Chapter 7: The Burning Skull

  My first love’s name was Elena. She pushed me down on the playground, then gave me a tulip in apology. Her parents had a house only a few streets away, and for years we were inseparable. When I was twelve, I started sneaking out of my window at night to visit her. When she was sixteen, Elena was allotted to have 3 daughters, while I was not permitted to have children, ever. When they found out, her parents stopped letting us see each other, but I’d still sneak out at night, right up until she moved away.

  Years later, I was given a work order on the waterfront. I saw a little girl playing in the front yard amongst the flowers, and she was the spitting image of Elena. It hurt so bad that my implant drugged me into oblivion and I awoke at home two days later.

  I started driving past that house at every opportunity, and thinking back, I guess that was the start of it all.

  —

  I used the last of my Red Balls to regrow my severed arm, and even then it was a raw, wretched thing that seemed to sizzle with lingering fire. I reactivated Hatching Predator as soon as I could, retreating into the numb rage that it brought, and propped myself against the trunk of a tree, its thick milky sap dripping down over my shoulders.

  As I looked about my hateful new world with infra-vision, the rational part of my mind dreaded that my screams would have attracted more of those Gosporian bug things, while the part ruled by my predator perk dreamed of them coming in droves.

  A few drones flittered about at the edge of my vision, but they were far in the distance and moved aimlessly. For a second, I thought I spotted something else, something hulking and serpentine, but it was gone before I could be sure.

  I needed to turn off the damn perk; every second that it screamed into my skull I could feel myself changing just a little more. Becoming just a little worse. Staring at the glowing red icon, I noticed something. The image was of a horned skull, set aflame, and that reminded me of a painting I’d seen long ago.

  When I was a child of 5 or so, the UE released a memo stating that children should play with their elders, that it would temper their youthful spirits. A week later, my parents started taking me to grandma’s house to play. She had this beautiful pre-peace house, perhaps 150 years old that sprawled every which way and had been renovated a dozen times. I spent a blissful summer exploring it, delighting in discovering the house’s many secrets, until one day I’d inadvertently discovered one of my grandma’s secrets too.

  Hidden behind a bookshelf beneath the stairs, I’d found her tiny secret shrine, though I hadn’t known what it was at the time. Just a golden crucifix set on a purple velvet cloth and behind it, a painting of a golden haired man with a halo, warding back a red skinned man with horns. I remember being so damn excited. My hands shook as I grabbed the crucifix and ran into the parlour to show everyone the treasure I had unearthed.

  I’ll never forget the looks on their faces.

  It was the last time we ever saw grandma.

  I stared at the predator icon and wondered whether an identical horned skull would be found beneath the skin of that man in Grandma’s painting. And all these years later, I wondered whether her death had been my fault. I hadn’t known her long, just a season, but I’d loved her fiercely. She taught me to swear when my parents couldn't hear us, she’d slipped me candy made from real sugar while my parents were in the garden letting Gazpacho take a shit.

  The UE punished her for believing in something they didn’t. What was so damn dangerous about that?

  With the guitar screaming in my ears, it was hard to feel anything, but there was something there, beneath the artificial rage pumping through me. Something that had eluded me since I was a child with those big emotions.

  I held a mental finger over the predator icon, poised to deactivate it, but my mind trembled and I found that I couldn’t do it. The agony of my many wounds and the unrelenting terror of being in this new world remained, and I couldn’t make myself face it.

  Yeah, this perk was going to be a problem.

  Time slipped by. I don’t know how long I sat there, half glued to the tree, taking deep breaths while my mind raced. Wondering what the fuck I should do? What could I do? Eventually exhaustion and the dump of adrenaline claimed me and I drifted away and fell asleep.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  My dreams were a maelstrom of blood, terror and rage, accompanied by electric guitar.

  I jolted awake with the same guitar riff screaming in my ears and leaped to my feet. Chunks of the fungal tree ripped free of the trunk where the sap had bound us together. How long had I slept? I staggered a few steps, arms raised to meet the attackers that I expected would be coming from all sides. My infra-vision was still active, but it took a second for my waking mind to process what it showed. Distant silhouettes, nothing close. Nothing had come for me. I felt ill, but breathed a sigh of relief, so stupid, to sleep now after all I had suffered to survive. I couldn’t stay here.

  My arm was still red raw and withered. Flexing my wrist, I curled my fingers into a fist, and the scar on my knuckles stood out in a white line. The tissue was tight, like a fat sausage on the grill, ready to split at the slightest knick. I’d have to protect it, but my clothes were shredded to little more than rags. The corpses of three drones lay a few feet away along with my improvised dagger and that gave me an idea.

