Chapter 12

Do you know that sensation you have when you wake in a strange place? It’s as if you’re for a moment in your own bed, and as long as your eyes are closed, you can picture precisely what you’ll see when you open them. And the shock when you find yourself somewhere completely different makes you want to close your eyes and reclaim that lost paradigm. I’ve had this feeling many times, but probably not as acutely as Warren felt it when he awoke.
For that blissful moment, Warren imagined himself secluded in a blue bedroom, wrapped tightly in a thick comforter, hiding from the morning light. But when his eyes flickered open, he found not the pure rays of a rising sun, but the mechanical glow of fluorescent lighting. And the tight wrap was not of his own doing, but restraints of some kind. He heard voices babbling around him, fading in and out, but never quite comprehensible.
The ceiling was low, stained a dark metallic green with tints of blue. It seemed to press him into a state of claustrophobia. Its uneven nature made him wonder if it was strange, or if he had lost his sense of dimension. He tried to crane his neck, but found himself strapped down by the forehead as well. So he licked his lips and shut his eyes again, listening for all he was worth.
Two voices, one distinctly female, another male, seemed to fluctuate around him most often—at times close that he could hear distinct words and phrases, but found himself unable to scour any meaning from it. He thought it might be Latinate—every now and again he thought he had heard at least a cognate of the English language or two. Just when it seemed the voices had drifted far enough his way, that he could decipher a word or two, a deep rushing wind ripped through the place. It had almost a throaty howl to it, as if the air were being sucked into some deep pit in the corridors beyond him.
Then the voices became audible again—much clearer now. Then he felt a shadow fall across his face. He relaxed his eyelids, took a deep rhythmic inhalation through his nose—and hoped they wouldn’t catch on that he was listening. But their proximity to him now didn’t help. Sheer clarity couldn’t interpret a foreign language. A set of cold fingers touched his arm, massaged it lightly. Then amidst what he took to be idle chatter, a sharp prick in his arm made him jump—Warren made a nasally gasp and fluttered his eyelids, as if waking.
The woman said something soothingly and stroked his forehead. He felt a tingle in that right arm that crept up towards his shoulder. Then he realized he couldn’t feel his fingers—she had most certainly applied a local anesthesia. He stared at the ceiling, wondering what they planned for him. His ears heard a bit of machinery being maneuvered; his shoulder felt a weight on the joint, then a thud. Warren yawned and flickered his eyelids again, eyes straining towards his right arm. What looked like one of his father’s air-powered nail guns was situated over his right forearm. The girl was holding some sort of device to his skin. It bleeped twice and she made a satisfactory grin. The man turned away, apparently setting the gun down. His shoulder felt another tug. Warren returned his gaze to the ceiling, which didn’t seem so low any more.
Then his view was filled with the woman’s face—which warren found only slightly attractive. She had a rather emaciated look to her, with sallow cheeks and defined cheekbones. Her eyes seemed set too deep and her skin seemed stretched over bone alone. Thin, but ruby red lips spoke something to him, and those blue eyes pierced his own, searching him past a sharp, beak-like nose. Her short, crimson hair still fell over her ears, but had been spiked in front. Her thin eyebrows rose in expectation of an answer; she glanced at her partner, as if to ask for help—but just for a moment—then she settled her gaze back on Warren, who desperately wanted to say something but had trouble finding the words.
Then the woman stood back and turned. Warren’s eyes grew wide when he saw a set of ink-black wings stretch from her shoulders and block his vision of half the room. They were grand, majestic, and terrible wings—like those of a giant raven. With a swift stroke of those powerful, feathered limbs, she took off down the corridor. Still in shock, he turned to see the man grin and exit the corner. No wings on him though, Warren told himself.
Before Warren had any time to ask himself what he had just witnessed, the whole room shook violently and it seemed the bottom fell out of the left side—the whole room sank to an incline. The straps held Warren fast, but a myriad of tools dove to the left-hand wall, bouncing beneath him. The bed he lay on seemed secured to the floor well enough, so he tried to relax. He took three regulated breaths, then paused for one deep breath, and then repeated the procedure.
But then shouts began issuing from down one of the passageways beyond his room. A distant explosion and what he took to be erratic gunfire trickled into his ear. Just before another explosion, Warren thought he heard the words, “Get down!” but he wasn’t sure of anything at the moment—except that his arm was tingling with a vengeance. He tried to wiggle it, but that just sent a shower of needles down the length of his arm. So he relaxed and listened.
