Rat tore through the city, drawing eyes wherever she went and not returning any until she reached a section that was less full of people. She dodged into an alley and let herself breathe. This place was foreign and she didn’t like it. Everyone was clothed, and so nicely, in colored scarves and floaty, silky veils. Rat’s body, clothed in a paper gown, stood out. Her white skin and hair were so different from the warm browns and blacks of everyone here that even if she was properly clothed, she’d stand out. There would be no escape inside one of the short sandstone buildings unless she climbed one. But the walls were too smooth and the roofs too low; it would be too much work for too little cover. Besides, she’d seen small hovering machines in the sky. No doubt the little helicopters, too small to be manned, would spot her.
So she kept running, keeping her head down, trying to avoid the eyesore of the bright, sunny streets and garish inhabitants. The noise was what she really needed an escape from. There was so much chatter, so much talking. Every time a child screamed, or a woman scolded said child, Rat’s teeth clashed together. And there were vehicles everywhere, on every road, releasing steam from their exhaust pipes and trilling a high siren at her whenever she ran in front of one. The helicopters purred overhead, humming just loud enough to remind everyone of their presence.
The noise eventually died down as she hurried through the streets into a darker part of town. The buildings were taller and more and more were made of metal, many stained or damaged. They were grim, without windows. Some were even missing doors. There were far fewer people here and those that did walk the streets walked faster, eyes to the ground. They wore dull uniforms or work clothes. Gone were the bright cars that whistled at her when she crossed their path. Instead were larger trucks, with no windows at all, the honked when she crossed their path and didn’t slow down. The air hissed with the release of steam, droned with the buzz of vehicles. It was cold, impersonal, and industrial and she felt significantly more at ease.
Finally, after she’d gone several minutes without seeing another person, she started looking for a place to wait out anyone who was still looking for her. The main road had many narrow alleyways leading off between buildings. Rat ducked into one, finding a short dead-end with a dumpster at the end. The ground was sticky, the walls too high for the sun to properly shine in. It smelled of rot and filth and Rat’s whole body released its building tension. Finally, a place to hide.
The dumpster was hot and full of garbage, but it was hidden from prying eyes and the burning rays of the sun. Rat dug through the trash, ripping bags open and hunting for clothes. She was too recognizable without them; she needed to try to blend in. She found an orange shirt with a deep cut down from the collar across to her hip, and some red and black splotchy pants with gashes opened in it every few inches. She slipped on the shirt and shuddered a bit. It was so soft and light that her skin crawled, almost as bad as the blankets back at the doctor’s office. The pants posed even more of a problem. Her entire body could fit in one of the legs. She slipped into them, rolling up the bottoms before tearing up another scrap of clothing and wrapped it around her waist, to keep the pants up. It wasn’t until she was trying off the knot that she realized how much her fingers were shaking. They needed to be occupied, full with something. Surely she needed protection. Surely she was in danger, surely she had to be able to do something. But dread bloomed in her stomach as she realized there was nothing to do but wait. Wait and think, and thinking never helped an agitated mind. Her heart beat faster and her chest grew tighter as she played over and over in her head, detail vivid as though it were happening in front of her, every moment of the crash.
A crying child. A bus. The screech of tires and hot asphalt and the hiss of the engine coming at her, faster and faster. She had been hit by a bus. And she had survived. This wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary had it not been for two things. She was unharmed and she could not explain why. She ran the pads of her fingers down her left forearm, her breath evening out as she traced the grooves of her scars. Deep, slow breaths, even, even heartbeats. Her eyes flicked closed and she let the soothing motions take over, undistracted by the unfamiliar world around her.
She whispered words she barely understood, words deeply ingrained in her brain, the words of her childhood, in a language long gone to her.
The water droplets that fall from the sky.
"Rane," she whispered.
The way the stars shone, the moon glowed, a candle burned.
"Brite."
The stone hills that rose high above the ground and towered above man and God alike.
“Mountin.”
A purple flower, dotting across a green field.
"Vilet."
The words still repeating across her lips, her hands moved across her body as she counted her scars, twenty-seven in all, and then felt the space where the next two should go. She couldn't let her count fall behind. Days, months, years, they all slipped by without much marker. The scars were how she counted time. She was twenty-nine accidents in. That’s all she knew about her age. Keeping score grounded her. Her breathing had returned to comfortable territory, she just needed something sharp to keep her mind alert. The pain and blood would clear her head.
