Future Winds (25 page)

Peeking through the transparent entrance, he could see the man of white and orange armor who had taken Lucas. He was sitting on a table, watching as the two men that accompanied him tore open halcyon corpses. Halcyon corpses were dead bodies preserved and frozen for scientific purposes. The two skinny, pale men were digging into the bodies of the dead, and ripping out organs for some sick and twisted means of self-indulgence.

“Alright, that’s enough,” The brutish man groaned hopping off the table as the other two pulled the intestine of a dead man on the ground from a hole in his belly like string from a shirt.

Terrified, Ness withdrew from looking at the blood soaked scene and pressed himself against the wall out in the hallway. He was quickly losing control of the rhythm of his breathing and felt dizzy. Across the hall there was an open block. He dove across and slumped down to the ground, feeling as though he were having a heart attack.

The three men exited the medical bay and Ness thought his stomach was going to rupture out his backside. He was more scared in that moment than he had ever been before in his life.

***

Aisha stayed hidden on the bridge of New Horizon until she was certain all of the members of Citizens United had left to execute their beloved proposition zero.

In a matter of hours, all of what was left of humanity, both on Flare and floating about in space awaiting their turn to warp in, would be shaped to the will of a hundred men and women. These individuals had taken their seat of power by means of a long game of politics and cruelty. One that Aisha herself could not quite fully grasp in these confusing dark times of chaotic survival.

Climbing out from her hiding spot, she scurried to the door and peered out of the room. The server room directly outside was also now empty. All of the workers in the data room had left for the assembly to be injected and molded into the future that Citizens United had designed.

She lifted the keypad and inputted the lock sequence she had observed Miles punch in earlier. The automated door sealed then gave off a
click
that confirmed it was locked and Aisha slid over to the commander's seat. She quickly pulled up the computer HUD that was embedded within the table. Her fingers punched in ‘Rising Sun camera feed’ and hit enter. A long list of options appeared before her and she scrolled down until she found a section labeled ‘convention hall cameras’ and double tapped her fingers to gain access to the video.

Multiple camera feeds appeared on the table, each with different angles within the auditorium. Tapping one video would enlarge it over the others, but she kept all of them a reasonable size so that she might drift her attention between them all equally.

People slowly began trickling into the convention halls and onto the stage. Men and women wearing white lab coats set up dividers for twenty to thirty dedicated injection stations.

Aisha watched for thirty minutes as the people packed into the enormous room aboard Rising Sun. When it looked as if there were no more left to arrive, Miles took the stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “You do not need me to tell you that today has been one of the single greatest tragedies mankind has ever seen. You do not need me to tell you how we lost more lives today than any other single day in human history. You also don’t need me to tell you excuses as to how we plan on picking up the pieces of our shattered existence.

“No, you need a solution. An idea: one rich, pure, and full of life. A solution that you can place your heart upon with one hundred percent certainty and ease. You need comfort in knowing this idea isn’t just right amidst much wrong, but something pure and whole. 

“We have had a team of scientists working on this project for many years and today every last one of you will gain access to it. We wanted to get this out to the public sooner, but politics sometimes prevent progression. I will not point fingers or play the political role. No, today we unveil that which will make us complete again. Today we bring you the
solution
.

“Humanity has always been fortunate enough to have a deep interest in figuring out just how exactly things work. How a clock ticks, how the sun sets, how neurons transmit data within the mind. Well folks, today we know the answer to all three of those questions. We know the answer to almost all of life's major questions for that matter and, in knowing so much, we have developed a serum that when injected will fill in the gaps of the human brain. This will allow us all to be faster, smarter, healthier, and stronger amidst these difficult times. This is not some late night limp dick pill that falsely promises to deliver on quelching your deepest insecurities and costs twenty-nine ninety-nine. This is the cure to humanity's
future
. We have it completed and available for all. If someone had the cure to that which handicaps everyone, he would be sick to charge a cost for that cure.

“So we will begin injections, right here, right now, and free for all. By nightfall we will be complete, united as one and stronger than ever before!”

There was very minimal applause throughout the crowd. Everyone in the room had lost someone that day and listening to a glorified sales pitch of some estranged cure all drug was something no one seemed to really understand or care for.

