Ѧnother nightmare.
Dreams upon dreams, where my control disappeared slowly, my body tightened as if I went rigid from death, giving me sore muscles the following morning. My open eyes became aware of reality, with the final image super-imposed over my waking surroundings. It was as if I had them wide from the beginning, almost sleepwalking. Fear creeped out of my bones, anxiety flooded into my mind. I searched for any threat in my room, any possible enemies trying to drive me insane. Sweat covered the sheets yes I was shivering; hot and cold at the same time, on the verge of crying from anger, sadness and despair.
Only a few seconds had passed and the memory of it already slipped through my fingers. Vague pictures were remaining, colors like red and black, but the rest was very blurry until it was nothing at all.
Every morning was the same. Even if that was all I knew, all I ever lived and experienced, the violence of what I was doing felt devastating. The memories, the traumas, they will never fade away. It made me different, cold-hearted some might say, but the other option was something I was not ready to consider.
I stood up, the covers sticking to my sweaty naked body. With only a few steps, I was already under the shower stream as the door of my bathroom had fallen apart days ago. I made myself the mental note to visit the market for new hinges while its cold recycled water flux gave some comfort and reassurance. A sigh slipped out of my mouth while my hands played with my hair. I couldn't remember the last time I had a trim; my hair reached down to my shoulders easily. My appearance wasn’t something important, but having long hair was not an advantage when it came to fighting deadly monsters.
My black cargo pants, white t-shirt and black jacket were already waiting for me on the chair beside the door. I dressed up swiftly, like every other morning for the past decade at least — time was not my strongest suit — and tied up my hair back in a bun, letting some strands remain loose. A quick look in the mirror mostly verified I wasn’t forgetting anything more than checked that I was decent enough to leave the house. Being a mercenary prevented me from countless hours in the bathroom, not that the population in Kendara, and Zelian in general, were concerned with fashion or hairstyles. That was very far from everyone’s mind.
After a plain breakfast, I was already out, unable to ignore the downtrodden state of the city. Dry earth, suffocating air, destroyed buildings, everything was dead or dying. Not enough water, not enough food for the billions of people living on this planet. It was hard to witness the slow and inevitable destruction of everything, to be a part of the multiple thefts, murders and assaults people were obliged to go through, as a perpetrator or a victim, to survive.
The market was already bustling with locals and exotic merchants, tightly clustered along one gigantic street that stretched for miles and miles. Even if the sun was just coming out, trades were flooding the place, everyone bartering food, supplies, tools. Every day, thousands of goods were sold inside these crumbling walls.
People were counting on this day-to-day event, since it was nearly impossible to find food in nature. Dried of its energy, the temperature and the climate were killing a large spectrum of animals and living things in general. Some of them, unfortunately, were forced to transform into monsters that now fed on our kind, far more numerous than the rest.
I was frequently confronted with them. Houses and homes, abandoned by killed or fleeing families, were often infested afterwards, their instincts driving them close to where we were living. And I was sent there to retrieve any gold, jewels, and valuable objects for my father.
I rarely saw him for more than two hours a day which was usually enough time for my missions' directions to be disclosed. But when I left the house this morning, he was already somewhere else. I assumed he also got an early start selling yesterday's salvage, living up to his nickname: The Collector.
He didn’t need a stall like the others; he had his own circle of customers. Rather than waiting for the big opportunity behind a wobbly table, he met the regulars in secluded abandoned spots — usually when it concerned shady objects. Sometimes, desperate people accosted him, counting on his reputation to save them from a sinister end. Ready to sign their soul for a trimester-worth of anything valuable.
I walked along the street, forcing my way between boisterous hagglers yelling at each other for the best price, and searched for a nice and quiet corner. I wanted to eat my fruit in peace—a rarity I picked from the ailing tree which grew behind our house. Some of the people interrupted their conversations when I approached, holding their breaths, acting as if they were not here so I wouldn’t harm them. I didn't even notice them anymore. I just kept walking.
I was stopped in my tracks when someone bumped into me from behind and made my snack tumble out of my hand and into a cauldron. I knew it was irretrievable from the high chirp sound the concoction emitted. Bubbles disrupted the weird liquid. “Watch where you’re going, you piece of—” the man exclaimed.
Taking my hood off, I faced him in a slow and drawn-out motion. My nostrils flared and I inhaled deeply and loudly, before answering. “What did you just say to me?”
His round and ornamented tattoo on his face unveiled him as a low-grade Jalyon. An ancient human species who evolved into super strong beasts that were now terrorizing the others, using their brutal and ignorant force to climb up the ladder of privileges.
