I can smell it. The thought almost came out of nowhere, but the stench of rot didn’t. I’ll admit, my trust in Caitlyn had slowly been building over the past however long I’d been down here, but the story she spun about the Kaiju getting closer hadn’t fully settled into my mind yet. Not until the bittersweet scent of it struck me in the face like a fist. I had paused suddenly, and because I was walking amongst the rest of them, they’d bumped into me and asked what was wrong. Now, I like to think of myself as a reasonable person. Someone trying to look out for the little guy.
Back in high school, I’d bump into someone to make sure a discus didn’t clatter them in the head. I’d trip someone up accidentally and catch them, just so the football some jock threw wouldn’t smack into their lunch tray.
Sure, maybe I hadn’t done things the right way, but I did care about getting shit done, no matter how I did it. I had been distracted when they had all been staring at me, distracted because of the thoughts that rushed into my mind, wondering how the hell I was supposed to get these guys to safety if that thing found us down here so soon. If I even could get them all to safety. A part of me almost figured: why bother? Fight the damned thing first and they can all figure themselves out, but I had been that confident the first time too, and I’d only survived because Lucas had been watching me get mauled, there to save me, save the day, and spare my life. He must have been down here at some point in time—at least, that’s what I guessed—but he wasn’t watching me now, and he wasn’t gonna save me. I was on my own in this. Caitlyn wasn’t going to fight and win. None of them could survive against it like this.
It was all in my hands, the responsibility of saving each of their lives. Kind of a shame that I almost lost mine the last time I saw it. Again, that stench slithered down my throat like the burning taste of bitter alcohol. Again I wondered what I should tell them. They waited, staring at me with hollow eyes and gaunt, pale faces. For some reason, I couldn’t really face the fact and tell them that I couldn’t. That I just couldn’t beat something here on Earth. Maybe it was my pride getting in the way of reason, or maybe it was because I was kinda starting to like having people rely on me, have their hopes land squarely on me, that I didn’t really wanna disappoint any of them. I didn’t know why I chose the words that sat on my tongue. Didn’t have a clue why my throat clenched when I was about to speak, or why my tongue decided to twist and turn and change what my brain had to say at the last second.
It wasn’t because I was afraid. That’s what I told myself, and that’s what I believed. When you’ve got lives to save, you can’t really afford to be afraid, because fear leads to mistakes, and mistakes mean the world loses out, especially right now if any of these people die. I’d never been perfect, but I was gonna have to try to be it now.
“It’s nothing,” I said, shrugging. “Just thought I heard a voice in my head. It’s been a thing lately.”
Hey, I might not be the greatest superhero on Earth right now, but at least I wasn’t a liar.
“Is it human?” the smaller girl asked me, as we continued walking, “to hear voices in your heads?”
“Hard to explain,” I muttered. “I don’t really know why I hear them myself. Something to do with selling my soul to some pissy old creature so a witch can help me escape hell.” I waved my hand. “It was a whole thing.”
“Your exploits,” the larger boy said, coughing once, and letting a goblet of blood and saliva splatter on his hand—I almost reached out to steady him, but he waved me away, “are strange, but many for someone so young.”
“She lies,” Rhea muttered, leaning against Thalia. “These are the words of a coward feigning glory.”
“By all means, cousin,” I said. “Tell us all about your many and glorious adventures through space.”
“We’ll be walking in silence for several minutes if she does,” the smaller girl whispered. Rhea may have glared over her shoulder at her, but in return, there was just the smallest sound of snickering from the others, too.
Where we were going now was probably the one room that was going to change everything. I was a sucker for historic pictures. The first time Cleopatra was photographed with her sword of light on her shoulder? Epic. Dad’s first sighting as he hovered over New Olympus, this figure with a billowing cape just in front of the sun and clear blue sky? It had burned itself deep into my mind. I’d always wondered when my moment would be, because I did like the vanity a little, and I’d wanted to ask them all the same question when those pictures were taken: “Did you know?” Did they know that it would be the one that would stick? The picture that would carve itself into history books so thoroughly that it was probably the only part of any exam I got nearly full marks on? And right now, even if there weren’t any photographers here, I could feel something in my gut, in my bones, there bubbling in my blood.
The chamber we were heading to could probably fix any and all of humanity’s sicknesses in seconds.