Eyes still closed, she fumbled around the dumpster, fingers toying over filth and waste until she heard the soft chime of glass on metal. A bottle. From the weight and balance of it, she could tell it was unbroken. A quick swing at the metal wall of the dumpster fixed that and her fingers played across the jagged lip until she found a sufficiently long shard. She brought the razor edge of the glass to her skin, closed her eyes, and waited for the clarity as she dragged the glass lightly over her skin.
She felt nothing. Just the cool glass and slight pressure. Was her mind blocking the pain? Was this why she hadn’t felt the crash?
She opened her eyes, glancing down, searching for the thin line and its seeping red, but couldn’t find it. Palming across where the cut should have been, she found nothing. No tax of blood that her body should be paying for the slice. Her skin was unbroken. Her hands must be shakier than she’d thought. Eyes open this time, she lined up the glass better with her skin and drew the line again, harder this time. Skin dipped underneath the edge but did not yield. It was as though she’d simply pressed down on the skin with her finger. She blinked a few times, before screwing up her face in concentration and pressing the point as hard as she could against her skin. Again, the glass pressed in and deformed the surface of her skin but did not cut. Her skin changed color with the pressure as the blood underneath was pushed away, but none made itself visible. She could just as well have been using a blunt rock instead of glass.
Trying to even her elevated breathing, she tested the glass against other substances in the dumpster. Maybe it was designed special, unable to puncture? But as a plastic carton, several scraps of cloth, some rigid dry cardboard, and a slimy piece of rotten meat all gave way under the tool, her mind was all the more clouded and concerned.
She jabbed at her arm, a harder more sudden movement, and this time heard glass cracking. Holding the broken bottle up to her eyes, she saw fractures running the length of it. Finally, she clenched the shard in her hand, squeezing her eyes closed and gripping it with all her strength. It shattered in her palm. When Rat opened her hand, there was nothing but fine glittering powder, not a single shard too large to fit in the grooves of her skin. Her hand shook and the silvery dust danced across her hands. What was going on? She pressed the powder into her hand as hard as she could, but she couldn't even feel it itching her. In fact, she hadn't felt itchy all day. Where were her small, parasitic companions that made a feast of her skin, paying her only in welts, rashes, and bumps? Not once, all day, had she felt the urge to relieve an itch. Any scratching had been purely reflexive.
Her breath sped up. Her fingers twitched and moved like spiders, dancing up and down, her arms, her thighs, picking between the tears on her pants to find a patch of skin that would return her hungry nails with that shuddering pleasure. She scratched at her neck, her belly, her hips. Not even her scalp, the forest of hair that usually housed thousands of bugs, returned the slightest inkling. Her breathing had reached the point where it had sufficiently coated her brain in a fog as she tried to rationalize. Her skin had rejected the blade. It had rejected her nails. She bit down hard on her finger, desperate to feel, but only received pressure back on her gums. Her mind reached for her calming words but they froze in the suffocated gunk of her brain. Why couldn’t she feel? Why couldn’t she feel? Why couldn’t she feel anything other than panic? The only other sensation was the growing dizziness, an ache or maybe a burn in her lung. She tried for a deep breath but her lungs seemed to have reduced to a fraction of their capacity. Black spots danced in her eyes and she felt very very far away. She trembled like a leaf in autumn and then she fell, fell, fell.
---
Rat scurried after the squirrel as it raced through the underbrush. Her heart pounded with excitement, echoing the frantic heartbeats of the rabbit itself. The thrill of the chase made her blood sing with excitement. Her prey darted through a bramble, but Rat followed it heedlessly. The thorns tickling her skin tasted like squirrel stew and she could barely suppress a thrill of excitement.
On the other side of the thicket, however, she didn't find the rabbit. She saw a silver statue of a girl, maybe fourteen years old, perfectly formed from the finest of material. Then the statue opened eyes of stark marble, shimmering sapphire, and matte onyx.
"Avara?"
Avara opened her mouth but only bubbles and sea spray spilled from her lips. As the bubbles popped, Rat could hear her words.
