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Chapter 6: Unyielding

Jace felt something stroking his hair. His head pounded and pain surged down his body like a pile of pins and needles tumbling down a long staircase. Everything was spinning.

“Why did you abandon me then?” Knight said, emitting a gentle coo.

Bucking as she bore a long, pointed nail into his cheek, he couldn’t muster the strength to resist her grip. Jace found himself bound at the wrists and dangling in the air from his arms. The very tips of his bare toes scraped concrete.  

His sight blurred, he tried to focus on her face that was near pressed up against his. The drilling drew blood that began dripping down his chin. The bindings grew tighter.

“I didn’t abandon you.” Jace said, his heart raced.

“You left me to die and then tried to save that craven Tannen.” Knight said with a gentle shake of her head. “I wonder, did it bother you that I was still alive? Were you worried one night I’d get up and just blow your head off?” She pointed her finger at his temple, cocked her thumb and made an explosive sound as her finger fell.

Jace locked onto her. The needles stopped tumbling across his skin. The world’s orbit gently fell from his senses. His eyes focused. It was Knight before him, but she was only recognizable by her voice. Her hair, a gradient of auburn to blond to raven black. Dark green designs embroidered her skin. Her irises cascaded between blue, green, and brown.

“No, the thought didn’t cross my mind until just now.” Jace said.

Her grip loosened and she stood up straight, taking a few steps back. She squinted and smirked at him, sashaying barefoot on the frozen floor. “I’m continuously amazed at your lack of a conscious.” Knight said as the vine-like bindings wrapped around Jace’s arms loosened and he fell hard.

Jace struggled to get his leg under him, everything trembled. His arms slipped as they gripped the wall, unforgiving sheets of ice layered every surface around him. He had nothing left in the tank. His vision danced between blurred and crisp as Knight’s talon-like toenails tapped inches from his face.

“You and I were both there. I wasn’t the one that rammed your tank into a fucking overpass.” Jace said, the chilled surface beneath him sapping the air from his lungs.

She squatted down, staring at her fingers. His blood still coated her index and thumb. Knight smirked as she licked the liquid from her skin. But that glee dissipated as soon as her tongue touched skin. Her face washed over with a deep scowl as she started to cough and gag, falling to her knees and heaving. Unable to fully regain her poise, she stumbled over to the still-prone Jace and poured over him with a haste only reserved for panicked students cramming last-minute for a test.

Her breathing sped as she yanked his jacket from his body. Lifting him up by his neck, a deep growl formed from her belly and she stared at him with his clothing half hanging. She found what she was looking for: a jagged etching scoured across his arm. The sight of it sent her into a raging vibration. A deep scar, like a tribal tattoo with a single fang in the middle.

Shouting curses, she dropped him. It felt like each time he fell, something was going to break. He was a delicate marble sculpture in a hall of diamonds.

With exhausted arms, he reached out to pull himself forward. He had to get out of here, wherever ‘here’ was. He found it a futile effort as Knight scooped him back up by the ankle, binding him by his legs to the ceiling, evoking vines from the dark recesses of the room.

“Where is it? Where are you marked?” Her face etching ignited with a dazzling green.

“I don’t know… what you’re talking about.” Jace said as his head bumped into her leg.

Like a raging inferno, she was enveloped in emerald flame. With a flick of the wrist, the tether bound to his ankle sent him careening into the wall. The tethers gave slack, and he bounced before collapsing feet-first onto the ground, sliding along the frozen surface.

“I will ask you again. Where. Is. That. Bastard. Mutt?” Knight snatched him up by the top of his head, and like a used rag doll, shook him.

Jace struggled to stay conscious. There wasn’t much more he could take. Rejection sickness would take weeks to recover from, even in a sterile environment but this beating was enough to punch his clock for good. He should have just taken his chances with the drone.

“I don’t know where it is.” Jace said. His fingertips and toes were going numb. The shivers that surged throughout his body faded. He was freezing to death.

“Enough.” The first Shepherd called from the doorway at the far-side of the room.

The light from behind the two Shepherds blinded Jace, his heart rate lept again. As his eyes adjusted, he could see more of what was around him. Rows of tables filled the far-half of the room, with various equipment lined on top: microscopes, centrifuges, and other research equipment. A number of large tubular vats were along the near-wall, filled with a stilled, black liquid.

