Chapter Twenty-Nine

Colony Two

Agloff felt something warm in his hand. It moved, wriggled. But it wasn’t indelicate, quite the opposite in fact. He wanted to lie here forever, suspended between fleeting wakefulness and some splendid dream.

‘Agloff.’ The softness of her voice pulled him from that other place.

‘Ariea,’ he said back at her. She was beside him, her hand in his.

His eyes strained open and her face filled his field of view. Her hair was roughened, and rouged marks scuffed her skin. But she was here. She was alive. He was briefly reminded of some perfect moment back at Backwater, when she looked at him a way one time, and he felt high in her company.

Agloff panted on shallow breaths, smiled.

She opened her mouth but could seemingly find no words, and she settled to smile back at him, then combed a hand through Agloff’s hair.

‘I wasn’t expecting you to come,’ she said then. ‘I thought if you had any sense, you’d have run the other way. I told Jask you weren’t coming.’

‘Well, you know by now I don’t have any sense.’

She leaned over to where he lay, cupped his hands in hers and whispered. ‘Thank you.’ But the enormity of its meaning was too dense for him to process. Agloff was sure he meant it as much Ariea did. She had saved him in a way, in her absence.

‘Where is Jask?’

Agloff tried to sit up. He was cuffed by one wrist to a gurney and had been changed into a hospital gown. The room was mostly empty, and bigger than it needed to be. Grime-laden mirrors boxed them in under a low-hanging ceiling. Any guards were conspicuously absent. It was just them.

Then a voice rasped from behind him. Agloff saw Ariea’s hand slip from his and she kneeled in deference. Agloff turned.

‘Agloff.’

Jask stood haggard, his weight keeled over on a walking stick supporting him. His neck was braced in plaster and his breaths hissed and groaned under the weight of hidden wounds. Agloff looked at Ariea.

‘I tried. I really tried,’ she said.

Jask reached a hand into the pocket of his silken robe and a red-stained shard of glass skittered towards Agloff.

‘And you very nearly succeeded, child.’

‘It’s okay,’ Agloff whispered to her.

He then looked below Jask. A second gurney had been laid out, beside a silvery tank dimly glowing against the wall of the chamber. Tubes and pipes ejected from its base and into the floor. Agloff saw a vague silhouette occluded within. He wondered if Eron knew he were here at last, that he had made it. If words even had meaning to him anymore, in his state of undeath. The world itself would lose meaning in such a place, Agloff imagined.

‘I’ve waited so long for you to be here,’ Jask said.

‘I’m sorry it wasn’t longer.’

‘Like Ariea, you shouldn’t waste yourself on childish comments. Wit is a coward’s weapon, so I’ve heard. It did them no good.’

‘Them?’

Jask waved a frail arm behind Agloff and he strained to see Oxford and Thawn hoisted from the ceiling by silver chains. Their toes dangled limply. The latter had been stripped of his armour and Agloff saw the price of his abilities. Regular wounds criss-crossed over his chest like the boy in the wards, as if he had been cut open. Thawn’s legs and arms had been replaced. He wrestled in his restrains, through limbs made not of flesh, but some alien material Agloff could not place. It wasn’t metal, but a synthetic of some sort. Agloff could only presume Jask was the same.

‘Years,’ Jask hissed. ‘Years for this day.’ He either restrained his excitement, or the exertion was pain he could not countenance. The Enemy spluttered and held a hand to his wounds again. He looked so weak. More than wounded, or old. But ill. He could not believe Jask and Thawn were of the same age, of the same kind. ‘This was all I ever wanted. Everything else was a tangent. Mere distraction.’

‘You haven’t won,’ Oxford spat. ‘We got the kids out of your experiments.’

‘Meh, for all of you, a reasonable exchange.’ Jask walked towards Thawn. ‘For you,’ he said, reaching a spindly hand to Agloff’s father. ‘I hate you so very much.’

‘I’m sorry, Mal,’ breathed Thawn. ‘I thought you were dead.’