The video was capable of zooming in, both visually and audibly. If the picture was made bigger from a target area, so too would the sound from that area be targeted and increased to a higher decibel. People were talking within the crowd and Aisha zoomed in on a random group of civilians.

“I don’t want to be injected with this. I do not even know what
this
it is,” a frightened woman whispered to those around her.

“No doubt, these are scary times,” Miles added as if anticipating that some might be skeptical within the crowd. “The fear of a needle being passed to you from a stranger is a legitimate cause for concern. But we are no strangers here. We are all on the same side in our struggle for survival. Now we are not done tallying the dead as of yet, but early projections are that we have lost over eighty percent of our populous today. The harsh truth is that what is left of our fragmented species, is simply not enough to build and secure a city. And the remaining carriers that are out in space, awaiting their turn to be warped in and help will not be arriving until we can establish a
safe
and secure haven for all. Now the president has signed off on this proposition and extensive testing has been done to ensure its safety. Those in the carriers still out in space are undergoing injections as we speak.

“This serum will provide the ability to access data wirelessly within your own mind. If your job is that of a welder, you will have access to anything and everything that fits in that category of knowledge and accessing that pool will be instant down to fractions of a millisecond. This will allow for what is left of our population the crutch it needs to continue forward.”

Aisha scanned over the crowd with the cameras where she found some people had begun to panic.

“Access denied,” said the automated voice outside the door to the bridge where Aisha sat watching the video feed.

Feeling her heart drop in realizing someone was trying to enter, she leaped to her feet and raced towards the door. Peeking through a small glass peephole, she saw a group of men and women had taken control of the server room just outside. One of those men were trying to gain access to the ship's bridge but was having trouble with the access code.

“Access granted,” the automated door chimed.

Aisha engaged her stealth cloak as the door lifted. A man with an eyepatch and a rifle slung around his back entered the bridge and tossed a keycard off to the side that hit her right on the nose.

“Worthless piece of shit,” he groaned in regards to the discarded key.

He had not noticed that his throw only went a few feet and stopped mid-air before falling to the ground. He was oblivious to her being present.

No way is this guy military
, Aisha thought as she looked the man up and down.
He is too rugged to belong to any formal authority
. His hair was brown and messy. An unkempt beard did little to disguise his scared face.

“Well look at that, the feed is already up,” he said as if he had caught a break, approaching the command table. “Varis, whatchya got out there for headcount?”

“Looks like every member of CU that is still alive and on Flare is present at the conference, either onstage or in back,” yelled a much younger voice from the next room over.

“If they detect us in their systems, they will dispatch someone in a hurry,” a female voice chimed in. “I would say that the time to act is now. I am uploading their GPS signals to you guys so that you can track ‘em down and end this quickly.”

Peeking around the corner, Aisha laid eyes on the woman. She was wearing a headset and her statement was directed towards whoever was listening on the other end.

“They are beginning injections,” said the man with the eyepatch. “Seal all the doors to the convention hall. It’s go time,” he commanded as he repositioned the cameras in the table to watch over pre-determined specific angles.

“Execution is a go,” called the women with the headset.

Aisha disengaged her cloak and approached the man seated at the table. He was so focused on the feed in front of himself that he had no idea she was directly behind him, watching.

Gunfire coupled with screams could be heard over the video feed from the convention hall. The individuals this group was commanding were assassins who were killing off the members of Citizens United. It was a coup, an organized resistance against those in power.

Aisha took a seat beside the man with an eyepatch. He jumped up from the table and pulled his rifle around front, pointing it towards her.

“I am not here to stop you,” she said, comforting the man.

He looked over his shoulder, then lowered his frenzied eyebrows and alleviated his tense posture before giving her a nod and gluing his eye back onto the video feed.

The people locked inside were frantic, running wild in craze amidst the gunfire while the assassins streamed through the hordes of panic stricken civilians and targeted anyone wearing a wristwatch.

There was no court hearing, no jail sentence, no fair trial, or any sort of questioning as to who was in the right and who was in the wrong. The price one paid for being caught with a wrist watch was public execution. This was a cleansing of society and these individuals had decided that the best course of action was one hundred percent compliance.