And right now, we were going to use it to come up with a cure to Ambrosia, and whatever else was making them all so weak and hollow and gaunt with disease. They would all be, soon enough, fully capable Arkathians.
Was my stomach in knots? Well, how couldn’t it be? My head hadn’t been filled with so many bad memories ever since I woke up from my nightmares in Hank’s farmhouse. But they were trusting me to keep them safe, to help them recover and not rot to nothing down here in the dark. It’s getting closer, Ry. I swallowed past the stench that was slowly gluing itself to my tongue. If they trusted me, I should give them the benefit of the doubt.
Trust was getting really hard to come by in my emptying pockets. I was spent, maybe in debt.
But what else does a superhero do apart from keep trying?
Even if it feels like we’re never getting anywhere sometimes.
“Ry’ee,” Icarus said, grabbing my attention. They were all staring. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“No,” I said, not pausing so they didn’t think otherwise. “How long did you say this is gonna take?”
“It can take…what was the word…an…ah, yes, an hour.” Icarus gestured toward the sealed door in front of all of us, almost like a containment zone. A lot like the humans, there was cautionary writing in yellow plastered all over the door and walls that I couldn’t really read all that well. With the system down here still feeding off my electricity, the lights blinked and flickered, dousing us in darkness every other second. I hated having to think about what it would be like fighting the Kaiju in the pitch black. “If all goes smoothly, we would be cured within two Earth hourly periods. Some longer than others, and with the level of power, maybe just a little longer as well.”
“So we’re talking roughly an hour and a half to cook up a cure?” I asked him.
He nodded, smiling weakly. “And then we can pay the humans back a favor.”
Music to my freakin’ ears, I thought, waving him forward. Icarus led the way, and the door groaned, shuddered, almost sounded like it didn’t really feel like opening any time soon as it slid aside. I glanced behind me, at the dark tunnel and the endless series of medical bays that housed the dead bodies of the ones who’d rotted away to carcasses. Each of them was sealed, and funnily enough, these were the only rooms a half-breed could open with just a touch, because more often than not, it was my kind that had to drag out the dead or pile them up in these very rooms if things ever went south. I would have found that kinda funny any other day, how even genetically I was meant for cleaning duty with the dead, but not with the smell in the air, or the very faint vibrations shaking the tunnels we had gotten deeper and deeper inside. Caitlyn had stayed behind, telling the others she’d rather plan.
In truth, she’d stayed back to act as a warning. She’d given me a tiny seed and told me that if it sprouted and blossomed into a glowing flower, then the Kaiju was here, and suddenly, being in a cramped, dingy, dark tunnel full of dead bodies stinking up the place and filling the air with rot wasn’t half as good of an idea as it had been.
“Your problems collided with mine, and now we both have a responsibility to fix it,” she had said.
And, like always with a Rivera, their problem always ended up being something I had to solve.
At least Caitlyn wanted to save the world.
The chamber we entered wasn’t half as large as you’d think it would be. The equivalent down here on Earth would probably be something like the size of a very big classroom, but in place of desks and a chalkboard, they had long black capsules along both sides of the walls. Each of them was open. Each of them could fit a person. The air here smelt stale and unmoved, and a thin layer of dust got kicked up into the air as the lights flickered into life. Not strong enough to make the shadows leave, but just enough make the skeletons slumped in some of the pods shine with dull reflections. A direct translation, I guess, would be to call this place a miracle chamber.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
It really would have to be, looking at the rotting state of some of these corpses.
Andreas, the largest of them, carefully scooped the remains of a body still draped in tattered medical clothing, and set them aside in a neat pile. Even with what little strength he had, little enough to leave him clutching onto the pod so he could stand back up, he took his time making sure their family’s crest didn’t touch the floor, but was instead carefully placed just underneath the person’s skull. With a grunt, he then sat in the now empty pod, his face gaunt, his expression hollow, and this look in his eyes that said so much without him saying anything.
Maybe he didn’t fully trust me, or maybe it was because so many others of us had already died in these pods thinking they’d be saved but nothing happened. Now they were just a pile of bones. No glorious burial, no honor from the Emperor given to their bloodline, and their families would never really know what happened to them. I was desensitized to death a very long time ago, especially when it happened to bad people who did bad things for stupid reasons, but all I could really do was stand there and watch as, despite their frail bodies, they all did the same until every single pod was clear. Rhea was the only one having a hard time, and I thought she’d retaliate when I tried to help her, and was expecting something along the lines of: you’re worsening their death by having your half-breed hands touching their remains. Instead, my cousin remained silent—weak, but silent.
