Quil Carter

Chapter 1

Reaver

Current Day

      Skyfall was… abandoned.

Desolate, just like Silas had said. Outside of this broken window, the wood frame bleached white, the cityscape of Skyfall was a shadow on a backdrop of clear night. It was now just a bruise upon necrotized flesh, unsightly but a common witness on the rotting corpse that was this decaying planet.

But only in the distance was this darkness settled. Here? Above my head the sky was red and glowing, the cold peace of this dead city and the fiery white hell that had been our tomb an evangelical dichotomy.

“Where are my babies?” Silas wept behind me. I don’t know when I’d stopped holding him or when we’d left the porch, my brain was an old engine confused by the fuel it was receiving after being out of service for so long. I was slowly starting to make sense of all of this, but currently my mind just wanted to gawk out this window, thinking perhaps that if I stared long enough a narrator would start to speak, give us a recap on what we’d missed.

And I knew we’d missed a whole fucking lot.

How long… has it been?

“This is fucked,” I whispered. I turned around, Silas on his knees with his eyes red. He was kneeling in a glow of white, created from a hole in the wall behind us. I’d say he looked like an angel, but I’d known him too long to make that deduction. This was a confused Lucifer being introduced to his new hell. “Silas, we could’ve been out for decades.”

I thought Silas was nodding slightly at me, only to realize this was no nod but a tremor that was rocking his body in steady sweeps. It appeared almost like a seizure, rocking Silas’s frail frame to an extreme where I suspected he’d be collapsing before long.

“The flames are still burning, but they must be retracting.” Silas wrapped his arms around his naked self, and although he outwardly looked weak, his skin was flawless. Mine as well. All my scars would be gone now, my own skin a porcelain doll set to be given to a boy who liked to play with matches.

I raised a hand and ran it through the three odd inches of hair I’d grown during my resurrection. Three inches would mean…

“Seven or eight months recovery, minus before I had a scalp,” I murmured. “A full body resurrection.” I squinted my eyes as I scanned the wrecked apartment we’d woke up in.

Wrecked apartment was no understatement. The furniture appeared dried out, the paneling on a nearby wood dresser curled to reveal bleached white, and the carpet beneath my feet not just covered in debris, but melted and stiff too.

“But the flames receding could be our family trying to snuff them out,” Silas went on. “If not and this is happening naturally… Sky’s flames took twenty years to burn away.”

Yeah, I remembered now. Twenty years. It could… possibly be close to twenty years. God damn.

That would mean… Killian would…

Killian.

The moment my confused thoughts brushed over his name, I severed my gaze with this haunting diorama of the dead world and turned from the window as if expecting him to be there.

Only moments previous, hearing Killian’s name conjured cold indifference, a resentment hardened through time, pressure, and flames. But now that I was being presented with the reality that I could’ve been gone for decades, other feelings were springing out from the shadows, vying for their turn in a spotlight they’d soon realize was burnt out.

If it had been twenty years…

Would… I mean… am I still in a relationship?

Had Killian moved on without me?

Why wouldn’t he have? Our relationship had been on life support before the entire hospital had blown up, and now here it was awakening from a coma amongst rubble.

Fuck. What was going on here? I needed answers. I need answers.

“Let’s… get out of here then, love. I need those answers too.”

I didn’t even realize I’d been speaking my own thoughts out loud until Silas said this to me, and I had to wonder just how much of my racing stream of consciousness had been inadvertently shared with him.

Like babies learning how to crawl, Silas and I dragged ourselves forward towards the wood dresser. And I did mean drag in the literal sense, the muscles in our arms and legs unwilling to support our weight. By the time we reached the dresser, Silas and I were both digging glass out of our palms, and our knees were leaving streaks of blood like we were trying to hide our own dead bodies.

But the effort appeared to be worth it considering what we found in the dresser’s four remaining drawers.

Suspiciously worth it.

There were two sealed packages of Fruit of the Loom placed on top of folded shirts. Further inspection revealing one pack to be a rainbow pack of briefs, and the other, boxers. Without wasting any time, Silas and I picked our underwear of choice– black boxers for me and red briefs for him – then dug further through the drawers to find jeans and long sleeve shirts.

Silas’s face made it near pointless to point out the obvious. “This shit was planted,” I muttered as I slid the shirt over my head. My hair felt like it was only an inch shorter than usual if that, but my facial hair was in full force. “But if we were pulled from those flames or at the very least found… why were we left here?”

“I don’t know.” Silas stared down at his hands, flipping them palm up to palm down, then examined his lower half. “Oh, I’m going to have to get cut again.”

I glanced down at myself, but I was fine. I remember there being some comment that they’d ended up developing some genetic thing to just have us born that way now.

What a dumb thing to think of with all this happening. But in my defence, and I guess Silas’s too, our brains had been ash for most likely a real long time.

When we finished changing, I crawled on my knees towards one of the walls that had been glowing from the white flames and felt the heat against it, then over to a closed door. I touched the doorknob, but it was boiling hot.

“How high are we from the ground? Go check,” I told Silas as I examined the door. “There has to be a–”

“There’s a rope…” Silas said hastily. “It has knots in it. Someone did put us here. Whatever remains they’d found of us.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw Silas crawling back onto the deck. There were blood speckles on the floor now from where he’d cut his toes on the glass. Whoever had supplied us with clothes wasn’t smart enough to give us some boots or socks apparently.

I followed him to the porch and heard a whimper. “I can’t see my home from here. I can’t see Olympus either. I need to get to the other side of this building.” Silas grabbed onto a nylon rope I hadn’t noticed before, tan and with large knots every few feet, appearing to be securely tied to the bottom railing part of the balcony.

“I don’t know what you’ll be able to see until we get far enough from the flames. All behind us appears to be fire.” Silas began to scale down, and I watched him for a few moments in case the rope decided to snap, or even more likely, his arms gave out, but he was climbing it without issue.

Silas looked up. “Grab it with your thighs as much as you can,” he called to me. “Don’t use your arms or legs to keep your weight. The knots… just rest on them when you need to.” Below him was just dark-bathed ash and scorched rock. Nothing was growing here, but well… it had been near fire.

Once Silas reached the bottom he tried to jump off, only for his legs to give out and spill him onto the ground with a muffled yelp of Fuck. I sized up the rope for a few more seconds as Silas sat on the ash and tried to dust himself off, before climbing over the railing and grabbing onto it.

Silas had been right about how I needed to grab the rope, my arms felt like noodles, my muscles dough. I could only make it a few knots before I needed a moment to rest and shake out my arms. I scaled down what ended up being three storeys before falling onto my knees beside Silas.

I looked up at the apartment building we’d woken up in, the entire five-storeys looking haunting with the glow of the flames behind it. The air was chilled now yet dead without a thought of breeze, and all was quiet but for a slight roar of the flames that my ears were only now deciding to pick up.

And here we both sat in the ash flexing and moving our legs and arms, me wondering where the hell everyone was, whereas Silas kept looking around as if expecting company.

The amount of time it took to hit me as to why he was doing this, was a big window into just how slow my brain was moving.

Silas was looking out for fucking proxy worms.

Because… there was only one reason for Skyfall to have been abandoned.

I felt like a moron. “Why did we leave that damn apartment without us even being able to walk.” I began kneading my calf muscles. “There’s worms here, aren’t there?”

“Use your electric touch,” Silas said. He motioned to my legs. “That will stimulate your muscles more than massaging them.”

“We’re still sitting ducks, Silas.” I winced as I shot the first jolt of electricity through my calf. “How long does it take for our muscles to–”

“Someone has been stimulating them for us. So, not long.”

My mouth dropped open, and I stared at Silas as he, once again, hastily scanned the area.

“How do you know!”

Silas hissed at me to be quiet. “Our muscles aren’t as bad as they usually are after such time.” He dropped his tone. “Keep your voice down. Just make yourself able to walk as quickly as–” Then Silas’s eyes widened, and in the cold glow that the hidden flames had granted us, he paled, staring off into…

Staring off into…

Not nothing.

But a figure dressed in a tight black suit with a duffle bag in one hand and what appeared to be a motorcycle helmet in the other.

However, this was no adult approaching us, this was a child.

A blond child with purple eyes, one who I recognized, but not at that age.

What the fuck was going on here.

“E-Elish?” Silas whispered.

No, no way. Nope. This wasn’t Elish, this kid wasn’t any older than eight or nine.

“Master Silas.” The moment the child said this Silas cried out and cupped a hand over his mouth. “Please, keep quiet. Are you able to walk yet?”

What the fuck was this?

The first explanation shot into my head like my brain had put a gun loaded with desperate reasoning in my mouth.

We’d gone into the past. We time travelled.

That’s what was written on the first bullet.

No. That made even less sense, you idiot.

The second bullet to pierce my brain offered me an even worse explanation.

“Did… Elish have a kid?” I whispered to Silas. “Did he clone himself?”

Why was I asking this like Silas would know the answer? And even if the answer was yes…

“Elish wouldn’t send a child out here,” Silas whimpered. He rose up onto his knees as the kid approached and reached for him. “Who are you, little love? Who sent you?”

The boy smiled, but it seemed off. No, it wasn’t the smile itself that was odd, but the weirdly fluid way his face made the expression. “I can’t explain right now.” The kid put a hand into the duffle bag and pulled out what appeared to be leg braces. “I didn’t expect you both to wake up at the same time, so I only have one set. Reaver, can you wait by the apartment for us? I need to get our king to safety first. You understand?”

Our king?

Yeah, that’s not something the Elish I knew would say, or teach his clone.

I didn’t like this.

“Back off, kiddo, I need to talk to Silas for a sec.” But Silas already had the braces in his hand.

“Silas, what are you doing?” I hissed. “You don’t know who the fuck this kid is. He could be proxied for fuck sakes.”

“I’m not.” The boy held out the small motorcycle helmet to me. “I’m wearing an anti-proxy bodysuit. Once we’re safe, we’ll get you two fitted for them as well.”

“Where’s Elish?” Silas asked. There was a rip of Velcro as he began to put on the braces. “Why are you out here alone? What’s your name? Where is everyone?”

The boy, with the smile still on his face, looked past Silas and me. “Hurry…” he said. “Let’s get going.” The kid dropped to his knees and began to put the second brace onto Silas’s legs.

And… I hadn’t been around that many kids, but I swear his movements, how exact his co-ordination was, didn’t remind me of a kid’s. Unless… they’d been making him practice this exact thing for months.

But if they knew we were up there for months why the fuck didn’t they come and get us? And why is a little kid our rescue party?

“Okay.” The kid stepped back, the braces both secure over Silas’s jeans. “Stand, Master.”

“Silas…” I tried to stand myself, only to collapse back down onto the ashy ground. I growled with frustration. The worst time in the world to be weak and unable to walk. “Something’s fucky here.”