“She wants to see him.” The second Shepherd followed up the first.

The tendril that bound Jace before snatched him up and let him down with care, planting him softly upon an open table behind Knight.

“I’m finished when I’m finished!” Knight squared off with them, stepping forward.

The two Shepherds looked at each other before they both squared with her and approached. “It is her will.” They spoke in unison.

Jace felt his heart rate plummeting again, the pounding in his head fading to a delicate fuzz. Lights out soon. He heard a soft thud in the floor panel behind the table, a stubby snoot protruding with bobbing nostrils.

“I don’t care what she wants. I have business to settle!” Knight said, rolling up her sleeves, a whirlwind of green sparks and flame danced as her voice distorted, growing darker. The twins matched her advance.

Jace reached out over the edge of the tabletop toward the creature, two eyes on one side of the beast’s face blinked at him. With a dainty chomp, the captain found himself being tugged off the table and into the vent, death’s embrace the counter-balance.

Everything ignited in the room as Jace entered the duct. Tables and equipment thrown as a tornado formed around Knight. Nothing remained in the center of the room. One of the cylinders near the vent burst from impact, bathing Jace in shadowy sludge. Whatever it was immolated Jace in a lightless fire.

By the time his feet had entered the duct, the pain dissipated. All sense of feeling disappeared. His head bobbed from bumping against the creases in the vent. He could hear his skin rubbing dry against the metal, his wrist and elbow getting caught on protruding rivets.

But it was serene.

There was a slight layer of guilt in thinking of it this way, getting dragged, his fate most likely to be eaten alive by this thing. But for the first time in a long time, his muscles and bones weren’t sore from sleeping on the hard bunker floor. His tendinitis wasn’t agitated from the miles of walking and running. The deep-seated exhaustion from perpetual hunger evaporated. The stress from worrying about everyone was gone. He felt no tension in his body. It was perfect stillness.

As they rounded the corner of the duct he lifted his head and shot his arm out, wedging himself in the intersection. The beast thrashed, sending ripples up his arm.

But he couldn’t look away. In a giant vat on the other side of the vent, on the far side of the room, a glowing neon green liquid swayed like gentle ocean waves. The rest of the room, insulated with layers of thick foam. From the cylinder, a thick bundle of vines emerged, spread up and out and burrowing into the foam, starbursts of red and orange leafy flowers dotting the thick tendrils. A feminine figure bobbed in the thick fluid within.

“Don’t!” The beast huffed out, his teeth still digging into Jace’s coat.

The gentle hum of generators beneath them were drowned out by the return of the ringing in his ears, and violent shivers. A thick cloud of pollen invaded the vent, filling Jace’s sinuses with sickeningly sweet flavors. As the desire to gag receded, things he long since thought he’d never experience again flooded his palette: fresh strawberries, blueberries, oranges. The sensation shifted, reminding him of home; his wife’s zucchini casserole, with tangy tomatoes and sweet carrots, danced upon his taste buds.

“Daddy!” A voice hushed a shout from back the way they came.

He broke his attention from the vat to look over his feet. He locked out his shoulder against the duct intersection, pinning himself, fighting against the tug of the creature.

“I’ve been looking for you!” The sweet voice whispered out to him. “Come home with me!”

He rolled and stared with wide eyes and jaw agape. It couldn’t have been Jasmina. But there she was, on her hands and knees, looking at him and waving at the end of the vent.

The beast kicked and scratched against the metal, his bite drawing blood and tearing flesh with violent heaving wags of his head, a deep growl emanating.

It couldn’t have been her. Jasmina died with his wife in The Fall. At least he thought. Maybe he was mistaken. It had to be just panic, or grieving. Perhaps shock explained why he thought so.

“Jasmina!” Jace called out to her.

“Get him!” Knight called out, the image of Jasmina faded for one of the Shepherds now scurrying in the vent towards him.

Jace twisted to reach over, grabbing the scruff of the beast and started thrashing his legs.

“Go, go, go!” He shouted at it.

The two launched deeper into the ductwork. 

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Art by Lê Long