had no visor or slits, but we heard its voice all the same.

Barrow.

“How many more?” It asked with a voice deep and clear.

No one answered, whether too brave or too afraid to speak.

Barrow let the question hang for a moment, but when it became apparent no one was talking he took a different tack. He strode down the line where we knelt. He had a deliberate, almost sluggish type of walk, like every step was an imposition.

He stopped in front of Mel, crouching down to get close to the boy’s face.

“How many more of you are there?” Barrow asked again.

Mel, for the first time in his life, stayed quiet when challenged, Constance bless him.

It cost him his life.

Barrow's hand shot out faster than a striking snake and took hold of Mel’s face, the strong, armored fingers wrapping around the top of Mel’s skull. Then Barrow straightened, standing up to his full height and bringing Mel with him, the boy’s feet dangling just above the ground.

Mel cried out, muffled against the palm of Barrow’s hand. He fought to free his arms from behind his back. The bonds were strong, though, and his feet kicked desperately as the weight of his heavily muscled body wrenched his neck painfully with every second. Barrow’s arm didn’t move more than you might expect the branch of an ancient tree to move, even as Mel kicked at him and tried to squirm. It took a full minute for Mel to stop struggling.

A wave of something cold passed through me. The ice in my brain crackled.

Barrow dropped the body like a discarded garment and took a step to the right, crouching down in front of the next boy. “How many more?”

“Stop!” Relief washed over me only to be replaced by cold terror as Vince’s voice shouted over the roaring wind. “This is all of us, and this was my plan.”

Barrow stood up slowly and plodded over to Vince, crouching down to his level like he did with Mel.

“Am I addressing the man called Barrow?” Vince asked, loudly enough to be heard by us all.

“And what if you are?” Barrow asked in return.

“I-” Vince’s confidence seemed to waiver staring into that blank helm, but he found his voice again quickly. “I challenge you. For the freedom of my men here.”

Barrow leaned in until Vince had to look up to keep “eye” contact as the big tank loomed over. “A fine idea if you were an Exotic,” Barrow stated. “I could use the experience, but I can sense that you’re not one of us.”

Barrow stood up again and addressed the rest of us.

“You made a fatal mistake, children, in not going for the kill when you had the chance. Your elders failed to impress this lesson upon you.”

“Killing someone in their sleep is something a reaver would do,” Vince shot back. “Not one of the Chosen. Not one of us.”

“Chosen…” Barrow mused, sounding out both syllables slowly, going deathly still for a long minute. When he continued, his tone had changed noticeably. He sounded pensive, far away. “Any man worth killing is worth killing in his sleep, boy. Your clan has been too long at peace if they’ve forgotten that.”

With a sharp *CRACK* and a red flash that wreathed Barrow in light, the Exotic stumbled forward a singular step, catching himself with his black armored boot. Then he was gone, the forward rush of displaced air the only clue that he’d been there at all. There was a heavy thud we could hear even over the wind and the crackling flames, a desperate scream, cut short. Then silence.

A long, tense few minutes later, Barrow came back into the circle of firelight. In his hands he held what was left of Brendon’s lasrifle, snapped in half. The bulky artifact looked like a toy in the Exotic’s hand.

“Well planned. Well struck.” He looked down at the remains of the lasgun. “Now you can die knowing you tried everything.”

Everything was wrong. Something had to happen. Something needed to change, or this would be it. Panic filled my mind. Every thought that raced through my head came with a thousand needles of ice.

Vince rose to his feet and turned to address us, his natural gravity drawing all of us in as it always did. “Our people live another day, and he can’t take that from us. The Clan lives on, and Constance will judge us worthy.”

“If your clan was worth a damn, they would be here instead of their children,” Barrow replied as he strode over to Vince calmly like he was taking in the weather.

“The System will judge us worthy!” Vince shouted defiantly.

There was a sword in Barrow’s hand. He didn’t draw it from anywhere. It was suddenly just there. It was as long as I was tall, thick as my wrist, and the ambient light around the blade died on contact with the metal.

Barrow placed the tip against Vince’s chest. The boy raised his chin defiantly to look the Exotic in the eye. The big man nodded, almost respectfully. “In a just universe, the System would have chosen you.”

Then he ran the blade through Vince’s heart.

Someone screamed. I think it might have been me.

Vince just hung there, head slumped, arms behind him.

I was up and moving, red rage tinting my vision blurred by tears, that primal, desperate scream still leaving my body. I leapt at the man who just killed my only friend in the world.

Barrow caught me casually by the throat with his free hand. I swung my fist wildly, trying to strike something that would hurt the man, but the Exotic’s arm was too long. I was shouting, cursing, gibbering like a demon, scratching at the Exotic’s impenetrable armor with cracking, bleeding nails.

Eventually, I had to breathe in, and when I did, I turned to Vince just as he died.