The kid gave me a sharp look as Silas managed to stand. “Skyfall belongs to the worms now, Reaver,” he said. “Stay against the apartment wall. I’ll be back for you once we have Silas.” The kid steadied Silas. “Let’s go.”

“Silas,” I growled. “Something isn’t right here.” A creeping feeling was crawling up my back, and my heart began to beat faster. “Don’t go with him.”

Silas, with his hand clasping Little Elish’s, looked down at me with an expression of weary reassurance. “It’s Elish, love,” he said. Everything Elish had done to him and he still says this like it’s a good thing. “And I need to know my family is safe.” Silas took one step, then two. The kid was holding him steady… his arm a steel pole that didn’t waver as Silas braced against it. “Please, do as he says and keep quiet. We’ll all–”

Silas’s words blended into the background, becoming nothing but static as my hearing and instincts picked up a new noise.

Bootsteps. Bootsteps.

Heavy, racing, running.

Little Elish’s head jerked in my direction, again looking past me. But there was no fear on his face, only a sneer of anger that warped his features enough to make him look straight out of Children of the Corn.

But as quickly as it came, the expression disappeared. “Faster, Master Silas,” the boy said hastily.

Fuck all of this. I commanded my body, not the other way around. This freak of a child wasn’t taking Silas, and whoever was coming wasn’t going to either.

I tried to push my weak muscles to work, using the frustration that was consuming me as fuel. I wanted to force this body into obedience, get some super human strength like that mom you hear of who lifted a car off of her trapped kids, and for a second, for second I thought I had when I managed to stand up.

But this new body didn’t give nary a fuck what I wanted. The first step I took, I fell.

However, as my knees slammed back down onto the ground, a new noise entered this cornucopia of confusion. This one high pitch.

It was the familliar whine of electricity, starting out as one sound, then two, then three.

I looked above me and saw something small in the air, then my head snapped towards the apartment’s parking lot when I spotted two purple lights shining through a thatch of bushes.

We were surrounded.

“Si–”

“FUCK!” Little Elish snarled, but as he turned to Silas with his mouth open, ready to bark at Silas to… I think rush, move faster, run – suddenly… fucking suddenly.

The left side of the kid’s head exploded, showering us in, not just blood, but blood and shards of what felt like metal.

Silas shrieked Elish’s name and stumbled back, falling onto the ground. He was coated in blood and chunks of brain, but amongst the child-flavoured slurry were scraps of mesh and warped pieces of metal, sticking to Silas’s skin and clothes like the kid’s brain had been a shraptnel grenade.

I looked down at my hands, a piece of the mesh glued with blood to my hand, then over at where Little Elish had fallen.

Inside his head.

Okay…

The interior of his skull was covered in the same mesh, and what remained of his brain, there were metal ringlets embedded in it, tubes going into those ringlets, moulded metal staples. I mean it looked like this kid was part… was part…

Fucking robot.

Then all hell broke loose.

People dressed in black and wearing goggles shattered the dark veil that surrounded us. They were armed with automatic rifles, covered head-to-toe in military armour, and had vests of bullets, and belts full of grenades, knives, and what resembled a cattle prod. Two of them shot several more rounds into Kid Elish, who was still twitching on the ground, then all of them began shooting past us.

One of them grabbed me. “Operation Charlie-Kilo now in play!” he barked. “Phoenix 1 and Phoenix 2 can’t walk.”

“Three drones, three mech cats!” another yelled. I was pulled off of my feet, a second swarm of armed men grabbing Silas, and past us I saw more purple glowing eyes bouncing down a broken road, until the glow of the white flames revealed a part of their forms.

Yeah, mech… cats. That’s what they were. The portion of face that I could see showed smooth black metal shaped around angular violet eyes, and long white or silver whiskers coming out of pin prick size ports on their muzzles and above their eyes.

The one I could see best had stopped, its pointed ears moving around like little radars and its whiskers all twitching individually. Then it turned and ran to catch up with the others, a long segmented tail behind it continously in motion to keep balance.

Silas hadn’t had the tech to make shit like this. He would’ve mentioned it, or Perish would have.

Jesus fuck, how long had it been?

“Execute Standard Bravo-Bravo. Snipers, ready!” The first voice, the one who’d grabbed me yelled. This was a military operation, but these were no legionaries.

“First drone is surveillance. Unarmed,” the second yelled. A gun blast sounded close to my ear; two men sprinted ahead of me as I was being dragged back. They raised their guns to shoot at the cats, only for the small robots to jump into the darkness, ash flying up where they’d once been.

“The cats are standing down. No aggression,” a female voice called out. “Observation mode. Offensive or defensive, Captain?”

“Weather update?”

“No update. Storm’s on track.”

“Defensive then,” the one who had me ordered “Focus on the drones.”

I saw two pairs of purple eyes watch us from underneath an ash-coated car, then a clank beside me as a drone dropped to the pavement.

“Reaver!”

I looked up, and even though my heart had been racing, I knew the moment I heard that voice… it stopped.

“Killian!” I screamed. I looked up, Killian’s voice coming from the second drone. “What’s going on? Baby, where are you?”

“Reaver, don’t go with them!” Killian yelled. “They’re with the worms.”

One of the men who’d been pulling me let out an angry snarl, “Fuck off, worm!” Then he said to me, “He’s lying, Reaver. But we’re all going to be proxied if we stay here.” A shot pinged off of the drone, creating sparks. It began to waver.

Two more men came out of nowhere and grabbed my legs. I didn’t know where Silas was now, but the moment I was airborne, the shock that had been stunning me mutated into panic.

I started to struggle.

Another gunshot. The drone Killian’s voice had come from fell to the concrete before bouncing into a thicket of dead brush.

“Let me the fuck go!” I yelled, and although my muscles still felt like they’d been slow cooked, I thrashed as hard as I could. “Let me the fuck go!”

The man who’d been speaking swore, then called out: “Reno! Get over here!”

What? Reno?

Reno?!

He didn’t even need to say anything. I recognized my best friend just by his panting as he ran towards me from somewhere out of sight. I looked ahead pleadingly, seeing nothing now but the apartment we’d resurrected in getting smaller and smaller as I was carried away, until my view was blocked by a man dressed the same as the others.

But the moment he was in front of me, while keeping pace with the group, he slid his googles off.

I was not a man who cried often, but the confusion and shock had compounded inside of me enough to feel as if I was going to burst into tears the moment I saw a familiar face.

“Baby,” Reno choked, and when I saw tears in his eyes, I felt wetness in my own. “You’re safe, baby. Trust me, just don’t fight. We’re getting you two to safety.”

“Nevada!” a female voice yelled. “Come back. He’s getting upset again.”

Reno gave me a broken smile. “I have to calm down Silas so he doesn’t explode,” he said. “We’ll be home soon. Just let them carry you. I love you, Reav.”

“Ki-Killian…” I managed to stammer. “Killian?”

Reno’s smile faded; truck motors roared to life behind me and rapidly got louder. “That’s… not Killian,” he said. “Or Elish. Or… any of them.” Silas screamed something, getting Reno’s attention, and as I was raised up, the sound of a rusty truck hatch opening nearby, Reno momentarily put a hand on my shoulder, then disappeared.

Even when I was in the back of the truck, I was still in too much shock to make sense of anything. I was sandwiched between armed guards, and now had my own set of goggles over my head and a helmet. I think to make me harder to identify if we were attacked.

But we weren’t, as the truck sped through the ruins of Skyfall, looking like a greywastes city but in better condition, I saw no purple eyes, no drones, but I did see new oddities.

There were large crates everywhere that hummed with electricity, several of them held dead proxy worms inside. I also saw streets in complete ruins, the buildings collapsed and the roads so incredibly broken it reminded me of how the ground looked after Bugs Bunny burrowed through. At least parts of Skyfall still appeared in fair condition, but others? Yeah, it was like the Worm King and Proxy Jade had a snowball fight but the snowballs were cars, traffic lights, and street signs.

“Hey.” The man who’d initially approached me nudged my shoulder. He was holding a flask, and even though I had no idea what was in it, I took it without question and put it to my lips.

Whisky. Thank the universe. Several swigs disappeared down my throat before the guy chuckled and held a hand out for it. “Not too much. You have an empty stomach and no tolerance.” He looked over his shoulder. “But home approaches. You can get some food in you.”

A pale light then streaked over him. It illuminated purple-blue eyes that suggested a chimera origin, but no one I remembered in this confused brain. I didn’t ask who he was, I didn’t care, but even if there was enough sense in me to ask, more light spilled onto us and the trucks, three of them from the sounds of it, screeched to a halt.

“Do you have them!?”

“We have them!”

“Yes! They have them, guys!” Cheering erupted ahead of us, people I couldn’t see loudly celebrating our arrival. Our rescue? But while these cheers were carrying on, a rumble of, I think it was thunder, rolled through the celebrations. The storm that had been mentioned off-handedly. Once one of them had confirmed a storm was coming, the other had told them not to shoot the robot cats since they were in defensive mode.

Makes sense, cats hate water. So they probably ran away to keep dry.

This should’ve been another window into just how in shock I was over what had just happened, but I was, well, too in shock to notice.

I squinted from all these lights shining on us now. Wherever we were, bright floodlights were everywhere. I think these lights… yeah, they were attached to a wall. The wall… I think it was made of concrete but there were wires or strips of rubber or something every few feet up. I didn’t know if it stretched the entire wall but it was everywhere I could see.

I tried to lift myself up off the truck bed to see where we’d been taken, but the man with the whisky put a hand on my shoulder. Before the weakness of my limbs had me slamming back down to the metal floor, I saw more lights, and as I’d guessed, they were attached to a thick concrete wall wrapped with those wires and crawling with sentries.

But even though they were bright enough to make daylight wherever they were trained, they also illuminated a lot of dust. Actually, everywhere was starting to look a bit shrouded, a thin mist was in the air but maybe it had always been here and it had been too dark to notice. Now, these lights had this wall decked out like a stadium.

Or maybe not a stadium. More like…

“Is this a fort?” I asked.

“It is now,” the man with the whisky said with a smile. The sound of a rusty gate opening was added to all the other chaotic noise, and the dude grabbed the side of the truck and motioned for me to do the same, moments before the vehicle lurched forward. “It’s not Skyfall proper,” he added, “but we’re free here. No Worm King, no Parasite God.”

“Parasite God?” I muttered. I wiped my wet eyes, the overzealous floodlights or maybe the dust causing them to water, and the convoy of trucks rolled into the fort.

More people dressed in black with goggles; all of them watching us, all of them holding various weapons. One turned around when our truck, which was dead last, entered, and waved for the gates to be closed.