“Nothing. Sorry,” he replied, before running away, tail between his legs. Everyone leered but didn’t say anything. They knew better. Even if no proper government had been established in Zelian for decades, some hierarchy fell inexplicably into place, the strongest being the favored ones. The Jalyons were feared, and they knew I was no joke. At least, I pretended to be.
Most of the merchants were selling junk and scraps for building and repairing. We had become a handy population, forced to imagine new devices, machines that could help us find wares to sell or even food to eat. I entered one of the shops, using an almost ruined building as a boutique, the walls all dried up and so thin we could see the rays of the sun passing through them. Jalyons and other humans looked at the shelves and I searched for a small round piece I needed for my bathroom door that broke. For now, it was waiting on the side of my wall and I had a clear view of my shower from my bed.
They didn’t give me any trouble but I could see them gawking from my peripheral vision. The whispers and the judgment. The Jalyons had wanted my head for as long as I can remember but they didn’t want to start a riot in plain sight, during the most crowded period of the day. They stayed far and eventually left the store. The owner hailed me with his gaze glued to his tablet in front of him. “Can I help you sir?”
I started walking toward him, still looking around until I decided to respond. “I’m in need of new hinges for my bathroom door.” He casually rested on his elbow, his hand twisting the skin of his cheek. Finally, and slowly, he straightened and had a moment when his eyes fell over mine. He gulped.
“Will you need screws too?”
“Yes. A dozen, for wood.” Two seconds passed.
“You won’t need that many for one door, sir.”
“You can never be too careful.” I answered with my voice dropping lower.
He kept glaring, not reassured at all, turning his back when he would have wanted to stay put until I left the store too. But he came back, with the hinges and the screws, and used his machine to calculate the total. “That’ll be five coins for you.”
Hidram and I had been poor for a long time, but he managed to make a name around here and we had a lot more than we needed at the moment. His insatiable hunger for power made him see farther than he could endure, and that would probably lead him to his inevitable end. Five coins were laughable. The shopkeeper was hiding something.
I searched for the coins in my pocket and took the equivalent of twenty, which was a little bit more than the original cost of the products I’d asked for. I dropped them on the counter after taking my dues and aimed for the door before he would have the time to realize my gesture. These were hard times. I might have been cold-hearted but I wasn’t a monster. Despite what everyone must be thinking.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Few minutes later, I was casually resting over a wall, next to a vociferous merchant drawing all of the attention on himself when someone called me from across the street. A hooded shadow gave me a sign, standing in an alley cornering a stall covered in blades, knives, daggers and various other weapons. I recognized my adoptive father instantly. But my gaze was held on a specific poniard, with ornamented red carvings into the dark wooden handle and a golden stone fixated on the tip. Oddly, its grip vibrated as I approached. Hidram called me again and I finally looked towards him, silently gesturing to me to follow him farther into the back. “Come, son,” he said, and a weird feeling crept into me.
I cringed at the name. I never called him father. Hidram was not my biological progenitor. He explained a few years ago, when I started asking questions about my mother and my family, that he rescued me as a baby in a ruin. He and his wife heard screams from afar, and she persuaded him to follow the sound. They wanted a child for a very long time, trying but failing. She saw it as a sign, felt like the universe was leading her to what she deserved. She had to save me.
Unfortunately, a tragedy had occurred in Zelian. A few months after they took me home, she had been executed by some Jalyons in search of a great victory. Only because they hated women. The Great Suppression, they called it. It happened a long time ago, maybe ten centuries, and lasted a few months. A lot of women died during that period. So many. It was very rare, now, to meet one. If there were still a handful of them trampling on this planet, they stayed hidden, to avoid the same fate my mother had endured. “There has been a… change in our plans.” he started to explain, his hands folded close to his face, looking around us.
“What are you talking about?” I answered, brows furrowed. My eyes deviated from his stare. He had blond hair, dark irises and a stern expression constantly plastered over his face. Hidram and I had nothing in common, not just appearance-wise. He had facilities in the field of bargaining, but when it came to protecting others or defending himself, he was utterly incapable. People were showing the Collector respect because of his unstoppable Weapon of a son. I was proud of our dissimilarities. I was ashamed of the name I had to bear relating me to him. And I was dreaming, each second since the start, of my deliverance.
“I need a favor.” he added after what seemed to be several minutes.
My eyes rolled back. “Isn’t that what I’ve been doing for years?”
He shrugged. When I was five, Hidram decided to use me as a weapon, trained me to fight, to steal, to intimidate. Since I was small, I started as a thief, spending all my time in the shadows, learning to be discreet, silent and deadly. As I grew, he worked me hard to shape my body into a killing machine, force-feeding me proteins, and injecting with near-lethal doses of hormones such as testosterone. I grew large, broad shoulders, crushing thighs. But I was not only strong and powerful, I was also fast, tactical and cautious. Depending on the mission, I had a whole arsenal of possibilities and gadgets that allowed me to succeed. Every time.