‘You don’t call me that. You would grovel? This is new. You could have killed me on that Tower. But you left me to die, hoped I would die.’ He struck Thawn by his cheek, scowled. ‘Because you didn’t have the stomach to shoot me yourself. There was a shot left in that poisoned gun.’

Thawn’s eyes glanced down to where his armour had spilled on to the floor and Jask followed. He collected a modest revolver, unclicked the chamber and studied it in his paling, inhuman hands.

‘One shot left. Were you saving that for me?’ Jask said, but Thawn didn’t answer. He dropped the weapon where he stood. ‘What did you come here expecting to happen, really?’

‘To kill you,’ spat Agloff from his bed.

Jask stifled a laugh. He looked back at Thawn. ‘You came for the boy, didn’t you? For Eron.’

‘How did you survive that fall, Mal? I saw you. Your chest. Your body was open.’

‘A flesh wound only. I was alive enough. When I came round, you were gone from the rubble and I abandoned. I dragged myself miles through the sand, for days, unable to walk. I survived by will alone. But, in the end, I got back to Erebus’ chamber.’

‘Moonwater,’ Thawn said.

‘I plugged myself into the machine that guarded the child. I climbed inside, and waited, on the whim that the Sign would follow Erebus’ trail, or you would come back.’ The words passed through Agloff, only half-understood.

Jask then turned to address the rest of them. ‘He told you about it, yes? Moonwater. You feel every second. Unadulterated thought. Without action. Without stimulation. You are in violation of your mind. It is the purest of all hells. I can’t describe it.’ He looked at Eron’s body. ‘But for you I will try. In your terms, imagine holding your breath until the last moment. That tension you feel in your chest. The urge to indulge it. Imagine being suspended in that last moment before you let go, and breathe, forever, without respite.’

‘I am so sorry,’ Thawn begged.

‘So long, so long I defended you to myself in that place! Over and over, the same old lies. I clung to the hope you had a found way off, that you took that shuttle like we said and made it. And… then I said, “he will come back for me.” Alas. Always, I clung to the same lie. That you loved me.’

Thawn panted, hauled on his chains. ‘I loved you well enough. I let you rest.’

‘Of course, one reaches a point beyond which you know they’re not coming. You tried to tell yourself that,’ Jask said to Ariea. Her chin dipped. ‘Eventually, the Sign found me, restored me.’ He gestured the network of circuitry that tattooed the back of his neck. ‘By which time, I had had more than enough time to think about you, Abbadiah. You needed to suffer for that.’ Jask staggered and moved to the glassy wall. He reached a hand for support then slipped to his haunches and panted.

‘Everything alright?’ Oxford sniped.

‘I’m old,’ the Enemy said.

Agloff leaned across his gurney. ‘Should you not be the same age as Thawn?’

‘A sharp eye has your lad,’ Jask said at Thawn. ‘Why don’t you tell him?’

Agloff’s father fell limp and sighed. ‘Moonwater is… addictive. Moonwater Disease, it’s called. The longer you’re in it, the more your body needs it to survive. Short-term exposure is harmless. But decades, centuries… Removing the body become toxic. It’s been killing Jask, slowly.’

‘And Eron?’

‘Removing him would be fatal.’

Agloff choked all feeling back down his throat. ‘And you didn’t tell me that?’ A rage took a hold of him; the same feeling he felt when Drake, and Fall, and Marty had patronised him. All the so-called adults with their half-truths.

‘I was protecting you from the truth. I thought you deserved some hope there was a chance for him. That he could be at peace.’

‘Not when hope is a lie. That’s cruel,’ snapped Ariea.

‘Is it?’

‘You said you had experience with moonwater. How?’ Agloff asked. He suppressed his rage, for now.

Jask laughed hoarsely and Agloff saw a deep-seated shame stir behind Thawn’s eyes.

‘Me and Jask were…’

‘Tell him, Abbadiah. Tell him what you are.’

‘We were exiled, and custodian of a machine, an AI called Erebus on behalf of our race. The AI was hostile. We were at war with its kind. But you see there’s a way to entrap such an AI… inside the mind of a child. They’re still developing. Their brains are malleable, receptive. We imprisoned Erebus inside a child.’