Her’s was the pod furthest away from the entrance, several clear from the others’ pods too.
In some sense, we were alone in the corner of the room, shrouded in shadows and loose pipes dangling through the ceiling. There’d been battle here, too, or maybe decay and time had just made this place look so old.
“What’re you doing?” she said hoarsely, her voice quiet. “You’re arranging the bones wrong.”
“It’s not like anyone on that planet allowed me to watch you guys do this, you know.”
“Fine,” she hissed, then coughed loud enough to make me flinch. She’s starting to smell like the Kaiju. “Just watch what I’m doing, we’ll be done with this faster if you learn. The feet, the shins, the thighs, and then the pelvis.” She arranged them, then waited, looking at me expectantly. I followed her orders with the dead person in the pod closest to hers, kneeling just like she did, too, and feeling a little like the kids who stacked rocks, trying to see who could get theirs to be highest before they came crashing down. Except now we were whispering between ourselves, and the brittle brown bones of the dead were our rocks. Next came the arms on either side, and then the ribcage—the spine in the middle of it, and the skull finally resting above it all. If I could find the crest, she said, then I should put it underneath their ribcage close to where their heart would be. And then it was time to pray.
I felt like we were wasting time doing this, and all the others were finished—but there’s a way of doing things on that planet, even if it quite literally is life and death, that needed to be dealt with first. So I watched Rhea mumble and mutter in a language that had long since died in my throat, sitting there on my knees in front of a pile of bones that I’d never known, that would probably hate my guts for being this close to them if they were alive.
But I had the sense of mind not to interrupt her, and the sense of it, too, to help her stand back up.
The others were already sitting in their pods, waiting. Rhea was heavy against me, like a sack of dead weight just waiting to be dropped. She sat with a groan, laying down immediately on the hard cushioned tube. I really had nothing else to say to her, watching as she shut her eyes and shivered, sweat gleaming on her brow and her fingers clenched tightly in a fist over her stomach. There was a weird lump in my throat as I stood there beside her, because I didn’t know what else I was meant to do. Rhea didn’t want my comfort or whatever I could say to encourage her to stay alive and kicking. Hell, a part of me was sure that her hate for me would keep her going.
Before I could leave and ask Icarus what came next, she grabbed my hand. Her grip was weak, like a little kid who just lost their mom at a store. “My father,” she whispered, so quietly she was hardly moving her lips.
“What about him?” I asked.
“And yours,” she said, finally opening her eyes. My breaths caught in my throat, stopping short of a gasp, because her eyes weren’t entirely golden anymore, but a flickering flash of light that revealed the green underneath.
“Yeah,” I said, crouching so she wouldn’t have to look up. “What about them, Rhea? I need to start—”
“How were they buried?”
I paused in silence for a moment, not sure of what to say. Looking at her like this, with blood trickling down her nose and cresting her parted lips…Gods, Rhea, why’d you have to be such an asshole when we were kids?
“Like kings,” I lied. “Well, your dad was in private. He had his believers, you know. Candlelight vigils, shrines, things like that all over the city. A lot of people hated seeing them, and you can’t blame them either.”
“Your father got the burial he always wanted,” she murmured, turning to look up at the ceiling. “He died a hero whilst my own died like a dog to you humans. But I suppose I do understand it now, the hatred, the anger, but I…I would like to ask you a favor.” Those last few words came out as a choke. She shut her eyes, then whispered in my ear. My jaw tensed, and I nearly wanted to tell her she was ridiculous, maybe stupid, but she’d already passed out. Her grip had loosened, and now her hand hung above mine, twitching, shaking, just like her weakening heart.
I stood, thought, I can only do that if you’re alive to see it, and turned toward Icarus. “What’s next?”
“The panel behind you,” he said, pointing just over my shoulder to an array of screens and what would kind of be a keyboard and a scattering of so many buttons it was hard to keep track of. “It controls the operations of these pods and monitors each of their…um…” He pinched his nose, and I saw his eyes flicker. “Sorry, I briefly lost my way of thinking. There is an override code to bypass the main security system, and from then onward, you’ll have to allow a sample of your blood to be taken by the machine. Once that’s concluded, you’ll simply have to allow it to do what it has to do.” He smiled at me, blood shining on his teeth in the damp light. “That’s all.”
