Viola Blackstar

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9963070-1-7
Verlag: FiXT
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 258 Seiten

In a world blasted and barren, the last bastion of civilization is a fortress-city called Central. Kaine, the city's benevolent arbiter, rules over the people in exchange for his gift to them: Re:memory-a public archive containing humanity's memories of the world before it was destroyed. Rezin doesn't know who he is or why he's in Central, but he does know this: he is a Reaper. When Rezin meets Elara, an intrepid adventurer with a troubled past, and Vray and Bastian, mysterious twins possessing incredible powers, they embark on a journey through space and time in search of the answers Rezin seeks.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Viola, Joshua

Leseproben

THE DARK THING
THE FIRST SEIZURE hit Rezin the instant he tried to stop the reaping and push the incomplete take out of his mind. The seizure hit him hard, jerked him upright, threw his arms out wide, and arched his spine as though electric currents surged through its length. The second seizure was heavier, more intense, flinging Rezin from the chair. He was unable to extend his arms to break his fall. He landed hard on the carpeted floor of the booth, gasping for a breath, then — The reaping took on greater force than any he’d ever felt, this thing he was taking that he no longer wanted filling his head, spreading through his mind, threatening to fill every corner of his thoughts with — Darkness. Enough darkness to swallow him and leave no trace. He writhed on the floor as another seizure broke over him, another surge of… something alien entering his mind. The darkness grew even deeper and for an instant Rezin was ready to surrender himself to it. Then the largest seizure of all struck him and, as it did, he saw the face. * * * Rezin had never seen anything like it. There had never been anything like it. It was the face of a world - a vast, ruined, ravaged world. Its mouth was a cavern filled with fire, casting forth stars of blackness. Its mouth opened wide as though the world itself was about to scream, but scream — what? Rezin knew what the world would scream before the sound reached him. His name. * * * He heard himself being called — summoned or condemned? — by the face of the world. Then the face vanished, the darkness closed once more, then opened and he was again in the Re:memory booth. The decryption was winding down — Rezin felt all the familiar tugs of withdrawal and completion, along with all the unfamiliar sensations of the new take: his skull had never felt so filled. Disconnect. The reaping was done. The seizures ceased the instant the endless take was completed and in that same instant, the alarms began to sound. He could move again, and he moved fast, part of his mind — still working, despite the pressure of whatever it was that filled him — telling him to keep his face low, narrow his eyes, hide himself as best he could even as he got to his feet. Rezin gathered the pulsar and left the booth as casually and calmly as he could. Rezin scanned the area, searching for Peake’s location. He’d have an escape route devised, Rezin hoped. He turned his head side to side, looking first to a waiting area positioned near a cluster of booths and then to an open hallway. But Peake was gone. Rezin was on his own. “Shit!” The alarms followed him, accompanied now by a voice: “Remain where you are. Stand in place. Unauthorized access. Remain where you are. Stand in place. Await security detention.” Rezin didn’t pause. He kept moving toward the exit — not the one he’d entered by — his thumb moving in long-practiced, but never used, patterns across the surface of the pulsar. Other patrons of Re:memory were staring at him, some stepping back almost fearfully as he approached. Rezin kept his head down, his thumb moving faster, the pulsar humming as it began to deal with its master’s commands, already widecasting a scatter signal frequency that might — but only might — scramble the worst of the surveillance images and tracking cameras, buying Rezin a little more time to get out. He almost made it. Rezin heard the scandroids above. The roars of their aerial turbines nearly deafened him. Then he heard nothing. Their engines stopped and the machines dropped mid-flight, flanking their target. Rezin raced for the exit. Mechanical leg-extensions burst from their midsections. In the instant they landed, they rose and stepped through the doorway just as Rezin approached it. “Stand in place,” they said in unison, each already extending a nozzle to deploy their constrictors and bring an end to — An end to me, Rezin thought desperately, watching their constrictor apertures widen, bracing himself for the entrapment even as he shot a desperate glance behind him in search of an escape he knew wasn’t there. He held his breath