  Using my dagger, I slit around the edges of a Gosporian’s middle carapace segment and peeled the plate free with a wet pop. It was a single, domed piece of chitin, flared at the edge and a little larger than my hand. I repeated the process with the other corpses, then stabbed a hole into the nearest tree with my improvised dagger. Thick milky-white sap dribbled from the hole and I caught it in the concave backside of the plate. Then I stuck them to my arm, one after another to form crude armour plating. A popup appeared in my HUD.

  Achievement Unlocked: Improvised Armour

  It zipped away into a flashing little folder icon beneath my inventory as the announcer lady started talking. She sounded a little waspish and I wondered if it was because I had ignored her before.

  “Congratulations on your third achievement! Wait, what? Third I hear you ask? Yes dear, third. But you missed the second one because you were too busy screaming and bleeding all over the place. You really ought to pay more attention to what I say, some of this is super important.”

  I opened the blinking folder and two achievements appeared.

  Improvised Weaponry: +7% damage with all melee weapons.

  Improvised Armour: +7% protection from all armour.

  New details have been added to your character screen.

  Opening my character screen, I checked its contents, but could make neither heads nor tails of all the numbers. I’ve always been more of a hands on kinda guy, so I closed it. I’d figure it out later, when I wasn’t in a rot stinking fungal forrest, swarming with bugs that wanted to eat me.

  My predator perk had driven me to run headlong at the nearest enemy and that had been a bad idea. I’d learned my lesson, and knew I needed information. I needed to know where the hell I was.

  I eyed one of the thicker trees and set to climbing it. This world seemed to have lower gravity than Earth, so I was able to make a superhuman leap. I made it up a few feet, jabbed my dagger into the trunk to arrest my fall and found new footing on another branch, then leaped again. I was at the top in no time.

  The forest was in a valley between two mountains. A green and yellow sea stretched to the horizon at one end, while at the other there looked to be a desert, but it was hard to tell. I was at the foot of one of the mountains and figured I could find shelter there, so I jabbed the tip of my dagger into the tree and let myself descend. The dagger slowed my fall, unzipping the tree in the process.

  I managed to avoid most of the drones that infested the valley, but even so, the journey to the mountain took the rest of the day. When I couldn’t avoid the drones, my kills were brutal and efficient. But ever more frequently I came across dead ones, their bodies crushed to pulp or exploded into chunks, and that concerned me.

  By the time I reached the foothills, the sun—or whatever star burned in that putrid green sky—hung heavy and low on the horizon. I’d lost count of how many drones I’d killed. Each encounter just a blur of shrieking guitar and custard yellow goo, leaving me with no real sense of triumph, just the dull certainty that I could keep going. At the mountain’s base, I found a rocky outcrop that offered some cover. I crouched there, gasping, my raw regrown arm slick with sweat and sap, the carapace stuck to it humming with heat.

  The wind shifted, lifting the hamburger reek away just long enough for me to catch my breath. Something else lingered on the breeze, though, like burning metal and ozone. A memory of earlier in the day flickered through my mind.

  That hulking shape I’d seen for a second, bipedal and massive. Had it been real, or a trick of my fatigued eyes?

  Staring up the mountainside, I flexed the taut flesh of my fingers, took a deep breath and turned off my Predator perk. For just a heartbeat, awareness broke through and I was myself, but pain rose in a wave and I hammered the button to turn it back on.

  I stared at that horned skull, bathed in flames. What was it doing to me?

  The image made me think of that painting again, of Grandma. Of the golden cross and God she’d cherished in secret.

  Had the EU's surveillance known the moment I had found it? Or had my parents informed on her of the violation? I could still remember the look in my father’s eyes when I brought that crucifix into the room, he’d looked so sad.

  But my mother, she’d been furious. Dad always said I took after her.

  I guess it didn’t matter now, it was all in the past.

  So why did it still hurt so bad? The pain so deep, so vital that I could feel it through the Predator perk?

  A low rumble overhead snapped my attention upward. Thunder or some alien craft? I couldn’t tell. Either way, a storm was coming. A chill crept down my spine, faint beneath my predator perk’s fury. The music rose in my ears, drowning out the doubts. I gripped my dagger. Whatever was coming, I’d meet it on my own terms—one more kill at a time.

  I peeled myself from the rocks and pressed on, up into the gathering shadows. My mind drifted between fear and fury, but the choice was simple enough: I'd fight or die. That would have to be enough.

  And once again I made the promise to myself.

  They’d pay for what had been done to me. All of them.