The grinding of the rusty gate was heard again. I watched the floodlight-bathed outside disappear from view, until the gates shut and a metal pole was lowered to lock them.

Our convoy drove down a paved road that had been patched with black, on both sides people were gathered on the sidewalks as if this was a parade and me and Silas the guests of honour. Some looked on in shock, others smiled, and a few held looks of concern.

None of these people I recognized; I think they were just Skyfallers.

Then a scream from Silas.

“TELL ME!”

My head snapped towards the sound of his voice, and the floodlights illuminated Silas grabbing onto Reno’s black jacket. His expression was anguished.

“I am no weak-minded fool who needs comfort before the blow, Reno Nevada!” Silas snarled this, but the heat behind his words was stifled almost instantly. Like a dead battery that had only been on the charger for an hour, Silas’s burst of energy vanished, and the hand that was clenching Reno’s jacket fell limply to his side. “Where is my family?” he whimpered. “Where’s Elish? Where’s Nero? Where’s my babies?”

Reno rubbed the hand that had grabbed him. “Where almost there, hun,” he assured. “Once we’re inside the house, I’ll tell you and Reav everything.”

In my peripheral vision, the whisky guy smiled. “He’s here now,” the man whispered, then sniffed and wiped his nose. “And he’ll set this right.”

I looked over at the dude, and kept staring at him until the trucks stopped. We were under a new set of lights now, but these ones were cold LED streetlamps illuminating a parking lot.

Reno stood up first. “At ease,” he called. “Amazing fucking job, guys; this couldn’t have gone better. Everyone go to the hall for a debrief. You assholes did good.”

A cheer erupted from the trucks, everyone but the man with the whisky raising their guns into the air. The ones in my truck, as they hopped out they all patted my shoulder, told me welcome back. But my stress levels, all of this sudden stimulation, it was starting to raise my temper.

“Okay…” The whisky man let out a breath. “Come with me, Reaver. We all decided it was best for me to not make myself known until we were here.” He began to help me out of the truck.

I… don’t know who the fuck you are. I slid down the metal ribs of the truck floor, then once my feet hit pavement, a small boy walked up to me with crutches. He smiled.

I didn’t smile back. I don’t think I knew how to anymore, but I did take the crutches.

We’d parked in front of a building that I think had once been a fucking boarding school or something. It was huge, had a bunch of stairs which Silas was being carried up, but just as I began the large trek up them, I heard a scoff followed by a chuckle.

“That’s gonna take him forever, dude.”

The whisky guy shushed whoever had talked. “Keep your voice down!” he hissed. “If we overwhelm Silas, he’s going to level Autumnhome.”

I looked behind me, the voice… this one was familiar.

The man who’d spoke was huge, and the guy put a finger to his lips like he assumed I knew who he was.

“Oh fuck off, you’ve met me.” The big one chuckled. He slipped his goggles off, revealing purples eyes that squinted as he smiled.

Yeah, that was…

“Ares…?” I muttered. No, wait, Ares… he was the one who got snuffed. “No… Siris?”

“That’s me!” Siris nodded and walked over. The whisky guy then took my crutches, and Siris picked me up like a damsel and began jogging with me up the stairs. The dude and the little kid followed suit. “Siris, right here, bud,” he said. “You recognize that pretty fuck.” He motioned with his chin to the whisky guy.

I shook my head.

“I don’t think he saw much of me.” The man laughed lightly as he kept pace with Siris. He glanced up the stairs, I think to make sure Silas was far enough out of hearing range, then said, “Knight, at your service. I’m your sister’s son.”

The sister who got snuffed too.

“Is this… all that’s left?” I asked. “Is everyone else dead?”

Siris’s head shook rapidly. “Nah, far from it,” he said. We reached the top of the stairs; the double doors open with Silas talking loudly inside. “But we’re the only fucks free.”

Free of what?

The little boy, with golden blond hair, closed the doors behind us, and I was carried into a lobby-type open room. It had all the furniture and decorations that you’d find in a hotel lobby, but the far end of it was lined with display cases holding a bunch of guns – many of which I didn’t recognize but looked high-tech –, mannequins dressed in suits that resembled something the Power Rangers would wear, and one case had those drones I’d just seen but they were mounted like trophies. All of these cases had pin pads on them, and below each pad a slot for a keycard.

I was carried away from the lobby to a hallway, and finally, fucking finally, was brought to a quiet sitting room where Reno and Silas already were. It had three tan couches centered around a wood coffee table, but my gaze went directly to a small bar area where Reno was. He was making a drink for, I’m assuming, Silas, who was on one of the couches with his hands clasped behind a bowed head.

“Silas…” I said. Siris set me down on a couch opposite of his. “You okay?”

Silas looked up at me, his face crumpled and tear-stained. “He won’t tell– SIRIS!” The moment his eyes flickered past me to Siris, he cried this, then once seeing Knight too, yelled the guy’s name next.

Siris sped over and embraced Silas, Knight right behind him, and Silas started to breakdown in Knight’s arms.

“What’s going on?” Silas sobbed. “No one will tell me anything. I don’t know what’s going on. What year is it? Where is everyone else?”

 “And why is Elish tiny?” I muttered. I ran a hand down my face. “And robot cats, and flying things, and… that wasn’t Killian?” I looked up as Reno handed me a drink, then, to my relief, several pills that better be opiates. “Reno, where’s Killian? He’s… alive, isn’t he?”

Reno nodding his head… I didn’t realize how tense I was until I saw that nod. “He’s alive, baby, but… he isn’t here. Neither are Elish, Nero, Apollo, Artemis, Kessler…” Reno sighed, and sat down after handing Silas a drink and some pills. “It’s easier to tell you who is here.” Reno looked towards the ajar door we’d just come from. “Come on in, guys.”

And in walked Ceph, Jack, and Sid.

Of course Silas just cried as they all embraced him, and as this went on, Reno sat down beside me.

I expected him to snatch me up into a hug like his arms were crocodile jaws, but although he did wrap those arms around my back, embracing me, Reno’s movements were slow and deliberate. I was confused for a moment at his restraint but I think it was pretty obvious that any previous limit I had, had already been breached several times over. Even I was surprised at how quiet and calm I’d been through this. I know I was in shock, that my brain was still rebooting, but I had a feeling I was a ticking bomb right now.

Everyone could see it. I was a dozen sticks of dynamite wrapped in wires with an alarm clock on top like the cherry on a sundae. They knew I couldn’t be disarmed, every wire was black, the ticking clock without a face, so all they could do was move carefully around where I sat, making sure not to kick me or bring me near an open flame.

“I fucking missed you so bad, Reav,” Reno whispered as he hugged me, and when I didn’t show any signs of exploding, he squeezed me tightly to him. “Now that you and Silas are here… we can find a way to get Killi and the family back. We’ve just been keeping ourselves safe and alive waiting for you guys to resurrect. We… we don’t have anyone here who can create or dispel radiation. There’s so much we haven’t been able to do.”

“How long has it been?” Silas asked. The family had finished hugging him, Silas seemed to be done crying over them, and now everyone was finding a place to sit. “Stop ignoring us. How long has it been?”

“And where is everyone else?” I added, my tone sharp enough to tell them I was done fucking around. No more delays, it was time for answers. “Where’s Killian and why isn’t he here?”

The mood of the room shifted, as did the people inside of it. Ceph and Jack, who were on Silas’s right and left, adjusted their sitting position every so slightly, and Siris rubbed his nose while Knight fidgeted with an unlit cigarette.

Yeah, me and Silas weren’t going to like this answer.

Reno took a deep breath, and I swallowed down the pills with a gulp of whisky and cola.

“It’s been nine years, guys.” My eyes closed as Reno said this. I swore underneath my breath, Silas gasped What! “And as for Killian, Elish, all of ‘em, a few years ago… their city was attacked.”

Fuck.

“Their city?” Silas whimpered. “What do you mean… their city?”

“It was once Irontowers and is now called Atlas,” I heard Jack say, his voice flowing like he was reading the first sentence of a fairy tale. But what I heard next, told me this was going to be one of those fucked up Grimm’s fairy tales. “Elish evacuated the survivors there and has rebuilt it, but it was infiltrated by proxy worms. The worms they… are inside of our family, but the populace doesn’t know. The worms control everything there.”

I buried my face into my  hands. There was my answer then. This was why… this is why Killian isn’t  here.

“He’s proxied?” I asked. “Killian’s proxied?”

I looked over at Reno, who was nodding. “Every chimera, lycan, born immoral, and nightcrawler that was in Atlas has been proxied,” he said, then let out a tense breath. “That little Elish you saw… he wasn’t trying to bring you to safety, that was one of Proxied Elish’s puppets trying to lure you away so they could capture you. Everything they do, they do it remotely.”

“You two have missed some… pretty amazing advancements,” Jack said. “Silas, Fox Keitel is back. We know he’s a nightcrawler. He helped invent some really interesting things before the attack on Atlas.”

Silas didn’t have a grand reaction to this, he only nodded. “I thought as much,” he said quietly. “Fox and Elish always got along. Robot cats with purple eyes… that’s fitting.” Silas took a sip of his drink, the pills no longer in his hand. “Nine years? Are… Sanguine and Drake proxied too? Is Sanguine’s mind well? Drake being taken care of?”

There was another change in atmosphere, bringing on what seemed like a wave of fidgiting movements. Not surprising, Silas became panicked. “What happened?” he suddenly cried. “Where are they?”

Jack held out his hands in reassurance. “Drake is okay. He’s proxied but okay. But Sanguine…” Those hands lowered to rest on his lap. They clenched each other. “Some of our family just vanished after the Atlas attack, Jade and Sanguine included.”

“Jade too? He was rescued?” Silas asked. “Elish got Jade back?”

Strangely, everyone’s heads shook. “Not that we know of,” Reno answered. “What happened a few years ago, we’re not sure exactly what went on. We saw Elish enter Skyfall, then a few hours later Atlas was absolutely swarmed with proxy worms. Whatever Elish did, it royally pissed them off. The Core got inside Atlas and proxied Elish, Killian, and the family. We’ve seen them since then, but not Jade or Sanguine.”

Ceph, who’d been nodding along to Reno’s explanation, then added, “We think the worms that were in control of Jade may have jumped to Elish, who we’ve dubbed the Parasite God. But where Jade’s body is, we don’t have a clue. After realizing the family were proxy puppets now, we stopped all communication with Atlas.”

“Beforehand, we had an okay relationship, Sanguine was our mediator,” Reno said. “We traded shit and Elish, Killian, Malachy, and Luca sent us supplies and made sure we were taken care of. But once we realized what had happened, that ended. We’ve been surviving on scavenging now, which thankfully has gotten easier with the head worms now in Atlas. All we have here are small Cores left in charge, and we keep them out pretty well.”

“And even better now!”