and — The thing in his skull seemed to expand. For a moment Rezin thought that his head might burst, yet he felt no pain, no sensation at all, only an almost weary resignation as the scandroids took aim and — Something sudden came forth from within Rezin, some force that emanated from him, struck the scandroids and spun them, their circuits fusing and the air filled with the scent of them fried, dead. Rezin didn’t allow himself to think, to wonder, to be amazed or relieved or anything other than moving. And moving fast, pushing past the dead security devices, and then faster down a corridor to a stairway, thumb pressing the pulsar to put everything the device had into casting as much protection and distraction and scatter as it could, and keeping the widecast going hard after Rezin made the streets and almost lost it when he realized where he was – The northwest entrance to Re:memory. The entrance that he never used. The one he gave the widest of berths. The one that scared him. The one where – Her perfect face, bloodied against the concrete where she lay The one where – 6:17 The one where – Her eyes losing their light Here: Where she died Rezin shook himself free from the scraps of memory – all he had of her, whoever she had been, and moved fast as he darted from Re:memory, making one, two, three, and then a full fourth block before he dared look back. No one following, no scandroids in sight. And still Rezin didn’t relax or relent. He put more distance between himself and Re:memory, moving in a direction opposite to the tack that would take him home. He would head that way later. Maybe. He wished the city had more shadows, more dark places he could hide himself within. His home was one of those places, and the best one, but he couldn’t go there now. All he could do was keep moving, not quite aimlessly, but in as random a fashion as he could manage, keeping alert, watching, wary, occasionally pressing with part of his thoughts against the unyielding darkness in his head. After half an hour he powered down the pulsar, and was pleased when another half hour went by without a scandroid or human officer paying him any notice. Had they deployed sentinels? He hoped not. And still he did not return home. Finally — an hour, two, more? — he found a spot near the North Wall barrier which protected them against the Outlands. He stopped moving, stepped behind a pylon that supported an observation platform whose observers were looking outward, not downward, and in its shadow Rezin — Tore off the skullcap with its mass of brown curls and cast it aside, shaking loose his red-dyed mohawk, his bangs hanging over one side of his face. Massaging his cheeks in the pattern that signaled the inserts to dissolve themselves, the pudgy face that he wore into Re:memory for the reaping were replaced by his own sharper features. He pressed thumb and forefinger against his closed eyes hard enough to dissolve the lenses that made his own fierce blue eyes far less memorable, both to passersby and, he hoped, surveillance monitors. He tapped his cheeks to ensure they had receded. Rezin took a deep breath and then another. He was himself again. He was wholly himself once more. Mostly. Something dark and powerful gnawed inside him. Rezin removed his jacket. The red undershirt he wore wouldn’t have been picked up by any cameras. He wadded the jacket into a ball; he would ditch it where it would be likelier to be found by some scavenger or cleaning crew rather than a scandroid or sentinel. He didn’t need it anymore. He had plenty of others – his line of work allowed him a large and luxurious wardrobe. He stepped out of the platform shadow and began to walk, slowly, toward home. * * * Rezin ducked through the crowded, shadowless streets, making his way to a building that towered over its neighbors. Home. For an instant as he neared the entryway, Rezin considered turning away – there was every chance that he’d been identified despite the disguise, and half a dozen different ways it could have been accomplished. They might be watching him even now – they might be waiting for him inside. He could run, he could abandon everything – but where would he go? Back to the Undercity he’d crawled from? The idea repelled him, but he would go there if he had to, and lose himself in the filth until he could create a new identity and emerge once more. Rezin didn’t want a new identity. He had no idea who he was – who he had been – but he was comfortable with who he had become. And he realized that there were things he couldn’t abandon – not without seeing them at least one more time. He walked toward the building that held his home. * * * He entered, making his way down a vast hallway punctuated by dozens of metallic doorways, each adorned with a holographic number floating at its center. He moved quickly, recalling the same sense of anxiety he felt from the last job. He hurried – he...