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DEMITRI
Every inch of my skin burns as though what’s left of this abused corpse is set ablaze. My stomach convulses with waves of nausea and my ghost appendage throbs with phantom pain in time with the beating of my heart. An absolute blackness covers everything, enveloping me in a cold, heavy cloak. Am I finally where I deserve to be, in the bowels of Hell? Is this what damnation feels like? Or perhaps this is the dimension to which Vedmak was cast for his sins.
Now, for mine. I am trapped here too. Vedmak. Vedmak, are you there? Nothing. I’m once again in control. At least for now, but I know all too well he will return. There’s no escaping him.
Slowly, the blackness eases—the weakest of light now detectable. The narrow shaft through which I fell extends above at least twenty meters. The sounds of battle are faint overhead. There’s no way I can go back the way I came. The small cavern has at least a couple of openings that disappear into the dark—tunnels perhaps. A way out? If I even want one, perhaps it’s better to die here. The flesh of my remaining hand is blistered and weeping. My scarred face is wet with fluid from broken skin and blood. Radiation poisoning. My death will be long and painful but fully deserved.
There’s a faint scratching in the gloom.
“Is someone there?” I say, the vibration of my words making my head ache.
Only the scraping click of a rusted wheel gun hammer cocking answers me.
“You know who it is, don’t play games, Vedmak,” a familiar female voice says.
It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, the shadowed outline of her face appearing, centered behind the stovepipe barrel of the hand cannon she has trained on me.
“Mila?” Of course, Mila. She pushed us into the shaft.
“Don’t act like you don’t know,” she rasps.
Gradually, her form becomes clearer. She’s huddled against a rock wall, knees drawn up, clutching her midriff with one arm and holding the gun with her free hand. The hate in her stare cuts to the bone. My once-friend knows all too well what I’ve become.
“Mila, it’s me. It’s Demitri.”
She wipes her free arm across her nose and sniffs. “Why should I believe you?”
Can’t blame her. I wouldn’t believe me either.
“This is all your fault,” Mila says, her voice unusually frail.
My chest cramps.
“Everything. Everything is your fault,” she repeats. “Do you know how many people have died because of you? How many innocents? I know it’s you, or Vedmak, or whoever’s been butchering my people. I saw the weapons your soldiers carry.”
“I ... Mila ... it wasn’t ... Please, it’s me.” I mumble.
“Stop talking.” She jerks the wheel gun at me. “Let’s say it is you, Demitri. Let’s entertain this lie. It doesn’t change anything. Do you know how many men I lost looking for you and Faruq?”
Faruq, yes. He was in the Vapid. “I saw him. Kapka had him.”
“Kapka’s dead,” she replies. There’s no relief in her voice.
“Then you found Faruq?”
She holds my shadowed gaze, pain, abhorrence, and sadness burning in her tear-filled eyes. She wipes her nose again. “Yeah, I found him. And he sent me away. He’d been tortured. He’s not himself anymore. And now he’s is gone. Because of you.”
“Me?”
“If I’d not been trying to stop you, I could have had more time and resources to find him.” She coughs, wincing in pain and grips her ribs again. “All because you can’t control that damn voice in your head. And now, everyone else is going to pay the price of your cowardice.” Loathing pours from her, venom now flowing from her lips like a stream. “I murdered children. Do you know that, Demitri or Vedmak or whoever the hell you are right now? Children are dead because of my orders.” Her voice echoes around the narrow chamber.
“The Rippers.”
“All because I wanted to try and save you. I defied Bilgi and everyone in the resistance by looking for you and Faruq.” Her voice trails off and she stops, swallowing her words before her tears can fall.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Mila spits back, her eyes so welled up a flood may escape them at any moment. She raises the gun and points it at my head. “Everything I’ve done has been wrong. Bilgi, Faruq, Gil.”
From this angle, the muzzle looks like a massive stove pipe. I focus on it—Mila’s face now nothing but a blur in the background. I feel empty. Before the lillipads fell, I’d wanted to live more than anything at any cost. Since Vedmak had taken control, death has more than once seemed preferable. Now, I feel nothing.
“I have to do one thing, the one thing that matters,” Mila says, her wet eyes burning a hateful stare into me.
I don’t have any words.
“Say something, damn you.” She lurches forward and presses the cold metal of the weapon to my forehead.
“There’s nothing left to say, Mila. You should do it.” A tear slips from the corner of my eye.
Mila screams in my face and the gun’s hammer slams down, a brief fireball illuminating the space between us.
A moment passes. I open my eyes and am greeted by the familiar dark of the mine shaft. Mila’s pallid face, close to mine, is etched in panic. Above my head, she has the gun in both hands, pointing it toward the sky. Smoke wafts from the barrel into the dark.
Staring at me the whole time, she slowly lets go of the gun and it clangs to the rocky floor. Defeated, I slump against a large boulder and cry.
For a long while, neither of us speaks.
“We’ll cure you,” Mila says, finally. Shuffling forward, she places a cold hand on my face.
Her touch sends a fresh wave of guilt through me and more tears fall. “I’m sorry, Mila. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I found you, now.”
“You don’t understand. The things he made me do ...”