Military personnel began firing back upon the assassins in an attempt to calm the squall, but this made matters worse, as now unarmed civilians were being struck in the crossfire.

“They are shooting back,” yelled one of the members from the next room over.

“We knew they would,” said the man with the eyepatch softly. “There are always innocent casualties in war,” he finished, his one good eye sinking as he watched the video.

Aisha observed the assassins now target members of the military to defend themselves before jumping onto the stage after any remaining members of CU.

Aisha heard the faint sound of gunfire just outside the data room. Those in the next room had heard it too but the man with the eyepatch must have thought the sound had come from the screen before him as he did not turn to see the door open.

Three men stood with rifles pointed into the data room. They burst a cluster of shots that traveled down into the bridge of the ship where it struck the man with the eyepatch in the head.

He was smiling as he watched the video feed before him with a sense of satisfaction for his planned coup unfolding with success. Whatever thought he had in that moment was his last as his head quickly expanded and exploded.

Bits of brain and bone splattered onto Aisha. Flinching, she jumped to her feet and raised her metallic arm to her face to shield her eyes from the oncoming gunfire. She dropped to the ground and engaged her stealth cloak while simultaneously rolling forward. Entering the data center room, she took cover behind a tower of circuitry while the half a dozen men and women in the room underwent the assault.

The men and women working in the data center let out rally cries as they grabbed their weapons and began to fire back at the three intruders. Unfortunately only four of them were armed. The other seven or eight were not. The defenseless ones made an attempt to stow away their lives, hiding behind pillars and underneath tables. Doing so was futile as the men that had entered, with intentions to kill, sprayed around the room, striking and killing anything and everything that moved.

Aisha crawled around to the other side of the computer tower and began making her way up towards one of the three attackers who advanced inward. They were too focused on their slaughter to stop and wonder as to why one of their first targets had fallen to the floor and vanished.

The three men, now split up to hunt down everyone in the room made for easy targets for Aisha to take down. She stood to her feet and turned the corner behind the man closest her. He advanced towards his victims and away from her slowly. Every foot step clacking against the floor was in sync with his own gunfire. He stopped only to marinate in a moment of pleasure in butchering his victims like innocent squealing little pigs. He was the giver of gifts who offered pain, suffering, and cruelty. Neatly wrapped in a box with a bow, he distributed the present of death, without discrimination to all before him.

Aisha made it up to him and sprang forward, gripping the back of his collar with her artificial arm. Quickly she worked her fingers in place and jerked her wrist, snapping his fragile neck with a clean, quiet break before dropping his lifeless body to the floor with a thud.

Shrieks and screams echoed from all around and Aisha's chest began to ache. Her stealth tech was draining her of too much energy, so disengaging her cloak, she withdrew her sword and cautiously crept around the next corner.

The second shooter was about fifteen feet away and was kicking over work stations to check for anyone who might be hidden underneath. Aisha lurked forward as swiftly and quietly as possible. She jumped ahead faster with every desk he flipped and every shot he took as to conceal the sound of her own footsteps, until she was directly behind him. He froze, as if sensing her essence lingering about and, whilst he was quick to spin around and face her, she was faster. Slicing diagonally through his useless armor, his soft flesh effortlessly split apart. She had severed his head and right arm from his torso in one easy swing of her blade. His two halves fell to the floor and spouted blood like a broken hose into all directions.

Now covered in the man's blood, she was granted a somewhat satisfying feeling. There was no time to wipe it away now, she figured. She was on the hunt and her primal instincts told her that the third and final target was aware that his comrades were now dead.

The room was silent, only the soft sniffling sound of a lone survivor, a girl hidden away beneath a desk could be heard. Aisha froze to listen for the third killer, but the girl’s sniffling and crying grew louder and louder in the silence until gun fire punctured down through the desk, into where she hide. The girl squeaked in shock of being hit and immediately began screaming the final seconds of her life away. The sound of her dying screams were painful to listen to.