I jumped when a small voice said this right behins me. I looked over my shoulder and saw that boy with the golden hair excitedly kneading the back of the couch I was sitting on.

The little jump scare grinned at me. “You can clear away the radiation and we can make Skyfall pretty again, right?”

Reno chuckled. “Calm down, kid,” he said. “Master Silas and Reaver just woke up. Let them get their heads on straight before we start getting them in on the plan.”

I motioned to the midget. “Who’s he?”

“That’s Grant.”

Surprisingly, Silas was the one who said this. “Is he a puppet too?” Silas went on to ask. “Or is Grant dead?”

The heavy mood returned, Jack and Ceph put their hands on Silas’s knees. “Grant did die, Master,” Jack said quietly. “He… took his life after Theo died, before the white flames happened. We didn’t want to tell you when it happened.”

Silas nodded faintly. “Is anyone else dead?” When heads shook no, Silas’s body sunk with relief.

“We have a new Kiki running around here too,” Ceph added. “And the sengil Elish had been growing to take over Luca’s duties is somewhere. They were smuggled to us after Atlas fell.” Ceph then gave me a glaring look. “Try not to kill this Kiki, eh?”

I was too tired to give him much attitude. “Will try, bud.” Luckily, the drugs were starting to kick in and I took in a discreet breath as the stress began to filter out of me.

Not all of it, but enough to relax a body just starting to ache from the workout it had been put through and cause my eyes to close.

To my consciousness, I had barely been gone, the time spent as ash having me remember nothing, but yet I felt world weary, the fatigue settled into my bones like I’d come back an old man.

“There’s a new Theo also.” Again Jack’s tone dropped. I assume this one was proxied then. “But… he and a couple of the new ones are in Atlas most of the time. They’re not proxied, at least we don’t think they are since they are mortal. Proxy Elish and the family just let them run around wild. And the new one is a stealth, the second one a revenant, so they handle themselves from what our surveillance has seen.”

“Revenant?” Silas said. “A new… kind of chimera?”

“Nah.” Reno put a hand on my shoulder and shook it. “That’s what they ended up naming who Reav and Clig are.”

Well, could’ve been a worse name… actually that sounds kind of badass.

“They sometimes come by for food. We pay them to reset the proxy traps,” Ceph explained. “They–”

“You send children out there with the proxy worms?” Silas said sharply. “What is this insanity? Why would you allow that?”

“It’s… different now, Silas,” Jack spoke. “We have our theories, but the worms… don’t act how they used to. They treat the three wild boys like pets more than anything, and let them do whatever they want. The Worm King’s worms and Jade’s prion have little interest in Skyfall now. It’s like they’re tired of living in ruins and darkness and want a civilized life. The Parasite God – Proxy Elish – he acts… a lot like Elish.” I opened an eye when the light that was soaking through my eyelids flickered, and saw who I undoubtedly knew was the new clone of Kiki. He made eye contact with me for a split-second before his orange eyes widened and he vanished like a spooked cat. I wondered for a second if Kiki 2 had some sort of genetic memory but I’m sure someone must’ve spilled the beans on what had happened to the OG.

“That… doesn’t sound like how a parasite acts,” Silas muttered. “How a proxy worm acts.”

Then Siris, who’d been quiet during all of this, piped up. “The disease shit really tired them out,” he said. “They got all paranoid afterwards.” Siris’s face split into a wide grin, like he couldn’t contain the excitement of what he was going to say next. “And the exiled diseased ones started–”

At the same time that Silas repeated Disease? Jack cut off whatever Siris was about to say.

“Siris,” Jack said sharply. “We said we wouldn’t get into the plagueworms now. The plagueworms require way too much explanation, and we’re not putting that on their shoulders tonight.”

“But King Silas would want–” Siris closed his mouth and pouted a frown when Silas raised a hand for him to be quiet.

“No, love, it’s okay.” Silas reached over and took a lit cigarette from Reno. He stared down at it, looking as weary as I felt. “It’s fine. Jack’s right. I’m very tired and… very overwhelmed.” He took a long drag of the cigarette, held it, then asked through plumes of silver smoke:

“Where’s my old family?”

It took me a moment to figure out who he meant by old family.

“Some have disappeared altogether, others are in Atlas,” Jack answered. “Some are in Skyfall.”

“Are any of them here right now?”

Their heads shook.

“Khe– Gabriel? Kel?”

“We haven’t seen them since the proxy worms took Atlas.”

Silas nodded to Jack’s words, then his eyes flickered up.

I saw them soften, and a glance to where he was staring had me seeing the little Kiki kid again, this time standing beside Sequel Grant.

“Come here, little loves.” Silas set the cigarette down on an ashtray and motioned the two boys to him.

The Grant kid smiled and ran over, whereas Kiki made it as far as the back of the couch Siris was sitting on before ducking behind it.

“Come on, Kiki. Go say hi,” Reno encouraged the boy. “You’ve been excited about this too.”

“Has he?” Silas reached a hand out and stroked back Grant’s hair. “You know who I am, love?”

Grant nodded, the smile still on his face. “Master Silas,” he said. “Or King Silas. You’re going to make the radiation go away so we can have the Skyfall back in the photos and videos.”

“Yes… yes, love.” Silas patted his head. “I’ll…” He let out a breath. “Master Silas will fix everything.”

“Aw, Kingy.” Ceph clucked his tongue. “You don’t need to fix everything, we’re–”

Silas held up a hand and shook his head. “It’s fine, love,” he said. “I’m just, as said… tired, overwhelmed.” He stood up, a shaky hand on Ceph’s shoulder supporting his weight. “Whoever has been in charge of archiving what has happened, get me as much information as you can. Either print it or put it on a disc, I want to read it alone. Grant, why don’t you and Kiki show Master Silas and Reaver to our room?”

“Room?” I muttered, the drugs now fully in my welcoming system and doing their job. “You forgot the plural.”

“Not tonight.” Silas grasped Grant’s held out hand. “You don’t want to face this overwhelming reality alone and neither do I.”

“Can we… do anything?” Jack stood up, and the others followed, all except Reno who was still sitting beside me. “Get you anything, Master Silas?”

“Just help us walk,” Silas said. “I have a lot of questions, so many questions, but right now I need to just process this. We both do.”

“Reav.” Reno nudged me. “Are you okay, pookum?”

Was I okay?

“I don’t remember ever having this low of a tolerance.” I leaned forward and put my glass down on the coffee table. It was empty now. “Besides that? I’m… fucking numb, and…” I glanced over at Silas, being held steady by Siris. “I’ll be there in a few,” I said. “I just gotta talk to Reno and I don’t need an audience.”

Silas stood there, surrounded by a bunch of family but you’d think he was all alone. “You didn’t want that little Elish puppet to take me far from you and now you’re fine with it?” Jesus, I better be hallucinating that pout.

I flippantly motioned to the others around the room. “If these guys want to imprison us, dude, we’re real outnumbered. I can take nine-year-old Elish in a fight. These guys? Not with this weak ass body.”

Silas looked at me with that pout for a few moments longer before finally nodding defeat. “Ceph, love, help me walk.” And he left soon after with the rest of the family.

And now it was just me and Reno.

How can it seem like my eyes were only closed for a second and nine years passed, yet inside I felt weary and… I think I was scared.

Even though fear had found me many times now, it was still an emotion I wasn’t used to experiencing and one that was not welcome. I didn’t want to be afraid, but yet what I was scared of was something I couldn’t fight.

I had so many questions, but my lips weren’t moving. Did Silas read me so well that he knew my limit would soon be breached like his? Only now that I was alone with Reno did my emotions allow themselves to be exposed to the light.

And I was scared.

But I had to know.

“Did he move on?”

I didn’t look at Reno. I stared at the ceiling, wishing I’d swallowed more drugs so I could be stoned enough to not feel a single thing.

“No, Reav.”

And this confused and fearful state of mind twisted that answer in a way I hadn’t expected. Because even though Killian was mine, and whatever answer Reno would’ve had for me wouldn’t have changed it. I found myself feeling flickers of sadness.

Killi had been alone this whole time? Nine years without a partner to support him, to take care of him?

My personality stats on paper would suggest that I’d be happy he’d waited for me, but damn… my Killi-Cat had been all alone.

Or… had he been?

“He’s not with Elish or anything, right?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Reno replied. “Actually… I guess you weren’t around to see it all unravel but Elish and Killian were both being controlled by Jade’s empath abilities. That prion inside of Jade’s head wanted Elish and Jade separated, and he wanted you next because you created radiation. Killian didn’t cheat on you, hun, and Elish didn’t cheat on Jade… it was all the worms.”

I turned my head towards him. “Killian too?” I asked slowly. “He was being influenced too?”

Reno nodded. “Yeah, of course. Proxy Jade was pulling all the strings,” he said. “I mean…”
Reno let out a weak chuckle. “I don’t know what’s happening with the proxied Killian, but your Killian? He was afraid you’d not want to be with him when you woke up, not the other way around. Never for a second did that kid lose any devotion for you.”

Those words brought a wave of feeling, the same sadness that Killian had been alone but also an intense feeling of… just… love.

Love and determination.

“Killi even made sure to take his spiderwire out before his twenty-third birthday to make sure his physical age would be younger than yours.” Killian’s… fuck, Killian’s older than me. He’s had nine more years of life experience than me. “Baby, Killian is devoted to you. He’s… when we free him, he’s going to lose his shit.”

When we free him. Because my Killi-Cat isn’t just a few miles away thinking tonight is just another night… my boyfriend is currently being controlled by proxy worms.

I leaned forward. “I need to get him,” I said. And because I was dumb, I tried to stand. “I have to save him.”

But to hammer into my body just how dumb I was, my legs immediately collapsed, sending me to my knees in between the couch and coffee table.

Reno snorted. “Retard.” He got up and grabbed underneath my arm to hoist me up. “You can’t save anyone with those little girl muscles, baby.” Reno helped me back onto the couch, though my teeth were grinding with frustration over this stupid crippled body. “But don’t worry nothing, now that we have you and Silas here, not just you being badass and Silas being king, but you two being able to create and dispel radiation. Now we can finally fucking do something.” Reno laughed, and his fingers tensed into my underarm before he let go of me. “Reav, you have no idea, no fucking idea how much things are going to change now. The proxy worms… they never were able to get proxied born immortals to release radiation. Every guy who’s able to is proxied or missing. You two are fucking… you’re gods to us right now.”

Reno slapped my shoulder. “But of course even if you couldn’t, we’d still be happy you’re here and no longer fucking ash.”

How did we even get out of those flames? Who dragged us out? Left the clothes?

I wasn’t going to ask, not tonight. I had enough on my plate tonight.