Mila takes a deep breath, as if she wants to say one thing, then changes her mind and switches the subject. “We may have a way to rid you of Vedmak. Oksana said she knows how.”
Did she just say Oksana? Vedmak had never found her. She’s still alive, after all this time. I wipe my face. “Oksana is with you?”
“She’s with the resistance,” Mila says, rubbing her ribs again. “Or I should say, she’s agreed to help.”
’Sana is helping Robusts? I can’t believe it. If anyone could help, it would be her. For the first time in years, there’s a glimmer of hope. The pebbles roll and slide beneath me as I shuffle on my butt trying to sit more upright. “You would take me to her? But you need to know, Opor has been compromised. Giahi is working with Vedmak. They have a neural link. Vedmak is using him to overthrow you and Bilgi.”
Mila sighs and stares at me again. “How did I not see it? I should have but I didn’t. So blinded by my own demons. I couldn’t save Bilgi from exile. Or Faruq from Kapka. Or even keep Husniya close, for that matter. She hates me.”
“I’m sorry,” is all I can muster.
Her face hardens. “I can’t fail again. I’ll get you back to Opor and figure out how to deal with Giahi.”
“You’re not a failure. You’re the strongest person I know.”
Mila’s resolve breaks and she hangs her head. “Demitri, it’s been so long. How did this become our lives? The things we’ve done.”
She searches my eyes as if I have the answer. As if somewhere in this Gracile head is the solution. Is her faith so broken she hopes for answers in me now, instead of her Yeos? What am I supposed to say? If Yeos exists, he’d surely smite me before Mila. At least she’d tried. At least what she did, she believed it was for the right reason.
The sound of gunfire and plasma rifles way above us breaks the silence.
“We have to find a way out of here,” she says, her face hardening. “Can you walk?”
“Yes, but, I don’t know how long Vedmak will stay gone,” I say.
With a grunt, I force myself to my feet and offer Mila my hand. She grabs it, and I hoist her up, wincing with a fresh streak of pain that shoots up my arm.
“What’s happened to you?” she asks, studying my blistered skin.
“Radiation poisoning. If we don’t get to Oksana, I’ll die anyway. Just more painfully than by a bullet,” I say.
She squints at me then wraps my severed arm around her neck. “Come on, we better get moving.”
With slow limping movements, we trudge on through the maze of musty earthen underground tunnels, which are lit only by the occasional clanking generator. For a while, we don’t speak, the crunch of pebbles beneath our boots echoing softly in the endless meandering dark.
“Did you hurt yourself when we fell?” I observe her hand clutched against her ribcage.
“Yeah. I don’t think they’re broken. Bruised maybe? It hurts to breathe.” She looks me over, my stump of an arm hanging about her neck like a cannibal’s necklace. “What happened to your hand?”
“I had to cut it off ... to keep him from hurting someone,” I manage.
From under my arm, Mila looks up to meet my gaze. She simply gives my forearm a pat.
My heart aches.
As we continue on, I offer fragments of the last four years. Vedmak, and his army of Graciles who he sends out on raiding parties to kill off Robusts using plasma weapons. Scare-tactics against Opor. His plan to grow more Graciles and link them to souls like his, using the nuclear fuel rods for power. The fact that if he links too many, it’ll generate a VME and kill us all. But eventually, it comes back to the simplest issues. The pain inflicted on those we care for. What I was forced to do to Anastasia. What Vedmak does to anyone who crosses his path. The Gracile children whose growth has been accelerated but their minds underdeveloped, so Vedmak murders them. Mila recounts Faruq’s torture and mental break, Husniya’s worsening condition, and Bilgi’s exile. These are the things that haunt us both and, in the end, what really drives us. Mila seems hellbent on saving me as if it might redeem some horrible misstep. The more we talk, the more I can’t decide if that is a good thing.
Another bend, another choice of dreary tunnels. It feels like hours, but I know it hasn’t been. A battle still rages above us, the muffled zip of plasma rifles firing and whump of homemade grenades penetrate the thick rock.
“Sard,” Mila groans. “How do we get out of here?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. We need to find a way up. There must be an exit. A ladder or winch or something.”
Perhaps you should pray to the little suka’s false god.
My arm spasms, jerking to life, seized by some invisible presence. “Oh no.”
“What’s wrong?” Mila searches my face, before answering own her question. “It’s Vedmak, isn’t it?”
I can only nod, swallowing a lump from my throat.
“Fight him Demitri,” she says, her face stern.
“I can’t. He’s too strong.”
“You have to be stronger.” She jabs a finger in my chest, her expectant stare boring holes into me. “Believe you can be.”
I avert my eyes. “I’m sorry, Mila.”
“Damnation, c’mon we have to get you help,” she says yanking me farther down a tunnel.
“Wait,” I say and pull away. My head swarms, goose-bumped flesh tingling hot. “He’s coming back. You have to go. He’ll kill you. Run, Mila. Get as far from me as you can.”
I don’t wait for an answer, and instead shove her to the ground, buying precious seconds. Vedmak’s maniacal laugh swells in my head until I can no longer hear my only friend’s footsteps, or her shouts for me to stop, far behind in the labyrinth of twisting dark.
