Lightning crawled in stuttering bursts across the starry expanse of night, as if the emptiness itself was cracking itself open.
What had once been the size of a distant moon now covered a quarter of the horizon. Radiant explosions of light tore gouges across the sky, but it was still millions of miles away from the atmosphere.
The scar’s growth was silent. And it would kill her quietly.
Her wounds were healed, mostly, thanks to the nanite syringes stored in the habitation quarters. Khadam had covered her arm with dermagel, and instead of a gaping wound, all that was left was fresh skin (too pink for her natural color) and the crust of dried-up gel.
And when Khadam tried to turn her thoughts away from this death impending - tried to steer her thoughts towards engineering a solution - all she could think about was how alone she was.
Finder.
She pushed the name out of her mind, only to have it bubble back up.
Why?
“Stop it,” she said. “Stop. You need to focus on what you can do.”
The Herald. The scar. The machine swarm.
Everywhere she turned, there was another insurmountable problem.
What matters most?
Above, the scar was rupturing with light. Branches and cracks flashing into being, each one oozing mist from their unknowable depths.
Eventually, it would reach the atmosphere of the planet. When it did…
Nobody wanted the light dams to fall. Even the zealots. Even the Swarm left the dams lone.
But the dams were imperfect, and from time to time, they failed.
She had seen it happen, an old recording. The light began to spread its branches, like a tree made of pure illumination. And when the light touched the atmosphere, when it came into contact with closely-packed matter, it raced through the clouds. Turning the sky black with spores of the disease.
Veins of the Change scoured through the cities, the mountains, the oceans - all the same. Changing them all into that grainy, glistening dust, lighter than air. Filling the sky with death.
If she was lucky, she had days before the light reached her planet. If she was lucky...
Can it be fixed?
All light dams required maintenance. That’s what the First Children were for, weren’t they? And the androids and the countless other constructs designed to keep the dams running for thousands, tens of thousands of years.
But even now, she could telescope into that massive work of infrastructure, and see the veins growing through that light-resistant metal. Black alloy, evaporating under the effects of the change. Turning into a kind of dust. There was a haze of slow-moving particles eroding off the light dam, being pulled up, glistening as they vortexed into the scar.
No. Even if she had all the resources in the universe, she didn’t think there was time to patch this one back together.
“Okay,” she said, picking herself up. Wiping the medicinal crust off her hands. “We need to move a gate to the other side of the planet.”
And then, she remembered that she was still alone.
“Fuck it,” she said. “If there’s no one around, then who cares if I talk to myself? Okay, Khadam. You can do this. What comes first?”
The crust from the dermagel crinkled and crumbled off as she moved, and her new skin felt a little too stiff around her inner elbow, but the wound didn’t split as she walked around the cargo hold. Searching for the next task. Ignoring the remains of Finder’s body, still laying on the floor. Hacked to pieces.
“You still have plenty of gates. Might as well move one to the other side of the planet, in case the scar reaches that side last. So… Hedrons, they can carry the gate.”
But what about me? She thought, tapping a finger to her pursed lips. How am I supposed to get to the other side?
“A bike?”
That would take hours to get up and running. And that was if there were no printer errors.
And then, how many hours would it take her to fly across the planet?
Time. Time was her enemy.
“Well, there’s always Finder’s gate,” she said. It was supposed to be a dark joke, to take the sting off. But the sting was still there. At the corners of her eyes. She swallowed down the emotion.
The screens that monitored the scar flashed again. Another glittering explosion of light erupted across the horizon. Starting somewhere in the center, and branching out into two veined wings of light.
Her eyes opened wide as a new idea settled into her focus. Brilliant.
Khadam turned to the wall of printers. She whipped through the blueprints, selecting parts almost as fast as she found them. By the time she was done, dozens of the printers were already at work, slowly extruding the pieces she would need.
For such a simple design, it still took an hour.
And another hour for her to hammer it all together. She used the angle grinder when the interlocking chassis was too large, and a chisel gun when she needed to punch holes in the metal.
It was a drone. Not one of the hedrons, but a simple self-propelled vessel, shaped like a lightbulb, like the ones they used in ancient times. Only this bulb was as large as a human child. She slotted a single fuel cell into the bulb-shaped array, while the “neck” of the drone carried all the repulsors. It wasn’t nimble. It wasn’t fast.
But it was enough to capture the light needed to power a gate. Once.
Inside the airlock, she threw the vessel up and impulsed her command at the same time. The repulsors ignited in mid-air, holding the drone steady. And then, it began to drift upwards, accelerating against the friction of the atmosphere.
She didn’t need to guide it. All she could do was wait. So, to keep her mind off of Finder, off the Herald, and off her own end, Khadam kept printing more pieces for more vessels.