With her eyes bulged, Aisha remained frozen still. The shots had come from around the corner directly ahead of her. That is where the final assailant was standing only a foot or two away. He was stuck in a stalemate. Just as aware of her as she was of him, the final killer contemplated if he himself wanted to turn the corner and inspect the cause of his comrade’s demise. To ultimately face the hero that had the courage to face the three monsters.

Quietly, Aisha raised her sword into the air as if holding a bat preparing to be swung at the pitch of ball in a crucial inning of the world series. But this was no game, this was life and death.

Blood dripped from her face. Each bead that free fell from her chin to the floor sounded like heavy raindrops crashing into a calm, quiet lake. Her heart beat heavy, so heavy that one could only wonder if a man so close as he could hear it bursting from her chest from where he stood. Still she waited. Waited for the son of a bitch to turn around the corner and look her in the eyes for all but a fraction of a second before she severed his head cleanly from atop his neck. She waited to claim another life with her precious blade. But he did not come.

“I am a fool, having not realized sooner that it was you, Aisha,” a familiar voice said coldly from around the corner. “You look different with your hair shortened.”

Abram? You're alive? But how? And what the hell are you doing?
she thought, confused for a moment.

“Look at the man below your feet, Aisha. Look him in the eyes. Do you recognize him?”

Without moving her head, she rolled her eyes downward to inspect the dead man at her feet. His decapitated head was similar to that of a human’s, but he was not human. Much paler and with a more pointed shape to the ears, nose, and face than that of the average man. He was something alien to what she could comprehend. His pupils were enhanced and she soon noticed that they were not just dilated but the blackness embodied the entirety of his eyes. There was not a shred of pallidity within his ghoulishly dark eyes.

“You shouldn’t,” he cynically continued, “he is not of earth. But so easy it is to scavenge the dead of their weapons and armor. To outfit ourselves in their disguises. Everyone is so desperate for a sense of security, they allowed us to walk right through the doors, with weapons in our fists and lust in our hearts.”

“He bled like a man Abram! Much like you bleed,” she finally said before backing away and slipping through a corner to the other side of the electronic towers, in an attempt to deceive and catch Abram off guard.

A canister rattled down the hall and began spewing gas into the air as it rolled to a stop just below Aisha’s feet. Another followed, bouncing down past her.

“I had the feeling that these would come in handy. Didn’t occur to me that it would be to flush out a stealthy,” he laughed.

The gas quickly entered through Aisha's eyes, nose and throat. She forced back all urges to cough and vomit as her face burned in irritation. Sniffling back seemed to only make matters worse in inhaling larger fractions of the tear gas.

“An outdated form of crowd control but easy to construct and efficient against civilians. You should have seen how many of these things the military had stock piled on this carrier alone. It was like they were prepping for an uprising,” he said, again injecting a cynical cackle into his rant.

***

Shakely, Ness exited the block he had hidden within. The dorm had safely stowed him away from the three crazy men who had passed by and were now long since out of sight. He had blown his opportunity to kill the man in orange and white armor.

A trail of blood led down the hall. The specs were laid out like the markings of a treasure map. Plain as day, the route in which the men had gone was lit up for Ness to follow. He had been given a second chance and he pointed his rifle ahead as to not waste this opportunity he was granted.

The path led him to the entrance of an elevator where he stepped inside.
What floor have they gone too?
he thought in a frenzy as he looked down at all the choices.

One button in particular, labeled ‘deck’, had a bloody thumbprint stamped onto it. Ness wiped the blood with his index finger and pressed it against the tip of his own thumb.
Still wet and sticky,
he concluded as he pressed in the button. It was the only viable hunch to go on.

The elevator ascended to the top floor and as it did, Ness forced himself to realize the truth: that the time to become a man had come. No longer would he stow away like a scared little boy. He had to confront this demon.

With a sense of confidence restored, the elevator reached the top floor and opened. Gunfire echoed from down the hallway ahead. The hair on the back of Ness’ neck raised as he flinched. The sound of the weapons ahead confirmed he had made it to the correct floor.

He wanted to be afraid, turn around and cower in fear, but the desire to murder this brute of a man outweighed the uncertainties that dwelt in his gut. He had to confront the man that had abducted his brother. He needed to look him in the eyes as he took his life away and claimed it as his own on behalf of his younger sibling who was by now, surely dead.