And when it came down to it, all I cared about was rescuing Killian. All this other shit, that was Silas’s thing, not mine. I only cared about Reno and Killian, let Silas and the others worry about this other shit.

My purpose now was to rescue my boyfriend.

 Chapter 2

Elish

237 A.F

Dear Jade,

Things have… changed here, but I say that every time I write you, don’t I? I believe I finally understand Siris’s grief over experiencing things without Ares. Now every drastic change in my life, every development in technology, new chimera born, Atlas rising in Skyfall’s crackling shadow… I feel no urge to celebrate with my family, only a pull of my heart that you are not by my side experiencing it with me. You are my Shadow after all, the darker extension that followed me around mimicking my movements, mannerisms. My silhouette was taken for granted by everyone, especially by the man he was attached to.

Then one day my shadow vanished and what made me human vanished with him. And what is a shadowless abomination who seeks darkness and solitude? I have become a vampire that survives off of – not blood – but your memory, who still sees a reflection in the mirror, yet it is of a man I no longer recognize. I pray to the fates once you awaken in my arms that you don’t find yourself staring at a stranger.

But even with these burdens, I am steadfast in my goal. Still I will carry on forward as shepherd with the human race my flock. The burden that was once Silas’s is now upon me. I had named my new city Atlas, but I am the titan with the world upon his shoulders. A world that no longer wishes to sustain us. Who has created parasites to drive us into extinction as we wither beneath a shrouded sun that knows not colour, only dull, dismal grey.

However, I do not yearn for bright spectrums, rainbows or sunsets, the only colour I wish to see is the gold within your eyes.

You are the breath that has been taken from me. You are the light that kept my world illuminated. You are the man who cracked open my tomb and now here I wander an undead, blind shell hoping for even the faintest of light to read to you by.

And I ask myself… how much longer can I carry on this death march? The Fathers of the Fallocaust killed mother nature and now her mutated children have sprung forth to take everything from us, including my husband. We are not wanted; Earth is rejecting us.

But I am used to being unwanted. I was born an abomination.

If it is true that we are the parasites and the proxy worms mother nature’s revenge upon us.

I say… bring it.

She made a mistake when she took you from me, and I will prove it.

All my love,

Magnus

–––––––

The ink where I’d rest the pen began to grow, expanding enough that it created a blot beside the S in Magnus. This was no anomaly, most of my letters to Jade had some kind of blemish on them. Some from resting pens, others from being repeatedly crumpled then smoothed over, and occasionally, when I was at my worst, they were ripped to pieces.

Most, however, were from tear stains.

Would Jade ever see these? I want to believe that I will be brave enough to show them to him once rescued, and even now several Ziploc bags held torn-up letters I collected after the sadness and anger faded. But that lingering fear of exposing such a side of me was still there, telling me that I had a long way to go before I finished burying the endless closet of skeletons that prevented me from being a decent husband.

Little good it did burying these skeletons when my own idle mind acted like a starved dog with a keen nose. Jade was always so good at distracting me from my dark thoughts or replacing them with better ones. I never realized just how much that boy knew me until his absence had me replaying our life together over and over.

Or maybe he’s been gone from my life for so long, I’ve twisted his memory to the point of it far surpassing reality. And when we’re reunited, nothing will be how I thought it had been, everything will be different. We’ll be two different men who’d lived two separate lives and soon we’ll realize that there is no going back to how it was once, and we’re both only still in this relationship due to a sense of duty rather than happiness. Eventually, one of us will bring it up during a fight and we’ll both admit that we’re no longer in love and we’re so entirely not in love that Jade won’t even be angry and go on a killing spree like he did when I dropped him off in Moros and I won’t even be angry and determined to murder any man he becomes involved with after me, because it’ll be like how they said… that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference which is so much worse because at least with hate that means there’s still emotion, there’s still caring, but indifference? That is so much worse. So, so much–

I shook my head rapidly and stood up from the desk I’d been writing Jade’s letter on. I wish I could say that these intrusive thoughts were rare for me but that would be a lie. How easy it was now for me to get sucked into my own mental torture chamber whenever I spent time in my quarters, yet this was the only time I allowed myself to fully immerse myself in Jade and everything that came with him.

But unfortunately as the hours went by, I’d see more and more little threads dangling in front of my face, just begging to be pulled. If I ignored them, they’d become clever and attach themselves to photos, songs, articles of clothing that still held faint traces of his smell, or objects that belonged to him.

Sometimes this drove me to leave my wing of the mansion and fully immerse myself with work, other times I embraced my masochistic side and allowed my racing thoughts to cannibalize every good memory I had and regurgitate a tainted one in its place.

There is nothing more dangerous than a chimera with an idle mind.

I set down the pen, paying attention to not look at the words I’d written lest another letter wind up as sprinkled snow on my office rug. Then I grabbed the mason jar of whisky I’d smuggled from the securely locked liquor cabinet and downed the remainders.

This helped break me out of my melancholy, but it would only be the deliberately long walk to the communal living area that would transform me from the brooding, pathetic, moping fool I became in that office to the King of Atlas and leader of the Dekker family.

It made me feel schizophrenic, like trauma had too infected me with an alternate personality. The Long Walk as I called it, had me passing the bedrooms and wings of almost all of my family members and the nightcrawlers, born immortals, and lycans that lived with us. Each door, some painted, some with plaques stating who lived there, others sporting a dozen locks and one even with a retinal scan, reminded me of… not who I was fighting this war for, but who I had to fake that I was this leader at all times that didn’t have these bouts of depression.

This mansion was good for such a walk though. It was endless rooms and corridors, flights of stairs and elevators. What made it most attractive however, was that the rich owner who’d occupied it before the Fallocaust had created himself an underground bunker with several concrete tunnels leading to two garages in opposite ends of the city. One we’d already converted to a hangar and the other held enough all-terrain vehicles, armoured cars, and military vehicles to evacuate the entire family, extended family, and their sengils, cicaros, and pets.

We’d always known about this mansion; it had stuck out too much when exploring Irontowers to ignore and once the bunker was located had been one of the handful of buildings we’d maintained and filled with radiation to prevent advanced decay and any greywaster occupancy. Once I’d made the decision to evacuate Skyland, this is where I’d moved the family, and this is where we’d been staying since.

My office was in my own personal wing of the bunker, the other areas filled with born immortals and nightcrawlers, the two branches from this tree of mutants that we guarded like diamonds in a bank vault. Under no circumstances could we allow the proxy worms to get them, and most understood that and adhered to safety protocol.

Most of them.

I made my way through the underground bunker’s open living room and kitchen, quietly exchanging a greeting with Echo and Sawyer who were making breakfast. The silence was due to several of the extended family passed out on couches. When I’d come to the office hours earlier, they were but an amalgamation of pale bodies strewn about the room like a bomb full of naked men had exploded in the middle of the living area. Now at least Echo and Sawyer had awoken and covered their shame with blankets.

This wasn’t a rare site. We had children in the house, one particularly curious to an annoying degree, and a downside to this mansion was that the upstairs had thin walls. If a family orgy was taking place, either planned or otherwise, it took place down here where children were banned unless it was an emergency.

I glanced at snoring cluster of rainbow blankets and random limbs to make sure Gabriel wasn’t amongst them and once confirmed he wasn’t, exited the living area and started on the several doors that required unlocking before the elevator. The first required a retinal scan from a living eye, the second a pin number that changed every six hours, calculated by a complicated set of rules that involved the time of day, the date it would’ve been pre-Fallocaust, the current season, and the international box office gross of Gladiator.

It sounded more complicated than it was, at least to most of the family. Once you understood how to calculate the formula it only took several seconds to produce a number. Some of the extended family and the brute and stealth chimeras struggled with it, but it’s nothing an annoyed knock on the door couldn’t solve.

And we allowed the annoyed knocker to be let in as long as they’d passed the first test, the most vital. This was simply called a spit test and had become one of the greatest discoveries in the last several years.

We’d discovered that when a proxy worm inhabited a body, it elevated the acid in their PH levels almost immediately and overtime every PH would settle on a nearly identical reading. The balance needed for the proxy worms to incubate their eggs and survive in relative comfort.  Every person living in this house had their levels monitored, and each resident of Atlas coming or going from the city were subject to the three S’s: Screened, Searched, and then Sniffed by trained hessian hounds.

I quickly calculated the pin number and punched it in. Once through, I swabbed my mouth with a Q-tip, and when cleared left the bunker and continued my silent pilgrimage to the main area of the mansion.

And as I walked down these lonesome halls, passing shut doors muffling murmuring televisions, conversing family members, an upset baby Kiki, and playing children, I focused on my breathing, my mental state, and made the transition from the grieving, lonely husband, to the King of the Dead World, ruler of the remains of the human race, and guardian of a family that had more than doubled in size since the proxy worms had taken Skyfall.

I was drawing close to my destination when my phone beeped. I dug it out of my pocket and saw in the notifications banner that it was from Killian.

We’re all packed and ready whenever you are, but there’s some weather going on you should take a look at.

And watch out for Seraphim. He’s loose.

I looked around the hallway, then listened for the sound of a racing heartbeat or the tinkle of a bell. The little monster had recently learned to climb and had come to enjoy jumping on people’s backs as they passed by, giving many of us a heart attack. He was now forced to wear a collar with a bell on it so he could no longer sneak around, but soon his fat baby fingers would be dexterous enough to remove it.

There was nothing though, Seraphim most likely scurrying off to harass Malachy, Reno, or one of the other family members that would tolerate his antics, or even worse, enable him to misbehave further. Allowing Malachy to create his own chimera was a decision that had continued to haunt me since the moment I fully analyzed Seraphim’s genetic text and realized just what an abomination Malachy had thought funny to inflict on the world. The twisting of that child’s genetics made Sanguine and Jack look like raw clones.

I made it to the living area without harassment, and by the time I stepped into view of Killian, Gabriel, Kel, and Gage, I’d shed the melancholy and depression and had fully stepped into the well-used skin of King Elish Dekker.

“Hi, Elish!” Kel was the first to spot me, and as the others said their greetings, he pointed to several packed duffle bags. “We finished packing for your trip. I wish I could come.”

Gabriel, who was knelt down in front of three open gun cases of containing Zappers, shook his head as he checked the charge on the first one’s battery. “It’s a one nightcrawler job, Keluva,” Gabriel said. “It’s unwise to put more than one at risk, even if that risk is small.”

Kel, who’d been sitting on the couch beside Gabriel, slumped down on it. “I know,” he mumbled. “I just really wish I could. I miss my adventures in the plaguelands.” Kel then looked at Gage with a growing smile, his eyes alight with nostalgia. “Remember when we found Melty Man and Melty Man gouged out your eyes and cut off your arms and I found you and rescued you and we killed Melty Man and ate him!”