Agloff swallowed. ‘And you imprisoned the child inside moonwater.’ It wasn’t a question. He knew it was true.

Thawn’s head sank to nod. ‘Through our negligence, the child escaped. We tried to do as much but failed when our ride crashed. I was found by the other machines. They’ve compelled me to recover Erebus for them since. I had no idea Jask survived, I swear to you.’ His face ached.

‘Did you look for him?’ Agloff turned from one alien to the other. Each’s eyes begged his favour, as though he were the parent to two squabbling children.

‘I thought he was dead,’ Thawn repeated.

‘After what I’ve seen about you, I don’t believe that. What then?’

‘The Sign, our kind, found Erebus, as expected, and the mind passed from child to child. I followed it through history. Earth’s history.’

‘It took you a long time, what, thousands of years?’ Agloff’s voice was sharp, cynical. He borrowed his tone from Ariea.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

‘The Sign kept it hidden well enough.’

‘Did they?’ Jask said but Thawn ignored him.

‘I got close, found the child was staying on Ku under guard, but the Confederacy were pulling out, and the Sign needed it moving, quietly, so they—’

‘They hired my mother and Tomas Wise to move it.’

‘She was a good smuggler. Too good. I think she understood who she was moving. It was a simple handover, then they’d take the child over the border and off-world. I reached the drop-off, killed the handler, and took his place.’

Jask stood, cut in. ‘Fortunate, was it not, that storm on Ku cut short your escape.’ He looked at Agloff. ‘You see, Agloff, Abbadiah here met your mother with every intention of killing her and taking this child for himself. Isn’t that right?’

Thawn writhed on his chains. Growled.

‘But you, soft as ever, fell for the woman. Dirtied yourself with her instead. You covered their escape from that watchtower. You could have taken the kid and ran. And your debt to them would have been paid.’ Jask looked at Agloff again. ‘The child became mine.’

Agloff sat straighter and stared dimly at the vat of silvery fluid, and the silhouette within. ‘And when Wise brought you my brother, you put that machine’s mind inside his head.’ He turned to Thawn. ‘For you. That’s what this is, right? It’s Jask’s revenge.’

‘It’s pain,’ said Jask. ‘Hurt for hurt. He left me, within myself, never even looked for me, while he indulged the enemy we fought against together. You know what we had said not a day before he left? That we’d find a farmhouse somewhere, or build one, and raise a few acres for ourselves.’

Agloff saw Jask’s words cut at Thawn in ragged blows and reveal the truth of him beneath.

‘Why’d you leave him?’ Agloff said to Thawn.

‘I thought he was dead,’ he begged a final time.

‘You were scared of him, right?’ Agloff lowered his voice. ‘Of having to finish him off yourself. Of being with him. I thought Ariea was dead. But if there is a snowy day in hell’s chance, you save them, you take it. And how many people did you let die because you were scared?’

Thawn didn’t answer and Jask spoke in his stead. ‘I thought, for a long time the only thing that might break him was to make his son his mission. So, I keep Eron alive at all costs, to make Abbadiah do the deed himself. Until then, he is my—’

‘Trophy,’ Agloff said.

Jask did not correct him. ‘I thought Abbadiah would have surrendered his mission to save his son. Alas, his freedom is more precious.’

Fury and despair welled inside Agloff like coiled vipers. He stared into Thawn. He was the man Jask wanted him to be, cold and uncaring.

‘Were it not for today, I could be forgiven for thinking you wanted to fail.’ Jask said at Thawn labouredly. ‘You waited for Eron, only because you could afford to. Not because you cared for him. Or about Agloff, who you knew was half a whole without him. Had you given yourself up, this could all have been avoided.

‘You see, Agloff. This is my point. He brought you here, not for your sake, certainly not for hers.’ Jask jabbed a finger at Ariea. ‘He came so he can remove your brother and deliver him for his own freedom. You were only ever the way in.’