I became more and more famous, feared, and the city also gave me a nickname: the Weapon.
Hidram continued after a click of his tongue. “There’s a manor a few miles from here, towards the north—”
“North?
“Past the abandoned railroads.”
“That’s Jalyon territory.”
“I know—”
“You never send me there.” I started breathing heavily. Not that I was afraid of facing one of them, but entering their properties was one of the worst kinds of provocation. They would likely use the slightest of intrusion as an excuse to start an attack since they talked mostly with their fists. And I wanted to eschew any more confrontation that I already had to endure for the sake of my dear father. “We decided never to send me there.”
“Let me explain. There’s a stone. Supposedly. I know from an exterior source that it was left there, the former owners of the house unaware of the power it holds.”
“What kind of power?”
“Something out of this world.” He said, eyes beaming with greed. And a fake smile.
I lifted my brow. “You have no idea, have you?”
“Because it’s not important, you just have to retrieve it.” He talked fast, bored.
“If this stone holds any power, I should be aware of it, since I’ll be the one handling it.”
“I don’t have much more information, son.”
“Then I have to take the risk of declaring war for a piece of rock that might not even be there, father?”
He had the audacity to cock his head to the side, as if he was offended by the sarcastic tone. “There’s no risk, I had the house cleared, no Jalyons should be around.”
“Should? That will not suffice.”
“That’ll have to do.” He stomped his foot on the ground.
“We already talked about this. Our relation with the Jalyons is not cordial. There is no way they will let me go there without a fight.”
“You won’t even be trespassing; it’ll be right on the edge.”
I frowned, my voice coated with irony. “Do you really think we’ll be able to negotiate with these brutes?”
“Stop.” I sighed but obeyed. “The stone is important. I want it. It could very well save us from the precariousness of our situation.” I almost murmured that we were living just fine but the urge to end the conversation quickly made me stay silent. “I already have a buyer that desperately wants it,” he continued, still surveying our surroundings. “He will pay enough for us to see what’s beyond. Nolis, we could leave Zelian.”
The realization took longer to land than he expected. And my reaction was probably not what he was waiting for either. “Leave Zelian? What’s going on with you, did you forget that all the portals were shut down ages ago? That the Jalyons are guarding them? That no one, for thousands of years, has heard of the other planets?”
He kept nodding during my speech. “I thought about that, and I already have it covered. You’ll just have to trust me.”
I laughed. “I never trusted you and never will.”
“Nolis.”
My stare was harsh and brutal, my blood was burning from the rage storming inside of me, and I was ready to unleash everything I kept deep, all the resentment, all the hate, all of it was about to burst right here, right now, in the back alley of the most crowded part of the city. But Hidram opened his mouth again, before I could. “It’ll be the last time, son. Just that one time and it’s over.”
I stared at him, searching for the truth in his eyes, afraid that it was another one of that bastard's tricks. He was always finding ways to have me close, to keep me at his disposal until the very end. By the time he would be done with me, I'd be shackled and too deep in shit that I would no longer be safe outside, always hunted, always on the run. When I would no longer have a chance of having a normal and decent life, where I wouldn’t have to put the lives of the ones I’d care about in danger, constantly. Since I’ve been working for him, I have made nothing else but enemies, and that kind of talk had been our everyday habit.
I couldn’t even start trusting him, couldn’t start believing a word he said because he was the best negotiator in our entire city. But the Jalyons would not fall for it. The Collector had been in their radar for too long and this mission was vowed to fail. “This is not going to end well.”
“I’m confident it will. Confident in you.”
His words didn’t reach the soft spot in my heart as he intended. We had never been close, accomplice enough to drown my trust in him without an ounce of hesitation. I wanted to refuse, to leave him to deal with his buyer and the oath he took. But to imagine a way out of this life rang loud enough inside my ear. And in his eyes, I found nothing but pure innocence. “You really believe in this,” I said after a moment.
“I do. This is our chance.”
I bit my lip. I would have to be a lot more cautious than the other missions he presented. Monsters were one thing, and it had been very dangerous from the start, but the Jalyons were something else completely. They were idiots, mutants that relied on their ability to punch harder than the rest to implement fear in the blood of the inhabitants. I wasn’t afraid to fight one. However, I was terrified of the repercussions. I took a deep and long breath before nodding imperceptibly. This was the closest I had been to finally see the end of my misery.
His wide eyes and terrifying smile made me regret my decision in a heartbeat.