PreCursive

  Deftly, I finished slicing off the st lock of thick blonde hair from the head of the mysterious little girl name ‘Aveline’. Thankfully, the small travel razor that I used for my face was sharp enough for the purpose, and it hadn’t been difficult for me to do this at her request.

  I…couldn’t say the same about the styling. I knew jack and shit about actually cutting hair in an aesthetic manner.

  I hope she liked straight across because that was what I’d done around mid-back for her. Thankfully, the strange little wisp of a child had yet to voice a word of compint while I was sheering more hair off her head than I think she weighed, kneeling before the now-empty pod I had found her in. When at st I had finished, there was an actual pile of discarded blonde locks lying carelessly next to her former resting pce.

  I’m not sure I liked the look in her eyes, so simir to my own, as she stared at it.

  “Mr. Hart?” She asked quietly, her young voice echoing in the boratory. She was still looking at the hair instead of me.

  “…yes?”

  Finally, her gaze shifted my way, to where I was kneeling near her. “How long…was I in the pod for?”

  The question hung in the air.

  All I could do was slowly shake my head her way. “I don’t know, Aveline. I…actually don’t know anything about this pce. But I’m guessing…it had to have been a very long time.”

  Aveline’s thin blonde eyebrows furrowed. “You don’t know?” She asked in confusion. “But you…you’re…” She trailed off, now taking a closer look at me. For the first time, I think she actually registered how heavily armed and armored I was. That, I think, armed her more than even my mutations.

  Now there was the fear I had been expecting, even if it was slight.

  But this was a child, even if she was an odd one. I knew how to deal with her.

  I took a deep breath and undid the csp on my cloak, removing it from my shoulders. At the same time, I removed my staff from its back holster and id it down on the ground next to me, keeping the cloak in my arms. Next was Terratcus, and my bow, and even my daggers. In moments, I had entirely disarmed myself to y everything in a pile not far from her cut hair.

  With one foot, I shoved the weaponry away until it impacted one of the cabinets in the b with a thud and a shower of dust. Under Aveline’s suddenly confused stare, I sat down cross-legged in front of her, holding the cloak in my p. The slight dais and steps of the pod that Aveline sat on meant that she was slightly above me. No longer as wary and frightened as she had been, the little girl looked down on me curiously.

  I met her gaze calmly. “What am I is someone who wants to help you, Aveline. I want to take you from…whatever this pce truly is, so you can get checked out by a Healer friend of mine. Maybe even a few of them. I don’t know if however long you were in that thing hurt you at all.”

  Plus, I was starting to think this pce was incredibly dangerous all on its own. It was no pce for a little girl.

  But I didn’t say that, at least not yet. I didn’t want to frighten the kid out of her mind.

  Aveline blinked at me. “I…think I’m fine,” She said uncertainly. “Mama said I might be in here for a long, long, long time, but that one of us should come find me one day. Sta-sis is safe, she said.”

  Stasis, eh.

  But that wasn’t as important as something else she said.

  ‘One of us.’

  I felt my heartbeat pick up. With my levels in Acting, it wasn’t exactly hard to keep my sudden excitement from showing on my face. Not from an uncertain child.

  “If I was able to open the pod…” I said slowly. “Does that mean I’m one of you?”

  To my disappointment, Aveline shook her head, sending her butchered hair flying. “No…at least, I don’t think so? But…”

  “But?”

  “But you have the eyes, Mr. Hart,” Aveline said, suddenly sounding certain. “We’re the only people that have the eyes, mama said so. You’re one of us, you have to be!” She suddenly stood up and scurried over. I was careful not to react as the desperate child id her cold hands on my cheeks and stared into my eyes. “You’re a Netherim…right?”

  Netherim.

  At long st, I had a name for the bunker people. That name…

  I felt absolutely no connection to it. It didn’t stir a thing in me, no matter how certain Aveline was that I was one of her people.

  But…one thing caught my attention…

  Slowly, so as not to spook the kid, I reached up till I could hold her hands. I carefully removed them from my rough cheeks to cradle in my much rger ones. Startled, Aveline looked down at them and only looked back up when I spoke again.