I’d heard this story before, and most of Kel’s stories about the many years he spent with Gage wandering the dying world. Gage had been in the process of trying to surrender Kel to his higher ups when the bombs fell, after Kel had proved to hold a unique talent of preventing Gage from gathering the large amounts of radiation needed to kill him. What had begun as prisoner and capture had evolved into a strange but loyal friendship. One that always reminded me of those buddy cop movies with the mismatch partners.

It had ended as many friendships had ended, in proxy worms.

“I do remember,” Gage said. He was standing behind Killian as Killian stared at his laptop, the concern on his face showing that he was watching whatever weather pattern had caused him nervousness. “That was when I decided I didn’t want to kill you.”

“Yeah!” Kel laughed. “That was so much fun. Melty Man tasted gross though. Because he was so melty.”

“Yes, he was very melty. We thought it would make his meat tender, but it just tasted like mush.”

“It totally did!”

I walked to Killian who’d yet to move, or even blink, and stood beside Gage to see what all the grave looks were about.

Killian was staring at a stationary screenshot that had been e-mailed by Teaguae, currently barricaded inside of the SNN news station where the weather radar and the equipment needed to run it was. The screenshot showed the ninja star-shaped weather disturbance, a hurricane.

But my eyes shifted to the landmarks around the hurricane, and the trajectory that Teaguae had added. “It won’t hit us,” I said. “We’ll be fine.”

“It’s a sandstorm, or more specifically… an ash and sandstorm,” Killian said nervously. “Teaguae said in the e-mail he’d never seen one like this.”

That caused zero alarm. “I’d hope so, considering we’ve only been tracking the weather in the plaguelands for two years.”

This got me a flat look, but before Killian could say something smart back, Gage chimed in.

“We started seeing terrible dust storms after the trees started to die,” he said. “And the ash and smoke from the burning cities had visibility being nothing for months. It blocked out the sun in many places.” Gage looked to Gabriel, who nodded.

“It was the same for us,” he said. “Vatos is in Alberta which has a lot of sand. It’s not a surprise if there’s a debris storm happening. We’ll bring a Charger X so there’s less risk of anything getting clogged, and the speed will mean we can easily outrun it if it changes direction.”

Killian chewed on the bottom of his lip. “If we skip the drop-off…”

I shook my head. “No, we’re not doing that,” I said, then motioned to Kel. “Fetch Grant for me and make sure he’s dressed appropriately. We’re leaving now. The Charger X has live radar, we’ll be able to monitor the storm from there.”

With duffle bags in their hands and the gun cases strapped to their backs, me, Gabriel, and Killian left the mansion and crossed the front yard to where the Charger X was waiting for us.

Grant had already bounded ahead, sporting a Sailor Moon backpack full of things to entertain himself with. He was currently more interested in bothering Reno however, who’d delivered the plane from the military base.

“Tinky!” Reno called with a smile as we approached. “Off to the greywastes? Did the law finally pass to sell Grant to the ravers?”

“Hey!” Grant protested.

Killian laughed. “No, it got shot down again, but we added an amendment to sell Seraphim too, so you know it’ll pass next time.” He grabbed the rim of the baseball cap Grant was wearing and pushed it down, causing the boy to protest more.

“Well, the Charger is good to go,” Reno said. “I just looked it over and everything passed the checklist. These guys are a lot easier to update than the Falconers.”

And safer to travel long distances with. We were already on the cusp of inventing a more refined and concentrated fuel. “In the next few years, the old Falconer hardware and software will be obsolete with some luck,” I said. “Fox’s new operating system will be a welcome change.”

“To put it lightly.” Reno chuckled. “I still get a kick out of imagining Silas and Reaver’s face when they see all the new shit Ethos Robotics and Skytech are coming up with. They’re going to shit their pants.”

Killian’s smile in response was warm, but the pain behind his eyes showed that the source of such warmth were the corpses of a past that he still refused to remove from life support – if only temporarily. “If our luck holds, maybe they’ll be back before the technology changes to much,” he said. “If we can… access the white flames easier…”

“…we can figure out how to extinguish them,” Reno finished, echoing words that had been repeated ad nauseum since the that blinding white light. “We’ll get there, baby. You know we will.”

Not if I have anything to say about it.

I left the two of them to their conversation, boarded the Charger, and soon we were up in the air and leaving Atlas and its endless cranes, scaffolding, and construction behind. Unfortunately, Killian’s conversation with Reno had sparked longing in the boy, and while I flew the plane, he and Gabriel discussed deeply several strategies that had been put forward to quell the white flames.

And while this happened, I discreetly dismissed every plan suggested. I even came up with multiple reasons why each would fail and logged them away for future use.

That kept my mind occupied enough, but then the conversation shifted to Killian starting to tell Gabriel stories about Reaver, which had Gabriel telling stories about both Sasha and Silas. This had me feeling small needle pricks every time Silas’s name was brought up, especially since these stories cast that Mad King in a positive light. It was even there to a lesser extent when it came to hearing about Reaver. Because although I knew that under the circumstances, Reaver’s reaction was warranted…

He’d still been responsible for Garrett’s–

No. Garrett wasn’t dead. What are you saying? Garrett wasn’t dead.

Why did your brain automatically come to that conclusion? You know better. How can you get angry at your family for saying he’s dead when your god damn reflex reaction was to conclude the same? With this line of thinking, you’ll never cure him and he will remain dead. It will be your fault then for not having faith in yourself or the technology and it’ll be you who killed Garrett. Not Reaver. Not the exterminator worms.

YOU.

Yes, I was right. I knew I was right. Just like their continued efforts to revive the snuffed family members, there would be a way to revive Garrett. His brain may have been consumed by the exterminator proxy worms, but they had his spinal cord; they had his body; they had bits of brain matter extracted from dead exterminators that they were sure was Garrett’s. The brain matter may be seemingly dead, but that was only because the technology wasn’t there yet.

Reaver didn’t kill Garrett, because Garrett wasn’t dead. Just like Ellis may be snuffed but she’d come back, Siris would come back, every snuffed family member would come back. And once they did, the family would be reunited. We’ll take back Skyfall, rescue Jade and Sasha. I’ll move back into Olympus with Jade and Luca; Malachy could come too. Jade and I will live happily, have a healthy relationship, work together, rebuild the world. Jade by my side, Garrett with his chessboard, Ellis with her crossed arms and exasperated look. Nero and Ceph remarried with Kiki, Kessler and Tiberius too. Gabriel reunited with Sasha. Ares with Siris. Grant and Theo. The second versions of our dead brothers all grown up and so close to their originals we’ll forget they’d died in the first place.

And then everything will be as it was. Everything will be as it once–

“Elish?”

Killian’s voice jolted me with such force that to my humiliation, I physically flinched. These intrusive thoughts had whisked me away again, this time without my leave to do so. Being on the plane where my mind was left to idle was to blame, but that only meant I still needed to learn better focus.

I can’t be Jade’s husband right now. I can’t be Garrett’s brother.

I am the King of the Dead World. I am the guardian of my family. I refuse these emotions; I refuse these memories. I am a machine right now on a mission to Vatos, after our stop at the greyrifts apartment to drop-off Grant and visit my–

“Yes?” I said, keeping my tone even. We were high up in the air and a discreet glance at the Charger’s control panel showed that several hours had gone by.

Killian was in the co-pilot’s chair now, Gabriel and Grant in the cargohold. “I really don’t like how this ash storm is looking,” he said, and I could see the colourful swirl of yellow and red from the radar reflecting in his eyes. “It’s shifted closer to Vatos. Not an extreme change but damn, just look at how big it is.”

This wasn’t the first time Killian had mentioned the storm since becoming airborne, but my past reaction had been an automatic dismissal that I barely remembered. My brain was as much on autopilot as the plane I was flying.

I looked over, trying to calculate the storm’s new path before Killian pinched the radar screen and zoomed out to show the rest of the map. “Elish, if the ash storm decides to turn west, it’s going to hit Vatos almost directly and right in the middle of us being there.” Killian chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. The concern that had been etched on his face since he’d first brought up the storm was deepening, as if the blowing sand from the storm had eroded his soft features. “If we skip your drop-off and just let Grant stay in Cardinalhall we might–”

“Out of the question, I’m not skipping the drop-off and I would appreciate if you stopped asking.”  My annoyance was backed up upon remembering that Killian had suggested this twice now. The first being in the mansion and the second when he’d brought up the storm an hour or so ago. This storm had seemed to consume the boy’s attention span, but I did have to wonder if this was his own way of distracting himself and keeping his own idle mind in check.

That being said, Killian was doing nothing but throwing chips down on bad odds, thinking that perhaps if he kept at it, he’d eventually win. However, nothing was going to stop me from completing this drop-off.

Killian wasn’t blamed for his frantic efforts though. He, like all of us, were overly cautious to the extreme degree when it came to proxy worms and the handling of them. Killian didn’t know why I wouldn’t budge when it came to my and Grant’s detour before the Vatos mission, and if he did… he’d understand.

Right now, nothing good would come out of more people knowing, and luckily, Killian had understood. “If it tilts west, it tilts west,” I said. “The plane will be fine, and a little ash never killed anyone.”

Killian let out a breath and leaned back in the co-pilot’s chair without another word. The clone I often called boy, although he was now a man of twenty-three, unable to release his grip on the anxiety he clung to as if it were his security blanket. It appeared like he had more things to say however, but he was smart enough to know that I wouldn’t react favourably to being bothered further.

Gabriel, however, held no qualms. “Ash has killed a lot of people,” he said gravely, appearing in the entrance of the cockpit. “During the storms I mentioned in the mansion, the survivors had to wear gas masks and respiratory devices when venturing out to keep from breathing it in. Everyone who didn’t eventually developed sickness, sestic pneumonia we called it.”

Then a small voice called from the cargohold. “Why is there an ash storm if all the ash is hardened now?”

“This area doesn’t get as much rain,” I said to Grant. “And stating it as an ash storm isn’t as accurate as one may think. There’s a lot of sand and dust in this storm too. Alberta’s terrain makes it susceptible to these storms; there’s probably been hundreds, but we’ve only recently started tracking them.”

“Oh, thank you, Master Elish. I understand.”

I looked back to the weather radar, the storm a spiral of colour that lit up the cockpit. Luca was in charge of SNN currently which meant he’d be all too aware of this current storm. Most likely the boy was looking at this weather radar right now and having kittens about it. Without Killian to worry with, he’d first call Malachy to scream his fear, but Malachy would offer only joking reassurance, not what Luca was looking for. Luca would soon hang up that call and phone someone he knew would offer him an appropriate level of worry. Apollo and Artemis perhaps, or Eli Sacario.

No, not Eli Sacario. Eli wouldn’t care if we were heading into a veritable tornado, just as long as we brought back a plague worm specimen for him to dance gleeful circles around.