The shouts were definitely getting closer, the cracks interrupting what had become a storm of activity seemed more and more likely gunshots. He imagined Livingstone was behind it. At least, he hoped he were. When Warren believed the commotion closing in on himself, the woman, if you could call her that, returned—swooped down and landed on the left wall, folding her wings behind her. She made a cute frown at Warren and searched the spilt tools lining the corner of the room. A syringe made her happy and, with a couple great flaps, leapt over Warren and clung to a mounted lamp at the top half of the angulated room.
She found the cabinet she wanted, and carefully pulled the magnetized door open. Small glass vials crowded the opening, and one by one she tossed them over Warren, until she found the one she was after and a small pile of broken glass had accrued at the bottom of the room. With a playful stab, she stuck the needle through the thin rubber cap and drew the syringe full.
Her eyes flicked to Warren and her tongue caressed her lower lip. Then, like an eagle diving down to snatch a fish from water, she spread her wings and dropped to the right side of the table. Landing with a crouch, she smiled at Warren, found the vein in his numb arm, and jabbed in the needle. She sang something in a language he didn’t understand, kissed him on the cheek, spread her wings and dove down the hallway. When she was out of sight, Warren tried to look at his arm—he could only imagine what sort of injection she had given him.
Just then another shout, one most certainly recognizable as Old Fred’s, erupted from just beyond the passageway. Warren decided to call to him, to aid with what had to be a rescue effort. “Fredric!” he tried with a hoarse voice. He coughed and tried for more volume. “Fredric! I’m over here” Several shots rang out—followed by a thud. “Fredric?” Warren tried again, his vocal cords warming up a bit. Another, louder thump echoed to him. Then, to Warren’s surprise, Sofi’s figure appeared in the doorway, one foot on the floor, the other on the left wall.
“Hey you,” she said.
Warren tried to smile. “Hi.” Sofi seemed to judge the distance between the passage way that fell off to the left and the corner of the room filled with medical debris. With a jump and a slide, she found herself below Warren. With another leap, she had secured a grasp on his table’s leg, and she pulled herself up, wrapping her leg between the supports to free her hands.
Her nimble fingers quickly undid the straps on Warren’s arms, saving the waist and shoulder belts for last, to keep him from falling. As she released his harnessed right arm, Sofi noticed the blood on it. “What did they do?”
“Several shots via needle and one by nail gun, I think.”
“Hmmm. We’ll check you out later, come on. Hold onto me with your good arm while you pivot. Excellent; do you mind that drop?” she asked.
“Not a bit.”
So he landed on the wall and leaned back against the floor. Another explosion sounded further into the corridors and several small cracks of gunfire reached their ears afterward. “Are those the others? Warren wondered aloud. Sofi nodded and dropped down next to him, crunching a conglomeration of medical utility beneath her feet. “Let’s join them,” she ordered more than suggested. “Down, I think, will be our best option. She withdrew a pistol from a leg holster and peered down the passage. She nodded, gave a little leap and slid down the incline on her right hip, disappearing quickly in the failing light. Warren gave chase rather whimsically and tossed himself down the corridor, though not quite as far out as Sofi, in hopes he wouldn’t land on her.
The slide wasn’t nearly as smooth as he had expected, but his location was; when he hit the wall at a “T” intersection, he landed right behind Sofi. A cry to the left caught their ears and Sofi took off in that direction. Warren blinked and shook his right arm, hoping some form of life would come to it soon.
And as his mind’s focus was somewhat distracted by the semi-simple job of following Sofi and waiting for her commands, he found a moment to wonder where Ali had gone. This gave rise to just enough panic to send a shiver down his spine. He had not seen (or heard, for that matter) Ali in the room where he awoke. Warren joined Sofi at the edge of the next hallway.
“We need to find Ali; she’s gone,” he whispered.
“Who?”
“Ali. The rat you gave me.”
“We’ve been through this: I didn’t give you a rat. She was a plant to track your movements. If we find her again, they’ll be able to find us again. It’s for the best, Warren, that she’s gone. Now hold while I clear this next passage,” Sofi said and slid into the darkness. The echo of two shots came blasting back to him. “Clear!” Sofi’s voice issued up to him. Warren had half a mind to disappear in his own search for Ali—let the others catch up with him. It was such a troublesome situation, one with which Warren knew countless others had struggled. His instinct warred against Sofi’s words. He wondered how he would even begin to find Ali. “Watson!”