Agloff’s breath quickened. He wanted to yell. Here, he saw the truth of himself. He was but the means to an unearthly end in this game of immortals. Of gods.

Jask slithered towards Agloff’s bedside and in a swift motion unlocked his cuffs. Agloff slid from the gurney and gagged at his hands and knees. He stood.

‘Speak,’ Jask said. ‘Say to him what you need to.’

Agloff rubbed his wrists and moved gingerly towards his father. ‘Is that true?’ he said.

Thawn just looked at him.

‘Is my life just a convenience to you?’

‘I didn’t want to interfere, didn’t think you’d want me to—’

‘Bullshit.’ Agloff felt an inner steel he had lacked so long. He felt clarity at its most distilled. ‘You could have come here at any point in the last eight hundred years. You could have given your blood to save Eron. It didn’t have to be mine, right. You’re his father after all. That’s why Jask stopped guarding Wilder after you came here the first time, why it disappeared off the maps.’ He pointed at Ariea. ‘He realised he didn’t have to bait me anymore. He had you. You could have stopped this at any point, but you stayed away. You let me and my friends get dragged through the mud and blood, because you didn’t have the stomach for what you did to Jask, and Eron, and everything you touch! You stayed away because you wanted to! Because you can, because not all of us have the luxury of living and waiting forever!’

Agloff felt Ariea’s fingertips close around his and he was reassured.

‘You never cared about me, or him!’ Agloff gestured the outline of his brother. He felt lines of tears roll down his cheeks. He clutched at his fists and choked back the urge to sob. ‘TELL ME I’M WRONG!’

‘You see, Abbadiah,’ Jask said. ‘You could have taken the kid and ran at Ku. And your debt to them would have been paid. But you let it run out and play out. Do you think any of this would exist if it wasn’t for your inaction? Your indifference for your sons? You created Colony Two! In everything you did and failed to do. Winter is a monument to your failure.’ Jask smiled. ‘And now your own son despises you.’

Agloff walked the room and Ariea followed. He stooped to the revolver Jask had held, the one with a single shot, spared for Jask. He supposed it would work just as well on Thawn too. He felt the eyes of the room fix on him like spotlights, but they were beyond his care. He held the gun up in his hands and stared at it a moment. It was heavier than he expected. He raised it to Thawn.

‘You would deserve this, you know.’

‘Agloff!’ Ariea said. She stood behind him, her arm tugged at his. ‘Please don’t.’

‘Did you let my mother die too? Just like Eron.’

‘I don’t know what happened to her.’

‘Somehow I get the feeling you’re lying.’ His grip on the weapon tightened.

‘Agloff,’ Ariea said again. ‘Don’t.’ She held his fingers still from behind him, but her words passed over. ‘You are better than him. You don’t need to hear this.’

‘You said you don’t want to know what happened to her,’ said Thawn.

‘You’re right. I don’t particularly. Not anymore. But if you hurt her, you deserve to suffer for it, like you let me and Eron suffer.

Thawn scoffed. ‘You don’t have to see me again.’

‘You’re lying, Abbadiah. You know where she went, as well as I do.’

Agloff turned the barrel on Jask. It clicked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Did you ever wonder where winged fever came from? The machines who created Erebus, the mind inside your brother, went into hiding after the war between our race and theirs.’ He nodded at Thawn. ‘They kept worlds like this as safe havens, connected by a network of passageways, hidden away. Innocuous enough. If you wondered why I entrusted Wilder to Tomas Wise, so far from here, from Eden… The castle was built on top of tunnels predating humanity, within which we had found one such passageway. It stands to reason your mother escaped through it. To where, I cannot say. But she chose not to come back. We never hunted her.’

‘Why would you tell me this?’ Agloff growled, shook the gun at Jask.

‘As consolation. I never meant to involve you, Agloff.’

‘So, why did you!’ he yelled. Could they stop yet? Could it end?

‘One sibling was enough for your father’s torment. But when we first investigated the gateway, unbeknownst to us, we brought winged fever in the other direction. An alien disease. Humans were immune, carriers only. I knew nothing of it until Eron got sick, only half-human. We caught it early, were able to medicate for it for a long time, but there was no cure. Eventually, I needed moonwater.’