  “I’ve had eyes like this since I was born-”

  “That’s not true!” Aveline suddenly butted in, sounding distressed. “That’s not possible! You only get the Em-er-ald Eyes when you’re ad-justed! Without it, the air in the Garden will kill you from all the Ae-ter in it!”

  For some reason, a shiver went down my spine, and not because of the childish mispronunciation.

  “…what?” I breathed, a feeling of dread overtaking me.

  My eyes…weren’t my own?

  “You know! You have to know!” She said desperately, looking to be near tears. “Only the Netherim have the Eyes! The Genirim don’t have them! Only the Children of Lost Terra do! Mama said so!”

  The bottom of my stomach fell out at those words.

  ‘The Children of Lost Terra.’

  Not Old Terra, as Rhazal and Tzo had referred to it as.

  Lost.

  And this child, right here, was telling me that she was one of those Children.

  Just. Like. Me.

  At the stunned look that must have existed on my face, the distressed little girl suddenly lunged forward, tching onto me in a desperate hug. She started sobbing into my shoulder as my dazed arms almost automatically reached up and wrapped around her slight form. I stared forward unseeingly at the pod Aveline had rested in for…potentially millennia, both rings of my mind racing to the extent that none of my thoughts were actually coherent.

  Netherim, Genirim…

  I had hoped that finding someone down here would present me with some answers. But instead…

  I only had more questions.

  ……………………………………

  I let Aveline cry her distress out onto my shoulder, doing my best to comfort this strange child whose world had colpsed with the passing of ages. Eventually, she grew quiet, but I don’t believe she had cried herself to sleep. Instead, after a few more minutes in my embrace, she drew back and looked up at me almost pleadingly.

  I think the time for questions had passed. I didn’t need to put this little girl to the question anymore, and honestly, I was a little ashamed at what I’d already done. I’d let my eagerness for answers override my empathy, even with the little bit that I’d asked her. Crification on…well, everything could either come from another source down here in the ‘Netherim’ bunker, or ter after I had gotten her out of this decaying hulk.

  First, though, there were things to be done.

  I set Aveline back down on the steps of the dias, and looked around doubtfully for a moment. “Aveline, you wouldn’t happen to know if there are any…shoes in here for you, would you? It’s…it’s time to go.”

  She looked up at me with rge, reddened emerald eyes and nodded. “Uh-huh,” She said quietly, pointing over her shoulder around the side of the pod. “There should be a locker with my stuff in it.”

  Ah. With the shadows in here, I had barely even noticed the back side of the pod. They were even deeper back there, to the extent it was hidden from my gaze. I gave Aveline one st smile, and walked over there, my light Spell bobbing along with me.

  When the glow of it illuminated what was actually back here, I stopped in my tracks, my shoulders tensing. I hadn’t moved far enough for Aveline to lose sight of me, so she tilted her head in curiosity my way, rising slightly from her step. “Mr. Hart? What is it?”

  “Nothing!” I said hastily, raising a hand to stop her and pstering smile on me face. “I’ve got it, Aveline! No need to get up. You just…stay right there.”

  She blinked at me doubtfully, but complied, sitting back down.

  I had to suppress a sigh of relief as I moved further back behind the pod. I didn’t want the kid to see what was back here.

  Namely, a corpse.

  Not just a stripped bare skeleton, like the ones out in the greater hall. But a properly desiccated corpse, covered in paper-thin skin, most of its flesh and tissue having melted away with the passing of eons. Bare scraps of ligament and rotten clothing covered the remains, the cut of them making me believe this might have once been a woman. It was hard to tell, though, because I…think this unfortunate soul had once been wearing a b coat, although little had survived of it to this day. She, presumably, was leaning against the back wall of the room, not far from where I could see the small locker Aveline had told me back, set into the base of the dais.

  I couldn’t tell what had caused her death. There were no easily identifiable wounds, nor indications of sickness. As far as I could tell, it was like she had just id down and died.

  My light glinted off of something pinned to the left breast of the coat scraps. Slowly, I approached the remains and knelt down, leaning forward to get a better look.

  It…seemed to be an ID card of some kind, held in pce by an alligator clip. On it was a picture of a beautiful, blond-haired woman perhaps in her thirties with emerald green eyes, wearing a pristine white b coat and smiling at the camera confidently. Next to that picture was a name, written clearly in English.