Finally.

It had seemed like an easy task at the time. Mantis knew of a colony of worms living in the West Edmonton Mall, now called Vatos. This colony had apparently been stricken with a type of plague that had wiped out a large number of their members. Of course, this was of great value to me and the family, seeing it as a possible way to eradicate the proxy worm Core that had taken over not just Jade and Sasha Zakharin, but most of Skyfall.

But when we’d gone there several years ago and had – with difficulty – brought back a worm… we’d found nothing wrong with it. It suffered from no disease, its biological makeup no different than the proxy specimens already dissected and analyzed.

To say that this had been a hard blow was an understatement, but it hadn’t spelled the end of this strategy of biological warfare. Upon looking at Mantis’s records, it had been clear that the Vatos worms had once been hundreds of thousands in number; a massive Core that had taken over the entire mall and turned it into a veritable hive. Now, the Vatos worms numbered a thousand, if that. There was no doubt about it, a plague had ripped though this Core.

So, the strategy had changed. Instead of giving up, myself, Mantis, Gabriel, Eli Sacario, and the science chimeras and lycans, had pooled our knowledge and had decided to encourage the Vatos worms to multiply and expand once more.

We wanted to make this Core as big as possible in order to trigger another plague outbreak. There was no doubt that areas abandoned due to there not being enough worms to occupy it, must hold remnants of disease on it, and if not, well, nature had a way of making sure no animal or parasite got the upper hand. The more massive a species became, the more likely something would trigger Mother Nature’s wrath.

Encouraging the worms’ growth had, unsurprisingly, caused a lot of discord in my family. But the truth of it was that these worms needed a high amount of radiation to survive, so the risk of them being brought back to Atlas was practically non-existent.

But there was still a real risk of myself, Gabriel, and Killian being proxied and potentially unrecoverable for a length of time.

“Should we at least grab respirators at Cardinalhall?” Killian asked. “If we’re refuelling after we drop you and Grant off…”

I thought about it and nodded. “Yes, just make sure Nero doesn’t see you,” I said. “If he knows we’re going back to Vatos, I will never hear the end of it.” Nero could run what was left of the Legion, but he was useless when trying to explain science and biology to him. All he knew was that I was heading to an untouched worm colony and that was enough to send him into a rage. I’d been called fucking stupid on many different occasions, but Nero had a talent of fitting that insult several times into a single sentence.

But it wasn’t stupid.

QUIL NOTE: This is as far as I got changing Elish’s POV from third to first person. Eventually this document will be replaced by the new and improved one, but from here on out this is third person Elish.

Second note: Except for like one sentence half a page down that I randomly changed to see if I liked the first person POV better and spoilers, I did like it better.

Right now, it was their biggest hope of stopping Proxy Jade and the Worm King, and getting Skyfall back. The more time that went by, the more years marked off of the calendar, the more difficult it would be to repair Skyfall back to its former glory. Already the death count had been huge, the amount of people fleeing into the greywastes staggering. They had Atlas now, but Atlas was being built off of a ruined city full of Perish’s abominations. It had been a challenge moving those abominations to different greywaster cities, and an even bigger challenge fixing the buildings enough for them to become habitable. Years on and still half the population was living in communal structures like schools and colleges as their massive fleet of construction workers rebuilt the city.

It had been rough… very rough. This generation of Skyfallers were far removed from their ancestors who’d transformed Vancouver into Skyfall. They were soft, spoiled, but they worked.

And if they didn’t?

Well, everyone had their uses. Even if their use was to be food.

Killian dragged his finger along the radar screen until he reached their plane, now approaching Halfton Valley. They were approaching Elish’s drop-off point, with Cardinalhall a twenty-minute Falconer ride away. Once Elish and Grant had departed, Killian and Gabriel would be taking the plane to Cardinalhall to refuel and obtain the respirator masks, then they’d be visiting the current railroad encampment to make sure everything was going well there. They’d stay there for an hour, then return to where they’d dropped Elish and Grant off and pick Elish up. Grant would be staying behind and would be retrieved once they returned from Vatos.

It would be a long day, but every day was a long day. With some luck, this journey to Vatos would not be in vain, and the worm that had triggered one of Mantis’s many traps would be holding within it a ticking timebomb.

“Turning on the landing thrusters,” Elish said. “Grant, are you secure?”

“Yes, sir,” called Grant, but when the plane jolted, the sound of coloured pencils hitting the metal floor was heard, followed by a sad Oh. This was followed by said coloured pencils rolling around the floor as the Charger landed, a yellow one even rolling past Gabriel to knock against the front console of the plane.

The pencil was a deep yellow… just like Jade’s eyes. There was a strong pull to reach down and retrieve it, slip it into the inside pocket of my coat to see if it would bring good luck. But if I gave in to these temptations to drown myself in memories of him, I know by the time we reached Vatos the depression and melancholy would have me useless, and I needed my wits about me.

Elish turned off the Falconer, the expanse of greywastes visible in all its dead glory from the windshield of the plane and rose as Gabriel opened the cargohold door.

The nightcrawler paused and listened, before nodding to the others once verifying that the coast was clear.

Halfton Valley. Home to one of Elish’s several hidden bases.

Current Occupants: 2

Grant did a running jump out of the plane and slammed his boots down onto the ash as hard as he could (the boy was trying to create as much dust as possible for reasons only a three-year-old knew) then shielded his eyes as he looked around. He was carrying a backpack on his back, and after insisting he was old enough, a small rubber knife in an equally small holder that was attached to his belt.

Every other chimera wasn’t trusted with a weapon at three, even a rubber one. But Grant had been turning out to be quite the miniature prodigy so far. He had shown not just advanced maturity for his age, but the boy could also keep a secret too.

Which is why he was accompanying Elish in the first place. No matter how much the brothers in his generation pried – and they did pry – Grant would not divulge just where Elish took him, and where he stayed while Elish left to do other errands, whether it was capturing proxy worms, visiting blocks, or making sure the Atlas Railroad project was continuing on as planned.

Elish and Grant left Killian and Gabriel, Killian observed looking nervously at the weather radar as the Charger’s thrusters roared to life. And once in the air, Elish and Grant walked towards the greyrifts apartment’s hidden entrance; the valley it overlooked a massive veritable crater to their right.

Elish adjusted the duffle bag he was carrying, and looked around to make sure there were no predators looming as Grant ran ahead towards the boulder that contained the door’s keypad.

He was running for a reason. Grant wanted to get there to press the code before the man inside saw them coming and opened the door. It was a game the man didn’t even know he was playing, but one Grant enjoyed.

Grant made it to the keypad and had flipped it open, but before he could press the code, the slab of rock in front of the boulder shifted, and the door it was hiding opened.

“Aw,” Grant muttered, but then he smiled big. “Hi, Master Kessler!”

Kessler stepped out of the open doors, his brown beard long and unkempt, his hair wayward and messy. Even though he resurrected with his muscles intact like all chimeras, Kessler’s now sedentary life had those muscles wasting away, and due to him not dying in years, had remained that way.

“Grant. Hello.” Even Kessler’s smile was a faded photo of what it once was; a half-hearted upturn of his lips that he managed only for Grant’s benefit. “You’ve grown a foot at least.”

Grant giggled. “Only a couple inches,” he said. “Where’s Timber? Is he awake?”

Kessler’s smile wavered. “He is. He’s on the couch. Go ahead and say hi.”

“Okay!” Grant ran into the open door and disappeared, Kessler’s heavy grey eyes watching him as he did, before turning back to Elish.

Elish held out the duffle bag. “There’s some new DVDs in there. Ones for Timber and ones for you.” Elish motioned towards Kessler’s long beard. “I see you haven’t utalized the electric razor I gave you. You look like the Unabomber more and more with each visit.”

Kessler absentmindedly touched his beard. “I barely notice it now.” This admission was made in a mumbled tone. “What’s the point anyway. Who am I keeping up appearances for?”

“Yourself, I suppose.” Elish followed behind Kessler as they entered the greyrifts apartment, and with a hiss and an almost inaudible click, the sliding door closed behind them. “It may help your depression–”

“I don’t have depression.” Kessler cut Elish’s words off, his own coming quick and with enough edge to demonstrate just how unwilling he was to admit the obvious. “No one in my situation would be bouncing off the walls with happiness, Elish.”

Elish unlaced his boots, showing Kessler a patience that had grown not out of a temperance of his own shortened fuse when it came to a tone being levied at him, but his own ingrained fatigue.

“I’m not saying you should be,” replied Elish. “But you can’t tell me that seeing yourself in the mirror everyday looking like that fills you with confidence.” They both walked into the open concept apartment, carved out of the side of a sheer cliff overlooking Halfton Valley. To Elish’s right was a long strip of floor-to-ceiling windows that showed off a view of the former lake miles and miles below, and further on a modest kitchen, then down a hallway the bedrooms and bathroom. They’d already passed the entrance to the laboratory below which contained several more bedrooms and an office, now closed off due to Kessler not needing that much space.

And there in the living room Grant had his hands on the seat of the couch, talking happily to a tiny, thin thing with his arms pressed against his chest and his hands balled into tight fists.

“–and I brought over more Dora the Explorer DVDs too,” Grant was saying. “And a stuffed duck to match your pajamas. I named him Quackers.”

As Grant spoke to Timber, Elish stopped his movements and watched the thin boy’s face, mainly his grey eyes that were staring unfocused at the ceiling, and his open mouth above a chin shining with drool.

“He’s smiling,” Kessler whispered, his voice cracking. “Do you know what I need to do to get him to smile like that?”

Elish wanted to ask Kessler if he had to talk to Timber in that high pitch voice. He’d developed a theory that this was due to Grant sounding like the cartoons Kessler always had on the television for the boy, but he didn’t have the heart to speak it. Elish never had much time with Timber, so he didn’t know just how aware the boy was of his surroundings or when someone was talking to him. For all he knew… what Kessler and Grant were so sure were smiles could be signs of stress.

What was certain, was that Timber being suffocated under Kessler’s weight had caused him catastrophic brain damage. The one-year-old boy who’d been full of smiles and laughter, inquisitive and bright, had been reduced to a tiny, twisted shell who depended on his father for everything.

Kessler let out a shaky breath. “Did you… you brought his epilepsy medication, right?”

Elish nodded, but the way Kessler said this spoke of it being more than just a reassurance.

“Has his seizures gotten worse?”

Kessler’s nod was faint. “Three in the last week,” he said under his breath. Even though Grant was now holding the DVDs and books he’d brought Timber in front of his own face, Elish knew Kessler still didn’t want to risk Grant hearing.