‘So you used Tomas Wise as your busboy to get me and my mum to you. So you could cure him?’

‘Or replace him as the AI’s custodian as was my intention originally. But at your age now, your mind would cripple. You would wilt. But that failed, and Andromeda fled, so I settled for synthesising a cure for Eron instead. Your healthy blood. All attempts otherwise failed. In our experimentation, in error, we bred a strand of the disease infectious to humans, but to which you were quite immune. It had a strategic advantage though. It spread, weakened many forts, hastened our conquest. But quite rare now.’

Agloff almost laughed. ‘The two of you; you both should have died centuries ago when that machine escaped. All you know how to do is hurt.’ Agloff took a deep breath and moved the gun from Jask to Thawn and back again. It seemed cruel to himself to allow one to live.

But Jask was dying anyway, he thought.

Agloff then turned. He felt Ariea’s grip tighten round his fingers. He looked down and saw her eyes glazed and reddened. Her face was struck in anger, her lean features angular, lines drawn across them like wounds and Agloff understood her well enough.

The gun slipped from his fingers into hers and she studied it as he had, then extended it to the Enemy.

The first and truest enemy: Jask.

‘You created winged fever?’ she said. ‘You made it kill us?’ Her voice shook bravely.

Jask seemed amused. ‘I eradicated it soon enough, didn’t I.’

She shook her head. ‘I failed to kill you once. I’m not passing it up the second time. You created winged fever,’ she repeated, jabbed the gun through the air. ‘You killed- you killed my dad.’ Her words began to break, but her arm was unflinching. ‘You… killed my dad.’

Jask opened his mouth to speak, but Ariea allowed him no such courtesy.

A gunshot snapped the air and she jolted backwards, tumbling to the ground. In perfect synchrony, Malvo Jask did the same. He slipped down the mirrored wall, smearing it red where he came to rest. His body began to writhe and convulse and Ariea watched without pity.

Agloff then turned to pull her close. ‘It’s okay,’ he whispered to her. ‘It’ll always be okay. It’ll never stop being okay. I’m here. I’m not going anymore. I’m staying with you.’

‘I need you,’ she said faintly. She let the revolver fall from her hand, like it was some disgusting thing.

‘I need you too.’

Agloff watched the life abandon Jask over her shoulder. He gasped on finite breaths, thinly and desperately. He had made his gravest mistake in leaving Ariea unchained. He presumed his survival had beaten her. But Ariea was stronger he was.

Jask’s pupils darted in their sockets, his wide eyes suspended in ringed sacks. For a final moment, they looked beggingly at Thawn, and Agloff saw that Thawn was unmoved.

Malvo Jask was dead.

Agloff leaned into Ariea and cradled her head against his shoulder. ‘He would be proud of you,’ he said. ‘We’re both proud of you.’ She looked up and half-smiled, tip-toed to kiss him on the cheek, then turned her head towards her victim.

‘He deserved much worse.’

‘He deserved it sooner.’

Agloff’s fury conceded in her arms and a smear of hope touched his soul. Colony Two was free. Winter’s aura could fade into the realms of myth. The line that started and ended with Jask was broken. Agloff couldn’t say he was happy; that wasn’t the word, but he was renewed. He looked down and beside him at Ariea’s bob of hair.

The piece of him that had so longed to come here, he could now abandon. He could take it and lock it in this room for as long as it may stand. For the rest of him, the rest of the Colony awaited, like Marty had said. It was his. It was everyone’s.

Agloff freed himself of Ariea’s embrace and reached to one of Thawn’s other weapons. With a jaded arm, he shot Oxford and Thawn free and each collapsed to the ground by their knees. Oxford just stared at Agloff, seemingly thinking of nothing to say. He then nodded and held a hand to Agloff’s shoulder. He supposed it was all the thanks he might get from a man who despised him.