Another three shots clapped against the walls and bounced through the passages. “Watson, I need some help,” Sofi urged. This overpowered Warren’s train of thought and mandated action. He slid down to her side; she pointed across his chest, down a low-lit corridor. “Run that way, go now!” Warren obeyed and bounced from wall to floor to wall on as straight a path as he could go. He heard another pair of shots, then that distinctive hiss-snap as the floor beside him exploded into a small puff of dust. He reached for his shoulder, found nothing and switched shoulders. When he grasped only air a second time, he panicked. Then memory kicked it and the question of Ali’s whereabouts plagued him.
But another hiss followed by a ricocheting ping kept his head down and his feet moving. Several shots (without the deadly hiss) issued from Sofi’s weapon and a slight thud warmed his heart. The already much more uniquely distant passage began to fall off a bit, curving downward. And just when he began to slow out of sheer caution, a soft orange light illuminated the corridor beyond him, issuing from an object beyond the curve, beyond his sight. Warren glanced back to find Sofi right behind him. He pointed at the light.
“What do you think it is?” he asked.
Sofi raised her weapon. “Let’s find out.”
The glow rippled over the subtle curves of the passage walls, drifting steadily towards them, growing steadily brighter where their line of sight ended. When the object finally appeared, it was difficult to look at—but not overpowering in its brightness. It took Warren a moment for his eyes to adjust from the relative darkness he had been in before encountering the object; then epiphany lit his mind: it was a moth—a giant, effervescent moth.
Its wings fluttered in a blur, but the creature seemed not to mind taking its time in its progression up the tunnel. Its size was palpable—perhaps as long as he was tall, with wings spreading across the width of the hallway, more than he could stretch his arms. And like a fine dust, light seemed to float off of its beating wings and to coat everything in its path. Warren sighed at the warmth of the moth’s presence—it was as if an emotional burden had been lifted from his shoulders by the light.
Sofi, on the other hand, kept her weapon steady—almost as if she recognized the beast and knew it was dangerous. She passed Warren with a crawling but steady advance, pressing a hand to his chest. “What do you want, demon?” Warren thought he felt the effects of a shiver in her body, and raised an eyebrow. She had addressed it, “demon,” and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. It seemed harmless enough—but so had that gardener. He decided to stay behind Sofi and let her do the talking.
But then something happened that caught Warren completely off-guard. The moth spoke with a tender, but surrounding sort of voice. “Take care little one, for you know nothing of tending the garden.”
Sofi seemed to tense, fighting something with every muscle in her body. Her lips quivered as she spoke again. “I know I have been charged to deliver this one to St. Barthe’s, ae1205-Bau, Vilate 3 and neither you, nor any of your kind, nor any agent of the Mar will keep me from completing my task.” Sofi’s confidence seemed to wither with each passing second. A short pause seemed an eternity of conflict.
Then the creature issued what Warren imagined was a laugh—a crackling sort of trilling note. It fluttered closer and Sofi stepped back, her right shoulder pressing in Warren’s left. “I do not intend you harm—as do some aboard this ship,” the moth soothed. “The Mar are fickle and their trusts are as easily broken as gained.”
“And you are less so? I know your kind—your filth runs deeper than the oceans.”
“If you will condemn me along with my species, consider my actions from the free air above, and I beg you to choose on a different day your judgment on me,” the creature spoke and suddenly stopped his wings, alighting on the floor. Deep dark circular marks filled the wings, which it stretched to their full span. Then the beast began to vibrate its wings and the marks began to shimmer—then to move up, down, to focus in on Warren and Sofi like two great eyes, searching their souls. Then the wings stopped and a shockwave of what seemed sheer light knocked them backwards.
When the bright, dancing spots in their eyes faded and the shapes of dark blues and greens took on texture and shadow, Warren and Sofi found themselves outside of the Denver waypoint building. Beside them stood Livingstone and Old Fred, Ali squeaked from Warren’s shoulder, and the six man team were high-fiving each other and pointing to the sky, the buildings, etc. Trent was running a hand through his hair and checking his watch.
Warren snatched Ali off his shoulder and stroked her head—then turned to Sofi. “What was that?” Sofi looked only at Livingstone who shook his head and kicked at the ground.
“It was a demon,” she explained, more to Livingstone than Warren. “I’ve never seen one like it—it was…amiable, even. It’s responsible for…”
“I know, Sofi. I know. It’s just…” Livingstone responded and shoved his hands in his pockets. A long silence continued until Warren couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Where were we? What happened?” Livingstone just paced, and Sofi seemed most intrigued by his actions. Luckily for Warren, Old Fred would never turn down a chance to talk, and he seized it by the horns and ran with it.