"Rat… I miss you. I'm sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to. Please do not haunt me anymore!"
"I don't understand." Rat felt a buzzing in her head that rattled her thoughts in circles.
Avara looked down at her hands and Rat could see the faintest hint of a coppery brown staining them. "I cannot go a day without thinking of- ' Her voice stopped abruptly as a tangled knot of seaweed clogged her throat. Her silver skin tarnished black and her eyes closed. Before Rat could say another word, Avara dissolved into silver sand.
Rat reached for the shimmering dust but fell forward into mist. She screamed as she fell and landed with a mouth full of gravel and ash. A high laugh tore through the air. She pushed herself to her feet and saw someone, something, peeking around a corner. Glowing, blood-like eyes and snow-white hair greeted her eyes before the thing vanished in an instant.
Rat looked around. Behind her was her hovel, the little shack she called home, but something was wrong. Her eyes lifted above her home as if she couldn’t control them, higher until she was fully fixated on what swarmed above the house. A living column of gore and knives, taller than the sky, hotter than flame, darker than night, and so bursting with hate swirled and breathed.
Its thousand thousand eyes slid in her direction.
She ran until her legs gave way beneath her and then crawled til her arms collapsed. She leaned against the wall and found it to be made of cool rusted metal. It was a dumpster. The dumpster she fell asleep in. The dumpster she was asleep in. Looking around, she saw a back alley, now bathed in the colors of dusk. Then she heard light feet running in the dark, followed by footsteps that echoed loudly and-
---
Rat woke up sharply to footsteps clanking against the pavement. An unearthly presence settled over her, the kind that signified something unnatural and the stupid part of her heart thought maybe it was Avara. Then she heard a noise, a sort of tuneless humming that sent a chill up her spine, far more than the crunch of metal being crushed. It was a voice, or maybe something that wanted to be a voice. Then there was a skittering, a screech, and a high pitched howl.
Then a cold synthetic laugh.
"Yes, quite the specimen. Useless for experiments, however. Ah well." There was a whimper and the thump of something heavy hitting the ground accompanied by a sickening crack. "Now. There should be one more significant life form in the area, the pale girl from the reports. Where did it go?"
Everything stood deathly quiet. Then there was a crash. Then the footsteps started again, slow and methodical.
As they passed by Rat's hiding place, she closed her eyes, steadying her breathing. Maybe it wasn’t talking about her. Maybe she didn’t need to get involved. Yet the steps moved so confidently, no pauses for searching, no sense of urgency, like a lion who had already spotted its exhausted prey. The person out there knew where she was. She could wait or she could get the drop on it. Rat swallowed. Her mind and body were, all things considered, rather sharp. She was ready and reasonably sure of herself. After all, hadn’t she survived the Butcher King’s assignment? Something ‘no one has returned alive from’? And her skin was newly durable. She stood a good chance.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
First, grab its attention, set it up to fail. She banged her hand against the wall of the dumpster and followed it with a muffled cry of mock pain, before trailing off into whimpers.
“Tsk tsk tsk, not a very smart specimen.”
The footsteps were nearing her, even lazier now. It had its guard down.
Her heart picked up the pace and she readied herself. A tiny part of her brain argued that she should have tried to gather more information on whatever she was facing, but she silenced the doubt. No sense in second-guessing now, it was go time.
Even though she’d intentionally given her position away, she still tensed sharply when the lid of the dumpster disappeared, torn away with a horrible wrenching noise. The interior was flooded with moonlight and she sprung from it, launching herself at the assailant.
It backed away with blinding, unnatural speed and Rat tumbled clumsily onto the ground. In a second, she was back on her feet. The form, hard to make out in the dark, stood between her and the main road. Her mind raced, trying to figure out the best plan of action. She took a half step forward, but hesitated for a moment, eyes darting as she determined a course.
Then she ran. Time seemed to slow as it had in the office. Each slam of her bare feet across the cracked pavement as she ran sent shocks up to her brain, which screamed faster, faster, faster. As she raced by it, the thing turned to follow her.