The operative’s eyes passed to Jask and Agloff saw a lust inside. Agloff imagined Oxford would will the body back to life, if only so he may kill it again. His urge was unsated. A moment’s rage passed over him and Agloff feared Oxford may take his life instead.

Agloff then shifted across the room to the opaque tank, bathed in silver. He reached a hand and spread his fingers across the glass and he sensed Oxford follow.

‘Does it hurt?’ he said from behind Agloff.

‘I don’t know. Jask could never take from me what I never had. Eron was only ever an idea. He was my imagination. I never knew him. And now… He is free.’

‘It’s allowed to hurt. I didn’t know everyone at home, but I feel it all the same. Grief endures. It never leaves us. We just get better at hiding it. It’s their memory’s way of holding on.’

‘I have no memories of Eron.’

‘But you live in memory of him. He is remembered in you. As the Underground is in me. You know I came here thinking it could free me. I could roll everything into a gunshot and be done with it. But…’ Agloff turned and saw Oxford consider Jask’s limp body. ‘I see him lying there and I’m just… disappointed.’

‘Disappointed it wasn’t you?’

‘No. Ariea deserves it as much as I did. Loss doesn’t compare. Not that kind. I’m disappointed it’s over. Turns out it’s best imagined. Not lived. Because now I have nothing to hold onto. We all need our catharsis. Someone to blame.’

Agloff stared deep at the silhouette floating in timelessness. ‘I thought mine was him- them. They were a way out of this shitty life at Backwater. Some other life even. But it was just a dream.’

‘Catharsis,’ Oxford repeated.

Agloff leaned his forehead against the tank and pretended he could hear his brother’s thoughts. ‘He deserved much better.’

‘We all deserved better. But you take what you get, right.’

‘It wasn’t your fault, Agloff,’ Ariea called behind him. ‘No matter what you did. It was always going to play out this way.’

Agloff scoffed and looked at Thawn then. ‘It’s his fault.’

He turned to Thawn, who limbs spread across the cold ground. The stranger then looked up at him, through bloodshot eyes.

‘You are responsible,’ Agloff said, ‘as much as he was, and I can’t forgive you. I can’t. I won’t. You took everything from me,’ Agloff whispered. ‘Winter fell today. And I think it is better without you, without Jask. The Colony can have its own start.’

Thawn couldn’t argue. ‘That’s… fair enough.’

‘What did he want… really?’

‘I think he wanted me to kill my son, to prove to himself I was who he wanted me to be. Nothing more or less than that. And he was willing to keep Eron alive at all costs to prove it, even if it meant enslaving a nation.’ At last, Thawn stood. He spoke in monotone. The depth of emotion was lost on his voice, if he had ever been capable of it. ‘I don’t expect you to believe me, but I never wanted to kill Eron. Why do you think I stayed away so long? It was for the same reason I didn’t go back to find Jask. It wasn’t indifference. Because you’re right. I was scared, and I loved both of them too much to let them go. By avoiding it, I could pretend that… I’m sorry I let you suffer, truly.’

‘I don’t accept your apology, but I think I understand enough.’ Agloff dipped his chin towards Eron. ‘Take him. Spare him this. Do whatever you have to. Just don’t come back.’

‘I carry my sins with me, you can be sure of that. Do you want a minute before I—’

‘Just take him. What about Winter?’

‘I imagine a lot of interested parties will lay claim to its land. In time, it will be forgotten.’ He made a movement towards Eron’s vat, then looked at Agloff a final time. ‘I did you wrong, I know that. But treat Ariea right and let her treat you right.’

Agloff looked behind him and Ariea had dragged herself onto the edge of his gurney and crossed her legs over its rim. She held her arm and studied him, and he her. Together, the corners of their lips perked into smiles. Agloff could not truthfully contend the enormity of what they had done, but they had done it, and she knew the same well enough. For that moment, the path they had taken to get to this place fell beyond all awareness.

‘How do we get out?’ Ariea said then, looking the room over. ‘There’s still hundreds of pilgrims out there.’

Thawn nodded towards Jask. ‘Show them his body, and they will never stop being afraid of you.’