“Sounds simple, but I can’t really read and write that well if you forgot.”
He helped me out through a very long and arduous trial and error of which buttons I should press on which keyboard and at which time. It was like learning how to spell my name all over again, but this time, the sounds of the hearts beating around me were slowing, and the stench of death slowly making its way toward us was growing worse. The seed still hadn’t floured yet, and each grating click of the keys was like a second wasted. I had to force myself to memorize the passcode of ten keys, make sure I got them right for when they were all in relative cryo sleep in the pods. The screens were on, the darkness was tinted blue, and the words scrolling along the curved glass made almost no sense to me, but all I had to remember was the sequence, the numbers, the letters, the symbols, and how exactly I’ll be giving them a sample of my blood for the system to analyze and make better for each of them.
No pressure, Ry. You’ve got this. Like memorizing your email password.
Except if I forgot it, there wasn’t anyone who could help me remember.
But I smiled and gave them all a thumbs up. In return, Icarus finally rested; Andreas nodded slightly before lying back down; Thalia glanced at Rhea once more, back at me, then shut her eyes, choosing to lie on her side so she was facing my cousin; the smaller girl—Aster, was her name, I think—gave me a thumbs up too before she lowered her arm and settled into the pod. I turned back around and waited for the sound of each pod to seal shut.
Then I stood motionless for a moment, feeling as the tunnel shuddered and as the air began to reek.
The seed was still a seed, so I opened my eyes and breathed slowly out of my mouth. Here goes. I took my time punching in the override code, and got it right the second time of asking. Like the tiny gadget nurses used to take your blood sugar, a small needle broke free from a syringe not too far from me from the side of the panel. Icarus had said it wouldn’t be too painful, but letting that thing stab my bicep and drink a test tube’s worth of my blood left me feeling woozy and a little sick. When the syringe slipped out of me, its barbed end came loose with a bit of my flesh and a touch of what I hoped to the gods wasn’t a bit of my muscle. It retracted into the array of wires and buttons and keys, the bulged screens flashed for several moments, and I briefly thought it hadn’t worked at first.
It didn’t take long for other similar needles to slide into everyone else’s arms, injecting them with an odd clear fluid the machine had synthesized into capsules no bigger than a few water bottles. I guess that’s it then.
This thing that looked like water, this thing I peered at and tapped against, could cure us of Ambrosia. Damn near make us invulnerable, too. A part of me wanted to stay here, maybe get inside one of the pods and do the same, maybe to come up with a cure for my own problems, too, as I wondered why the hell dad hadn’t thought of using this thing to protect himself against Lucas and Ambrosia. But maybe it was because Lucas had tricked him into thinking he wasn’t a threat, either. At the end of the day, dad was dad, and Shrike was just a human in a dark costume playing pretend. He was never a real threat to him, but Ambrosia definitely was, and so was whoever had come up with it, anyway. But if this system could cure almost anything on the planet, defeat any virus and create any cure for anytone, antibodies to everything the universe had to throw its way, then wouldn't that also mean…
I felt something press against my thigh, something small and stone-like.
My heart skipped a beat, and my throat instantly dried as I rose. Now on my feet, I felt every single vibration go through the soles of my boots and into my body, like the resonating heartbeat of some hellish creature trapped deep in the Earth. I slid my hand into my suit and pulled out the seed, cupping it gently on my palm.
I saw the light slipping through the gaps between my fingers before I saw the flower blossoming on my hand. I stood there frozen, barely breathing, with a countdown still showing roughly an hour and thirty blinking on the screens to my right, and the screeching, echoing, bellowing sounds of something distant and devilish and monstrous only getting nearer by the second. I stared at the plant, at its curling petals and soft golden light, and tried to swallow my fear, my agony, because there were people relying on me down here as much as they were up there on the surface, too. Right then, as I gently placed the glowing flower on the control panel and zipped up my suit, the tiny little lightning bolt Cleopatra had given me hadn’t felt so cold pressing against my chest before.
Almost like the tip of an executioner’s blade grazing my throat, biting harder into my skin as I walked down the dark tunnel, leaving the miracle chamber, with my boots echoing through the empty, rotting silence.
Round two, you ugly bastard, I thought. Now I’ve actually got shit to lose and everything to gain.