She was just passed it when her whole body slammed to a stop, yanked hard by her head. The thing had grabbed her hair and she tripped and fell. Then it lifted her off her feet, her toes several inches off the ground. The yanking on her hair didn’t hurt, but it was harsh enough to know that her assailant was not concerned with her comfort. As it lifted her off her feet, she realized just how much taller it was than she. She squirmed and struggled as it turned her slowly. Finally, she faced it.
The creature was humanoid and most of its body was shrouded in darkness. Had it not been for its face, she probably would have just thought it was a particularly strong person. But the smooth, dark surface of its face, marked only by long, glowing eyes, wasn’t organic. It was too lifelike to be a robot though. A God then? Rat’s stomach squeezed. Why couldn’t it have just been a rapist or murderer? Things really had been simpler back at the mine.
Its glowing green eyes bored into her, assessing her in an even, methodical sense. "Hmmmmm," it buzzed. "An interesting specimen.” The light from its eyes flitted the way a scanner might before it blinked. Upon reopening the light had dimmed. “On further examination, too old and too diminutive." This whole time, Rat had been clawing at its face, but it didn't react and her nails slid off its skin like glass. "Subject worthless for experimentation."
The next thing Rat registered was flying through the air and hitting a wall. Something crunched and cracked as her body crumpled into it and her heart double skipped in fear as the wind was knocked out of her. Running a hand against the wall and catching her breath, slowly, her lips parted. It was the bricks that had broken. She felt like maybe she’d tripped and fallen.
What had the ship done to her?
Whatever it was, right now it served to help her survive the impact. Anything else, she’d consider later. Right now she was disoriented and a bit battered, no worse. Her heart was running at a familiar elevated pace now. She actually felt better now that she was stinging a bit.
"Hey, fucker!" The thing turned around. Its eyes were bright again and Rat could almost smell its surprise. She grinned, showing off her sharpened teeth. "Was that - Were you trying to kill me? I’ve had crippled slaves get closer. I’m actually embarrassed for you. Do you need another go?"
The thing tilted its head. "Interesting. Subject has survived lethal force. Dissecting its body will prove informative." It raised up a hand and arcs of pale green energy exploded around it. Rat braced herself, ready for the energy to strike, but instead, it jumped to a nearby dumpster. Over the crackling hiss of burning air, Rat heard something shift inside the dumpster. She darted next to it. Had someone else been hiding? Hadn’t the God mentioned there was only her left? Maybe it was wrong. Her eyes darted between the God and the dumpster. The God wasn’t moving so Rat took advantage of the moment to dash to the dumpster.
She pulled it open, a little too short to see inside.
“Take my hand, fast.” She reached a hand in the dumpster, still keeping an eye on the God. Would whoever was inside the dumpster need protecting? Had the attack hurt them?
Her body broke out in goosebumps as something cold and slimy wrapped around her arm. She was reminded briefly of the ship and she lost all composure, yanking her hand frantically out. Attached to it was a four-fingered hand with glistening black skin.
“What in the ever-living fuck,” she sputtered, pulling her arm away. Its grip was like iron so she slammed her arm against the lip of the dumpster, pinching the hand hard between her arm and the metal. Its fingers tensed before going limp. She scrambled away as the entity finished its ascent from the trash.
Its body was emaciated and it had no eyes or nose. Its skin was a slick black that reflected the moonlight. The only defining feature on its lumpy, misshapen head was a mouth full of glass shards.
"Procure the specimen for me,” the God ordered.
The misshapen mass obeyed. It jumped at Rat, pinning her to the ground. Its teeth closed hard around her neck, pressing into her throat, but again her skin proved an impermeable barrier against harm. The construct hesitated in its attack and Rat, choked by the pressure around her neck but otherwise unharmed, writhed and twisted until she saw an opening. Her nails made contact with the rubbery skin of her assailant and ripped a hole in it. The creature howled and went limp as a torrent of garbage poured out of it, trash from the dumpster all mashed together, papers and moldy food scraps and gummy packaging.
Rat pushed its flaccid body off of her and stood back up. She stepped over it, body still crawling with goosebumps. Across the alley, she met the flickering green eyes of her enemy. Again, she couldn’t read its smooth face, but there was a hesitation in its movements before it shot both hands forward, the green energy releasing again.