It never hurt to have backups, and besides, all this material would go to waste soon enough, when the scar... Stop it.
As they slowly oozed their materials into new shapes, she went back to the cargo hold where the gates sat, unused. The fuel cells there, empty. One last time, she cursed that wretched, black-haired fool who had let them empty. And then, she apologized in her mind, because she still felt guilty about her hedrons devouring his bone-dry corpse. Because he’d only been trying to survive. Because he’d been abandoned, too.
Rest easy, now. Whoever you were.
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Before the other vessels finished printing, she felt the alert in her implant. Her first vessel was nearing the outer edges of the scar, and all that flashing light. So soon? It was closer to the planet than she’d hoped.
She ran to the screen, and watched the vessel’s array begin to open. A simple, blossoming flower made of panels contoured to catch the light and funnel it into the fuel cell. One moment, the fuel cell was empty, and the next, it was full.
Over capacity.
The cell shattered and at the same time, the vessel’s camera went black. All its sensors, gone.
She slammed both fists on the wall, letting out a shout of frustration.
Are you mad at a machine, Khadam? Rodeiro’s voice, taunting her. Does being angry fix it? No. Anger is stupid. The only thing that will fix it is fixing it.
“Shut up!” She slammed her fists against the wall. And again, and again, until her hands were hurting and the stiffness on her arm felt like it was going to split open.
Wait. You can try again.
The printers were still going. There were parts, fresh and warm and ready to fit together.
And fail again?
“There’s too much light,” she shook her head. “It will destroy them. I can’t get close enough.”
Then what?
You cannot stop, Khadam, Rodeiro was saying. This is the one thing you cannot do. The Herald must be destroyed. Only in this, you cannot fail.
But she had failed.
Her mission. Their mission. The scar would grow and devour her alive.
So, she would die. And with her, the last chance for humanity. For all existence. The Herald of the Change would grow, whether he knew what he was or not. And in his wake…
The undoing of all things.
She breathed in deep through her nose. Grinding her teeth, as she stared at the walls. The printers. The gates, empty of light. A single word, marching in her mind.
No.
Absolutely not.
This is not how it ends.
There were ways out. One, in particular, that was so obvious and so easy.
Khadam went back to the terminal where she had left the clasp - discarded it, only a few days ago. Back when Finder was still...
She hooked the clasp into the grid. And right before she sent a signal, she stopped. Lowered her hand. Let go of the clasp.
You have to do this. You.
Khadam had built defensive construct before. Rodeiro and her and the other coldsmith’s in the conclave kept the machines maintained in case of attacks. There had been attacks, of course.
She could still remember the time a fleet of anti-humanists had found their conclave. Crashing their ships intentionally onto the planet, destroying huge swathes of their crop towers. The defense systems worked flawlessly. Slicing the ships in half, even as they descended into the atmosphere. And when there was nothing but wreckage left, her own drones had flown through the cut-up remains of ships, and tapped any survivors. Painless death.
But Khadam had never done it herself. More, she had never done it unprovoked.
But it’s not unprovoked, is it?
Poire is the Herald, the destroyer of all things. What more provocation do you need?
Then again...
There was that needling doubt. He’s only a child.
Khadam gritted her teeth. And bent down, to pick up the clasp. She impulsed the signal.
“Poire? It’s me.”
A long pause. Enough time to ask herself too many agonizing questions. She was about to put the clasp down, when a voice crackled on the line.
“Khadam? What happened to you?”
“I- My connection cut out. I’m sorry.”
“They used to lie to me, too. All the time, they told me the tests wouldn’t hurt. Or that I was doing fine. I could always tell.”
“Who lied to you?”
“My caretakers. The directors. Everyone. They were always hiding something, and so are you.”
She blinks. Some child.
“I’m not angry. You don’t have to lie to me,” Poire said. “I’m on your side.”
What does he know? Khadam needed to find out.
“Poire,” she said. “Did they ever tell you why… do you know what you are?”
“The savior? Is that what you mean? Only the avians call me that. And some of the cyrans believe it too. Not Vorpei. Nor the Magistrate.”
Is that what they’ve been telling him? That he’s a savior?
Where did they get that idea?
“No,” she said. “I mean… Have you ever seen the visions? You said you had.”
“Yes.”
“What does it feel like?”
“When the world is too loud, and there are too many people around me. It’s like being swallowed by too much water. The world is still there, but its different. Or like I’m different, and I can see everything for what it is. Like nothing is real, until I can see the truth of it. I don’t know how to explain.”
“You’ve seen the change.”
“Yes,” he said.
“The end of all things.”
A pause. Finally, he said, “Yes. Is that what it is? Yes, that’s what I saw.”
“And there’s someone there, in all these dreams. You’ve seen them, right?”
“Yes. But he’s hard to look at.”
