Filaria - Brent Hayward [46]
The first person he rescued, naturally, was the girl. Accessing pods from the outside was routine. He merely opened the escape panel and helped Crystal Max crawl out. Soldiers did not attack them. Clinging to his back, Crystal Max clamped firm thighs around Mereziah’s waist and locked her arms over his throat. Her smell was like nothing that had ever filled his sinuses before: tangy and sharp and delirious. Though Crystal whispered to him the whole while they clumsily travelled down towards the slit — her breath hot in his ear, saliva moistening his neck — he was so tense and lost in her scent that he could think of nothing to say in response to her encouragements except to stutter, “Don’t worry, just hang on, hang on . . .”
Not far below them, the big slit in the wall seemed to pulse expectantly.
TRAN SO, L12
In an adjacent chamber, another prisoner cried, caterwauling sobs that rose and fell, carried on the stale wind blowing lightly through grilles set high in the wall.
The dark gods were no longer in this room.
Forearms heavy with manacles, manacles heavy with chains, all resting on his trembling knees. Tran so’s ankles had been shackled uncomfortably to the leg of the bench he sat on. Sickened by the lake water, he rocked gently forward and back and listened to the wavering cries from next door.
Behind his left eyeball, parasites that had made their home there rolled and resettled around his tear duct, squeezing a tear free to roll down the angular planes of his cheek.
Tran so Phengh still feared for his own life but the past few hours had actually abated the initial rush of terror. The menace of his abductors — those he referred to, internally, as ‘the dark gods’ — had greatly diminished; in fact, their aura — perceived, at first, to be one of purest evil — was now diluted, misplaced, almost like one of bewilderment rather than threat; he now looked upon the giants in blue as similar to the misguided deities one saw knocking on doors in the slums of Hoffmann City, trying to enlist listless citizens into some program or other, distributing dogmatic pamphlets, or scolding teenagers for gathering in too large a group.
His heart was still beating, and his lungs drew air. He had not been hurt. One of the giants who had pounced on him in the underwater lair, and then carried him all the way to this holding room, over its shoulder — in and out of nightmarish devices and bizarre settings while Tran so swooned and rolled his eyes up into his head and retched up bile that ran in dark stains down the giant’s shirt — was even kind enough to ask Tran so several times over the course of the journey if the bindings on his wrists were too tight, and if he had ingested some form of toxin. That particular god had even apologized for the brusque takedown, and for having to confiscate Tran so’s knife.
“We thought you had damaged the filtration unit,” it explained. “You see, we have been activated without any guidance. Our instructions are not clear. As we looked around, and tried to assess possible reasons for being called upon, we became maddened by the evidence of senseless vandalism that we saw in the world around us. What had happened? We assumed our reason for existence was to correct matters. Now we know a little better. So, despite our continuing search for the truth, friend, you have at least been cleared of that initial offense.”
After tying him to a bench, Tran so had been left alone. Dark gods still passed by the room, paired or in small groups. Occasionally, one of them entered, stooping, to remove or add someone to the captives there, whose ranks rose and fell over the course of the day. All these gods looked the same, and Tran so Phengh could not tell which one it had been that had showed him signs of kindness after his arrest. Yet as a whole, in their actions, the giants seemed to lack coherent leadership. This aspect, too, familiarized them, reduced their threat. They were certainly like the gods he knew back home. They were unsure, imperfect. They were like people.