Bricks ripped from the buildings lining the alleyway, forming into a squat construct with huge spiked fists. From the sand slithered a long boneless shape, five serpents tied together at the tail, and from the roof of a nearby building, shingles banded together in the shape of a bat. They charged Rat, not quite in sync, but working of one mind. This time she was ready for them.
The sand snake hit first but she grabbed it with a hand, stomping its other heads under her heel, while the fangs gnashed against her arm, ineffectively. She dodged the brick beast, which crashed into the wall behind her, just as the bat made impact with her stomach. But it was the ceramic and stone creature that cracked and fractured, even as she staggered back at the blow. Planting her feet over the twitching snake, she grabbed the floundering bat with her now open hands and tore its wings off. Then she grabbed both damaged monsters and hurled them at the brick beast. The sand snake evaporated on contact but the bat’s wings jutted into the brick and the monster fell to the ground before crumbling into clay.
Rat caught her breath, appraising the damage, making sure nothing would come back. Then she lifted her head, red eyes staring through her stained hair to meet the luminescent green of her foe. There was no mistaking the fear that shone back at her.
"What are you?" The words clicked, still more curious than anything. “You aren’t like any of the specimens we’ve worked on before.”
Its words chilled Rat and she snarled. The noise tore through her like the fire that raged in her blood, screaming to be let out. It pressed against her skin and she panted, fingers twitching near her arms as if she could tear open her skin and let the flames consume the monster, let her bare feet dance in the ashes. But her skin would not tear, this she knew by now. There was only one way to satiate that fire.
When Rat spoke, her voice was far more even than her racing heart. "You wanna know what this bitch is made of?"
For a moment, the thing tipped its head, as if expecting her to answer. “Your identification and classification is requested.”
Her lips curled into a joyless smile. “Denied. And you’re gonna fucking die not knowing.”
The thing’s eyes fell into slits and it thrust unleashed even more of its power. A dozen of monsters sprung up, rubber, cement, tar, food scraps, oil, the unholy culmination of an urban landscape warped into sick abominations. They surrounded Rat, boxing her in. She stood firm, wondering if they could feel the heat that radiated off her. They just stood there.
"What are you doing?” screamed the God. “Move. Attack! Bring back her remains for Eden."
The monsters did nothing. Rat took a step forward but they shied away from her.
Step by step she approached their creator. It shivered and emitted a high pitched whine as it pulled a bladed instrument on her.
"Stay back!"
Rat took another step forward. Then another.
The thing swung at her. Reflexively, Rat caught the blade in her hand. A sharp sting exploded across her palms and she stumbled back, overwhelmed. Across her palm, a large gash let loose a flood of scarlet across her milky skin. She was bleeding. She was bleeding and it hurt. It actually hurt. The fire inside her was unleashed.
The laughter bubbled to her lips before she could even try to stop it. She pressed her fingers into the wound, revealing in the feeling of it. It was like a film over her mouth and nose was finally gone.
Laughing still, she punched the thing with a strength that exceeded what her scrawny arms should have been capable of. It fell on its back in an undignified sprawl, stunned. She tackled it then, punching it again and again.
She could hear the weak scream that had escaped the monster’s previous victim. Again.
She could hear its cold voice, dismissing the ‘subject’ as useless. Again.
She could hear it ordering her own destruction and see the fear in its eyes as its minions fell before Rat.
Again.
Again.
Again.
But no matter how many punches she landed, the mask remained uncracked, and soon her hands, as durable as they’d become, were getting sore. Her laughter dimmed into frosted growls, which grew louder with each blow, to screams of fury. Finally, with a howl, she picked up the knife it had cut her with and plunged it into one of its eyes. It whined mechanically, and the light behind its remaining eye flickered a few times before dying. All at once, its constructs crumpled to the ground, discorperating into whatever refuse they had been formed from. The scraps of metal, an old cushion, the punctured tires all rolling away looked so banal it was impossible to even imagine how it had come together to form anything alive.
Rat stared down at the body, corpse, destroyed mechanism of whatever this thing had been. What had it called itself? Eden? Gathering and collecting people for experimentation or servitude, destruction, pain, and ultimately death, as the immortals always did.
She pulled herself to her feet and stared at the blade. It had been able to cut her. So was her skin back to normal? Or was the blade special? Her body stung, but it wasn’t close to the pain she remembered experiencing after similar fights with a God… For a moment she was reminded of the last time an immortal being had physically attacked her and her hand clamped over the blade, deepening the cut.