He, Poire had said. He’s hard to look at. Does he know?
“Tell me what you see.”
“He’s wearing clothes that don’t make sense. Almost like armor, I guess. When he moves, it’s like he’s not really moving. It’s like the world has moved around him, and all I see are ghosts of where he was. Flashes. Who is he?”
Her guts were squirming. Every part of this hurt to do. What if he’s lying about this? What if he knows who he is?
What if he doesn’t?
She wasn’t sure which was worse.
“Have you seen his face?”
“No.”
“I have.”
“Did he look at you?”
That was too specific of a question for her to ignore. The dreams had been studied extensively. Every moment, every inch, every single possible thread that humanity could untangle, had been written down. Some even found ways to record their dreams.
The Herald, as far as Khadam understood, never bothered to hide himself. Never tried to obscure what he was.
An old man, with white-gray hair, and a neat beard. His deep, black skin was wrinkled - though whether through sheer age, or lack of self-care, or a lifetime of strain, it was impossible to say.
An old man, who had once been a child. This child.
“No,” Khadam said. “He never looks at anyone. Only at the Horizon. At the destruction that follows inexorably in his wake.”
“Who is he?”
“We call him the Herald,” she said. “The prophets spoke of him first. Powerful. A new form of life, they said. Until all humanity began to dream the same dream. Until Seedfall. Only then, did we see him for what he was. Only then did we recognize what we had let into our midst. The bringer of the change. The one who will destroy us all.”
“Who?” Poire asked again.
And Khadam didn’t know why she said it. Was it the innocent naïveté of the child before her? The earnest need in Poire’s question?
Or did she, in a moment of weakness - after every last emotional string had been pulled to breaking inside her - did she decide to leave this one up to fate?
Either way, it was a stupid thing to say. The truth. She should not have told the truth.
“It’s you, Poire. You are the Herald.”
“What…” Poire’s question died on his lips. She could not see his face, but she could hear the sudden, invisible pain he must be choking on now.
“You are the harbinger of the change. You are the greatest threat to all humanity. To existence itself.”
“How can that be?”
“It was seen. By everyone. By every single human being alive. You were seen.”
“No,” she could almost see him shaking his head now. “That’s not true. Why would you say this? I’m just Poire. I’m nobody. I was last place in my conclave. Always. They wanted to get rid of me, but Nuwa was the only one-”
“You were raised by biologists, were you not? But you’ve never known your parents. You have human DNA, but you are not like the rest of us. Because the biologists - your creators - wanted you to be born of something else. I don’t know how they made you, but they did. I don’t know how you are part of the other side, but you are. They thought that you and your conclave would save us. But you… You are destined to destroy us all.”
A painful silence.
It seemed to last forever.
She checked the line. It was still hooked.
But she could not even hear him breathing.
Until...
“Khadam?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to kill anyone.”
For the second time that day, her heart broke. First for Finder, and now for this… thing.
“I didn’t ask for this,” his voice was shaking. Quivering with the sobs that threatened to spill out of his throat. “I never wanted to be… What should I do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can it be stopped? What do they say will happen?”
“No,” she said. “It cannot.”
She would not tell him the end, because if he did not know, then maybe that would make all this easier to bear.
“How do you know?” Poire’s voice was filled with anger. “How can you know anything about what I am? Who I am? One dream. Just because you have one stupid dream, you think you can see the future? It’s not possible. Nobody can see the future. Nobody can...” His anger faltered, and so did his voice.
And went silent.
The ground tremored slightly beneath the gate walker. Now that all the hedrons had stopped their work, there was no point in building an extractor any longer, but the planet was still gradually losing integrity.
Not that it matters anymore…
She looked at the screen, where the center of the scar was now brighter than the sun, too bright to look at. Branches crackling and flashing and exploding silently across the space between the stars. She had to pull the camera back, so she could see it in its entirety.
“Khadam,” Poire said slowly. “Why would you tell me this?”
“Because-” she started.
Because I’m a fucking idiot. Because I’m weak, and you’re the first person I’ve talked to in months. Because you’re a child, you look exactly like a human child, and for some damn reason, I don’t want to do this to you.
But she didn’t say any of those things. Instead, she told him the truth. Again.
“Because I need your help.” Khadam swallowed. Shook her head in disbelief at how stupid she was being. He’ll kill you now, you fool. You had him, and now you have nothing. But Khadam plowed ahead, because what else could she do? “I need you to open the gate on my side.”
“And then what?” he shouted. “What are you going to do?”
Silence.
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you,” he said. Not a question.
“Yes,” Khadam said, her voice croaking over the word. She wasn’t sure if it came out at all. There were tears running down her cheeks now. The only human she had seen in months. Maybe the only other human alive. And she was supposed to kill him.
“Yes.”