This man had taken away the only thing of purity and value Ness had on this vile, chaotic planet, so distant from his native world. It was his own flesh and blood, the little boy, Ness was to protect in their distant travels across the galaxy. The mission given to him by his beloved mother who was stuck back on earth to face her own tragic fate. He had failed himself, he had failed his brother, and he had failed her. Now he sought to avenge. Bringing his brother back was a chance as slim to none. The least he could do now was cast down vengeance for his family. So ahead he pressed with his rifle leading the way.

***

Abram’s boots clicked against the cold floor as he strolled down one of the pathways searching for Aisha who was lodged in an opening, fighting back the tear gas that felt as though it was burning into her very brain.

“Why do you hide, girl?” he said in mocking anger. “It’s not as if you could escape. Where would you even go?! Back to earth?!”

Trying to open her eyes, she quickly realized she was blind from the gas burning away at her vision. Snot dripped from her face as she got on her hands and knees and began crawling her way towards the entrance of the room. Banging up against a desk, a glass tablet fell to the ground with a loud crack and Aisha knew that Abram was now honed in directly to her position and in route.

Catching a faint glimpse of the brute’s rifle extending around the corner, Aisha gripped her sword and jumped forward, swinging blindly. She had successfully sliced through the weapon.

Now unarmed, Abram turned the corner holding what was left of his broken rifle.

This was the first time Aisha could look upon him. Despite the burning sensation in her eyes, she could see that he was different. Something had unhinged him, inducing a blood frenzy. His eyes looked to her as if killing her was the single most important task before him.

With a maniacal grin he heaved his broken weapon towards her and her face caught the entirety of the blow. Blood quickly gushed from her nose and mouth alongside the mucus and tears. She fell backwards slamming into and tumbling over a desk.

Abram took the opportunity of her flinching and falling to leap forward with a bare arm attack.

With a burning and broken face illustrated in misery, Aisha got back up and swung her sword downward in a defensive manner to keep the beast at bay. Abram raised the palm of his hand up to stop the blade, but human flesh serves as no such shield for a blade like hers. Aisha drove it straight down the center of his hand, splitting his arm in half from his fingertips down to his elbow. Blood spilled in all directions and Abram began to laugh as he pushed up against the blade. He forced it to dig deeper through his elbow and up into his forearm while maintaining direct eye contact with Aisha.

What the hell has happened to him?! He hasn’t just lost it; he has gone full blown psychotic!

Aisha tried to withdraw her blade that was lodged deep into Abram’s arm, but it was stuck in the bone encased by the thick muscle of his forearm. In her seconds of being defenseless, Abram back handed her with his good hand with such force that she lifted off her feet and fell back into a stack of data towers that quickly fell down upon her.

“Such a weak girl,” he spat, ripping her blade from his arm that was now literally split into two. Tendons and veins hung down from the open flesh with blood that sprayed like paint relentlessly across the floor.

Woozy and concussive, Aisha pushed through the computers and stumbled again to her feet as Abram slowly walked towards her. Just as he swung down at her with her own weapon, she rolled forward and engaged her stealth cloak.

“Again with this cat and mouse shit?” he laughed, lifting his surrealistic open wound to his face. He began sucking out a mouthful of blood before spraying it forward from his mouth in all directions.

The blood hitting Aisha outlined her invisible body. It was a clever move to expose her and served to once again make her fully visible to him. Now she was trapped directly between him and a wall.

Disengaging her stealth, she looked Abram in the eye as she panted for air. His face radiated with hatred.

“This is it,” she said calmly with a mouthful of blood.

“Yes,” he moaned, as if taking immense amounts of pleasure in killing her. “This is the end of everything you have ever known and anything you will ever know. When you close your eyes, they will not reopen. It will be life as you knew it prior to being born, only now, it will be in death,” he taunted, lifting her blade and resting the tip against her rib cage, directly above the heart.

Just as he thrusted the blade forward, Aisha turned with the blow, causing the weapon to only cut across the surface of her skin as she sprung forward and lifted his hand that held her stolen weapon.