This thing had wanted to experiment though. It relished in causing pain. Rat had been lucky, but the woman before-
Rat hastily stashed the blade and headed in the direction of its prior victim. The main road was dead, so Rat was able to slip to the next alley over unnoticed. She found the body crumpled in a broken heap against a tall metal fence at the end of the alley. Blood obscured most of her face and her bony legs splayed out in directions legs weren’t supposed to turn. The woman’s skin was still warm even as she lay still and Rat felt a prickle of misgiving. If the woman had died before the fight, her skin should be cool. Had she only just died in the past few minutes?
The prickle turned to shame as Rat recalled how long she’d hidden in the dumpster before attacking, how sloppily she’d fought, how many times she’d futilely punched, knowing it wasn’t doing damage but feeling so good doing it anyway. Every action had been reactionary, but reactionary wasn’t enough. Acting only for herself worked fine when she’d been powerless to help anyone, but it wasn’t enough anymore. She’d given herself too many long, self-indulgent moments and maybe this woman would be alive if she hadn’t.
Rat reached out, foolishly perhaps, to arrange the woman’s body in something more… dignified? Natural? But as she grabbed the woman’s shoulders, her body shuddered and she gasped a long, deep breath. Rat flinched reflexively, but when the woman’s eyes opened, there was nothing there to suggest she’d been unnaturally revived. Just injured and regaining consciousness. Rat’s body flooded with panic. Here was a chance for her to do something but she’d had no idea what. Rat had never been in the business of being able to save injured people.
Rat fumbled for a pulse, thinking through every treatment she’d ever experienced and how she could possibly administer them here.
"No… use…" The young woman’s breath was raspy. "My legs are fucked and my-” she cut off, coughing, her eyes spiked huge with pain. “Fuck.” She spat out some blood, sniffing. “I can’t get up and they can’t find me. If you want to help, just finish this.”
Rat blinked once. And then once again. “I can… move you?”
“Can’t see a doctor in town. If they recognize who I’m with, we’re all screwed. If you won’t do it, I will, but it’s easier if someone else does it.”
“Do you have a home or something? I could bring you there.” Rat was starting to get angry. This woman was alive and Rat was gonna save her, no matter how hard she made it.
The woman laughed, wincing. “Yeah, not happening. I can’t take a stranger back to the base. You could be anyone.”
Rat pressed her eyes closed. She could just leave, right now, and this woman would die and Rat could go back to eating garbage and wearing torn clothes and keeping her nose to the ground like a good little rodent. But her eyes were a tad too open for that now.
“I’m either carrying you to a doctor or you can tell me a better place to bring you and that’s just the fucking deal, ok? I saved you from that thing.” For all the shit Rat always got for getting people killed, she’d expected a bit more gratitude for helping.
“Sneaking past a Drone isn’t exactly heroic.”
“I fucking trashed it! I didn’t sneak by.”
The woman’s eyes finally displayed an emotion beyond pain and resignation. “Liar.”
Rat tilted her head, pissed. “Alright lady, see with your own eyes and call them liars.” Rat scooped up the woman, who yelped in pain and transported her to the alleyway where the fight had happened. Her body weighed next to nothing. Or maybe Rat was just stronger now.
“There, see?” Putting the woman to rest on the ground, Rat held up the destroyed Drone, its once built body now deflated. “Lights out, shut down, dead.”
Now the woman looked at Rat, a completely new look in her eyes. It was an expression that Rat had never seen in someone looking at her.
Hope.
“You killed a Drone…” The woman’s eyes dashed up and down Rat’s scrawny body and her lips formed rapid words that Rat couldn’t follow. “How long do you think you can carry me?”
“As long as you need. What’s a Drone? Where are we going?”
The woman shook her head. “I can’t tell you. We have to move quick.”
Rat wasn’t gonna hold the woman’s life hostage for information but she was still peeved at being put off. “You owe me some answers when we get there.”
The woman laughed, but it was a good-natured sound. “Don’t you worry. There’s gonna be a lot of questions and answers when we get there. Keep your questions in your head for now. We have to move quick, before sun up. There’s a stop we need to make.”