He seemed to diminish in that moment, when the light finally left his eyes. His eyes sunk back into his head and his skin turned ashen. His frame grew gaunt, and his body collapsed in on itself like a dead insect husk left in the sun for weeks.

When Barrow withdrew his blade, Vince’s body fell to the ground lighter than it should have been.

Barrow’s evil sword was at my chest now, his faceless helmet staring into me.

“There is no divine hand. No blessed ancestors judging our deeds.”

With a wet pop, the blade pierced my chest cavity and took me through the heart, just as it did Vince.

“You people pray to a rotting corpse.”

Life left me quickly, almost rushing out of my chest. Something gave way in my skull, finally giving me some relief from the migraine. I slumped forward as my vision dimmed, but not before taking one last shot at the man’s face.

Somehow, this one connected. My fist hit with a meaty *GONG* accompanied by the sound of my breaking bones.

Wrath.

The world stopped.

The fractals were back, dancing around in my vision, a jumbled mess of…

Wait.

Something snapped into place.

Welcome to the System, Ryan Kotes. Your integration is the first of many steps on the path to ascension. Please stand by for initial assessment.

I blinked, or at least I tried to. Nothing was working. My fist was frozen mid strike on Barrow’s ‘face.’ I could even see the shock of the impact as it traveled up my arm. The pain was still there from being impaled and from my broken hand, though it was a distant thing. I could tell it was there, but it was muted.

Assessment commencing…

What the hell did I have to offer the System?

The Constance Clan had been waiting for generations for the next Exotic to appear in their bloodline. They built their entire lives around honing their bodies and minds to perfection, training their kids from birth to fight, and… What? The System chose me? The defective guy that wasn’t allowed to train?

My mind felt clearer than it had been a few heartbeats ago, and the questions piled up.

Why not any of the paragons of physicality literally kneeling a few feet from me?

Why not Vince?

Despair bubbled up again from the dark places of my mind, but I forced it back. I needed a clear mind. People talked about this moment of first contact with the System like it was a religious experience, and I should at least try to be present for it.

Error: Bodily Integrity Compromised. Anomalous material detected…

In all fairness, there was a sword through my chest. Hopefully the System wouldn’t hold that against me.

Error: Spiritual Integrity Compromised. Anomalous presence detected…

That was as or more concerning than the previous message. What was draining my spirit?

The text started to fly by, faster than I could absorb its meaning:

Assessment complete.

Ryan Kotes

HP: 1/23

MP: 0

Body: 1 (Amputation: -3, Physical Trauma: -6)

Mind: 9 (Blood Loss: -1, Concussion: -2)

Spirit: 7: (External Drain: -2)

Initiating Emergency Protocol: Life Preservation…

Eligible Classes: 4,602

List of eligible classes curated due to Emergency Protocol: Life Preservation.

Eligible Classes:

Animator (Uncommon)

End of list.

Initiating Class transition.

Integrating. There will be some discomfort as your body is modified to synergize with your class…

What?

I… No. Everything… collapsed in on itself. One second, everything was frozen in time, and all the pain of dying was a distant worry, but then the world dissolved. My broken fist, my arm, my body, the sword through my heart, even the light around me collapsed around each other, broken down at a fundamental level and fused with blazing, blasting sun-fire.

I felt all of it. Whatever was keeping me from experiencing pain in the time stop, it wasn’t working anymore. I felt myself melt away, scoured and disintegrated, then condensed. Then there was nothing except a single mote of dim light that was, at once, so small yet infinitely complex and unique. I saw it against the massive, swirling chaos of the cosmos.

Then there was a rushing sensation, the kind you get when you fall out of your bunk in your sleep, just before you hit the ground.

The world came back into focus, and time resumed its normal flow. I didn’t come back the same way I left.

I had the sensation of floating. The world seemed narrower, everything closer.

No. Wait. One of my eyes was shut. That side of my face felt hot and too big.

Spots danced in what vision I still had, blurred as it was.

Everything sounded tinny, like it was being projected through a can on a string. I had a hard time making out individual words.

-”id you do?!”

Barrow’s fist smashed into the swollen side of my face.

I… blinked.

What?

The rushing sound in my ears abated, letting the sounds of utter chaos reach my brain. Gunfire. Shouting. Explosions. Engines. It was a cacophony of violent action.

I tried to turn my head, but Barrow had me by the throat. I wasn’t floating so much as being held in the air and beaten to death.

“What did you do?!” Barrow erupted. His voice was strained, manic.

He hit me again, and the world flashed white.

“What have you done to me?!” The man practically screamed at me.

Process interrupted.

Protocol: Life Preservation: Synthesizing Core from available material…

Synthesis Complete.

Bodily integrity restored.

Integration complete.

Initiating travel to class tutorial. Stand by…

Everything rushed away from me, or maybe I rushed away from everything else.

Then I was gone.