  I studied it for a moment somberly, before I called out over my shoulder. “Aveline?”

  “Yes, Mr. Hart?” Her voice drifted back to me.

  “Out of… curiosity, what’s your mama’s name?”

  “Um. It’s Cecily. Cecily Montbnc.” She answered, curiosity in her voice. Thankfully, she didn’t get up to investigate. “Why?”

  I sighed, closing my eyes briefly in resignation. Still, I made sure my own voice had no trace of the sorrow I felt for her in it. “No reason. I found the locker, so give me a minute.”

  I didn’t move, though. Instead, I stared forward into the empty eye-sockets of the long-dead remains of what could only be Aveline’s mother. Spelled out clearly on the ID card were the words ‘Dr. Cecily Cir Montbnc’. Anything else identifiable had long since been erased by the passage of time.

  I couldn’t let Aveline either see this or know about it. The girl struck me as particurly intelligent, so she had to have realized that her mother was gone, if only subconsciously. But knowing that and seeing the remains were two entirely separate things.

  I wasn’t that cruel. Perhaps…ter.

  Much ter.

  Aveline…she really didn’t have anything, did she?

  Resolve grew in my heart, sudden and steel firm.

  I bowed my head to the long-departed mother. I made sure to keep my voice low as possible with my next words. “I’ll take care of her. I promise you that, Cecily.”

  I turned from the unfortunate soul and reached for the ring on the small locker to my right. I had to tug on it harder than expected to open it, causing the door to screech in protest at the movement.

  But something else happened that caused my heart to leap into my throat.

  Behind me, I heard a slight ruffling noise, followed by a small ctter.

  My head whipped around, only to find that I was once again staring into empty eye-sockets.

  The head of Cecily’s corpse had turned slightly to the right to stare.

  Right. At. Me.

  I knelt there in sudden tension for…I don’t know how long, eye to eye with the apparently moving dead woman. The remains didn’t move or shift an inch further, though, nor did the empty sockets light up to signify the reanimation of undeath. I was only broken out of my stupor by the sound of Aveline’s voice.

  “Mr. Hart? Are you alright?”

  I blinked rapidly, my eyes flickering away from the remains in sudden panic. “Just fine!” I said, my voice cracking slightly in a way it hadn’t since I was a teenager. “Give me a sec! It’s a real mess back here! Not safe at all!”

  A familiar glint caught my eye when I looked back, this time oddly coming from the ground. I followed it to find that Cecily’s ID card had been torn from the remains of the coat, to rest in the open, bony palm of her hand.

  I grit my teeth.

  Okay.

  Message received.

  I snatched it up before my nerves could fail me and stuffed it deep into my supply pouch. Then, I turned around and rapidly snatched up everything in the old locker. I barely registered the small, child-like shoes or the odd grey discus. There were strips of what might have once been clothes in there, but they had unfortunately degraded to the extent they were little better than scraps. Once I had hold of what remained, I stood up and hurried away from the…resting pce of Aveline’s mother, and stepped back into the light of the pod.

  Aveline lit up when she saw the strange disc in my arms, and snatched it out of grip to clutch it to her chest. She barely reacted when I slipped the thankfully intact, strangely pstic shoes onto her tiny feet. She only looked up in curiosity when I slung my cloak over her shoulders, wrapping it around herself. “Warm,” She whispered.

  I did my best to smile down at her. “Time to go, Aveline. I’ll get you out of here. I just…need to find my friends and take care of something, first. But I swear I’ll look after you. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

  Aveline gave me a tiny nod, before looking back down at her…toy, I guess. I hastily gathered up my weapons and gear, strapping them back onto my body. My new charge didn’t protest as I bent down and picked her up, holding her close to my chest. She only buried her face into my left shoulder.

  As I turned my back on the pod I’d found her in and strode for the door, my light Spell bobbing along with us, I couldn’t help myself. Once I’d reached the entrance into the b, I cautiously looked over my shoulder, my eyes deliberately finding the space behind the pod.

  It was hard to tell, but…

  I think the skull of Dr. Cecily Montbnc had turned back around to face us, as we were leaving.

  One st sight of her daughter…before she left this pce forever.

  I shuddered slightly and turned away.