“Three? Shit.” Elish knelt down in front of the duffle bag and opened it up. “Increase his dose by a quarter pill. If they remain that frequent call me. It might be that this mixture of medication is becoming ineffective. We had to change Jade’s medication many times when he was having seizures. How’s his weight? He’s looking thinner.”

“Up a bit but… I think you’re right, what you said last time, about the feeding port. He’s not getting enough calories in him. That’s becoming abundantly clear.” Kessler rubbed his nose. “Fuck, the surgery… and managing the port. It sounds so scary.”

Elish brought out the boy’s bottle of epilepsy medication and handed it to Kessler, then drew out a stethoscope. “It’s like I said, Kessler, if you fear that it’s becoming infected at any time and you can’t get a hold of me, just open the windows of his bedroom and put in a space heater. The exposure to radiation should kill the bacteria if you get to it soon enough. And you have strong antibiotics on hand too.”

“I… I know.”

Elish walked over to the blue couch, Grant now reading Timber the back of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles DVD. “Give me some room, Grant,” Elish said. “Why don’t you put away Timber’s new toys for him.”

“Yes, Master Elish.”

After Grant had run off, Elish took a chair from a nearby dining room table and sat down on it in front of Timber. The boy, almost five years old, didn’t acknowledge Elish’s presence. He remained with his eyes turned upwards, his mouth opening and closing slightly and his fingers flexing.

Elish began examining the boy’s body, listening to his heartbeat, testing his reflexes, and once Kessler had brought out the small scale meant to weigh dogs and cats, weighed him too for his records.

Elish brought out a picture book he always packed to see if he could get the boy’s eyes to focus, then played several notes on his phone to make sure Timber was still hearing properly.

“I’m not seeing any cognitive decline from the seizures,” Elish said after he’d finished examining Timber. “But I’m also not seeing any improvements either. The offer is still there to bring him to Atlas for a brain scan.”

Kessler, who’d been hovering around the living room, nervously watching Elish as he performed Timber’s exam, nodded. “I know,” he said. “I just… it won’t make a difference and right now I just can’t.”

“I understand.”

Kessler hesitated, then asked with his eyes on the floor. “How’s the family?”

“They’re well.” Elish placed Timber down on a padded mat on the living room floor. Grant was already laying on it watching a DVD, a space beside him made up for Timber once his exam was finished. “Let’s speak in your office.”

“Yeah, good idea.” Kessler leaned down and ruffled Grant’s blond hair. “There’s some cookies in the cupboard, kiddo. Grab a few for yourself, just watch the crumbs.”

Grant smiled big at this. “Okay, thank you, Master Kessler!” And as Elish and Kessler walked into the small bedroom Kessler had made into his office, Grant jumped to his feet and dashed to the kitchen.

Elish closed the door behind them, then turned to see Kessler sinking into his office chair with a sigh. “It’s such a long stretch of time between talking to an adult, sometimes it’s hard to remember how to carry a conversation,” he said. “I used to hate the sight of you, but now I’m like a damn dog hearing the word walk whenever I spot that plane on the horizon. How pathetic.”

Elish pulled out a second office chair and sat down. “Humans are social creatures, as are chimeras,” he said. “And the option is always open to bring one of your cicaros or sengils here. They belong to you technically and not Tiberius. And they would be happy beyond belief to see you again.”

“No…” Kessler’s head shook rapidly, as if trying to ricochet Elish’s idea right back at him. “I’m no fun to be around, why make them miserable too? Anyway, I’m sure Tibbs has been poisoning them all against me. I don’t want to risk them hurting Timber or something, thinking they’re doing me a favour or some twisted shit like that.”

  That was an argument that Elish had long since abandoned trying to bring reason to. In his isolation, Kessler had all but convinced himself that Tiberius would murder Timber on the spot if he so much as saw the boy, when that was never the case.

Tiberius had made the mistake of siding with the family when a discussion was had on what would be best for baby Timber when he was recovering. Once it was clear that the boy had suffered irreversible brain damage, everyone had decided that it would be the most humane thing to end Timber’s pain. To do what Silas had been doing since civilization had restarted itself under his rule.

Because Timber stood no chance of leading a normal life, and there was no way to guarantee that immortality would repair the damage to his brain. The kindest course of action was euthanasia.

But Kessler… did not take this news well. Unbeknownst to Elish and the family, hearing this plan to end his son’s life had come on the heels of him finally accepting that Caligula had fired that bullet and not Reaver. Kessler lost himself, and after an explosive fight with his husband, who’d been battling his own grief, had taken Timber and fled Skyfall.

It had taken Elish three years to locate him, and once he had, Elish had taken Kessler and Timber to his greyrifts bunker. Now, every month Elish visited them, examined Timber and kept a record of his progress, provided medication, money, and whatever else Kessler requested. And once observing how gentle Grant was with his younger brothers, decided to bring him along to give Timber time with a boy near his age. He didn’t know if Timber noticed beyond reacting to Grant’s voice, but at the very least it taught Grant patience and compassion.

“How’s that proxy worm plan going? You said on the phone you’re heading to Vatos after?”

Elish nodded, in the process of opening his cigarette tin. “The traps we have set are quite a ways away from Vatos’s main nest, right on top of an area that had once been inhabited. We even found mummified worms there, although none tested for any disease,” he explained. “We deliberately set those traps further away in hopes that they would only be tripped once the nest had expanded enough to start nesting in areas previously occupied by plagueworms. With any hope, they will be re-infected and we can start manufacturing the virus.”

Kessler reached over and plucked a cigarette from Elish’s tin. “I won’t tell you not to underestimate those fucks, you know as well as anyone how crafty they are.” Kessler shuddered. “Being infected by them is… disturbing on a level I have never experienced. It makes me sick thinking of… what they’ve done to Skyfall.” Kessler lit his cigarette; an opiate one Elish observed. “The greywastes is safer than the last living city in the world.”

“Former last living city,” Elish pointed out while lighting his own cigarette, then said as it dangled from his mouth, “Just because you’ve never been there, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

Kessler laughed quietly. “Yeah, I know, I know,” he said. “Irontowers wasn’t in the best shape though. How is it?”

“In a never-ending state of being repaired, but the decision to maintain upkeep on the mansion and skyscrapers have really paid off in dividends,” Elish answered. “We’re always in desperate need for wood and concrete, but the more progress we make on the railway line the easier things are getting.”

“Good. Irontowers never had as much radiation as the rest of the greywastes, but it still preserved things enough it sounds like,” Kessler said. “It’s hard to imagine most of Skyfall living there now.”

Because a lot of Skyfall wasn’t living there. There were still people surviving in Moros and the West End, the areas furthest from Skyland. Others had defected to the greywastes, anyone with family there really, but that still had left Elish with an incredibly large amount of people to house and feed.

The hardest years were the first ones. It wasn’t just sneaking into Skyland to dismantle and move everything within the agricultural building, or sneaking food, clothing, and building supplies through sewers to awaiting trucks that sometime had to outrun Proxy Jade and the Worm King chasing them for sport, it was the civil unrest that came with such a disruption.

The sheer number of ungrateful idiots who did nothing but complain, steal, bully, and harass was staggering. A number of public executions of incredibly wealthy elites had to be performed to put the others in their place, and for a while the ones killed by the worms, the unrest, or the executed, fed a great deal of people.

And once that ran out, the first winter killed many more. Not so much from the cold, but the very bonfires spread across the inhabited areas to give people a place to warm themselves. The wood had been treated since it was used for buildings, and that combined with whatever hazard was thrown onto the fires had the sick and weak dying from whatever breathing issue their spongey lungs became tainted with.

How many had died in the last several years? Countless. Skyfall’s economy? Collapsed. The line between Morosian, Nyxian, Erosian, and Skylander was thinner than ever. To help stabilize everything, Elish had even changed Skyfall’s currency to the Atlas dollar. That was not a popular decision, but those who were the most outspoken were put to death.

However, it wasn’t like the class system was completely null and void. The Skylanders were still the most educated, the richest ones the most knowledgeable on things like finance and economy, business in general. Most understood the catastrophic circumstances and were happy with an ‘inside job’ as they called it, jobs that involved organizing and paying the thousands of construction workers whose task it was to rebuild Irontowers into the new city of Atlas.

All of these were things that Kessler had heard about. Elish wasn’t just an ear for Kessler’s woes, but vice versa. It helped to have someone like Kessler to talk to when it came to things like this. Everyone else always wanted to offer solutions, solutions that were stupid and ill conceived, desperate to placate and lessen the strain on Elish’s shoulders even though the idiocy behind their suggestions just made him more aggravated.

But Kessler wasn’t like that. Kessler nodded, threw in some dry wit occasionally or a comment here or there, but mostly… he listened.

Elish had once told Jade, many years ago now, that because they were immortal, brothers that they currently were at war with, siblings they despised, could one day be their allies, their close friends. To remember that their current circumstances were not permanent and would always be in flux.

And this…? This was why. Elish had hated Kessler for years, and Kessler hated Elish. They’d both done terrible things to each other and even more terrible things to those they loved.

But once Elish knew they had to evacuate Skyfall, he had searched for Kessler, wanting his help to maintain control over the masses and aid Nero with the Legion army. Once finding him and seeing Kessler’s depressed and sad state, Elish instead gave him a place to live with his disabled child and took care of them both.

Because when it came down to it, Kessler was still Elish’s brother. There is little joy kicking an injured man while your shared house burns to cinders around you.

Kessler discreetly cleared his throat. “Any, ah, progress on those white flames?”

This question had Elish hesitating for a moment, although he was able to hide it through an inhale of his cigarette. He’d now smoked several, over an hour passing since entering Kessler’s office. Elish had filled Kessler in on what was happening with Atlas and the railroad currently being built to help feed the greywaster blocks and move product from the greywaster factories and factory towns. Silas had never wanted the greywastes to be so accessible, or Skyfall to be accessible to the greywasters, but times had certainly changed now.

“The flames?” Elish muttered, then he shook his head. “No, we don’t go near them. Things are… I have enough on my plate right now, I can’t put money into trying to stifle those flames.”

Kessler nodded, the ashtray resting on a foot stool between them quickly filling with cigarette butts. “I was thinking too that… Silas seeing all of this happening, seeing Skyfall so abandoned might break him. King Silas–”

He is no longer ‘King’ Silas.

I am king now.

“–worked so fucking hard to keep everyone alive, and him being so tired after all that family drama shit. If he saw how things are now, I don’t know, I think it would destroy him.”

Then perhaps I should put my scientists towards finding a way to quench those flames. I would like to see his face when I remind him how all of this is his fault. How this downfall could be traced back to him several times over. How he didn’t just tip the first domino, he swept his hand over the pieces he’d carefully laid.

“Possibly,” Elish muttered, and because the last thing he wanted or needed was Kessler getting on him about his still fostered hatred and resentment towards Silas, added, “He would provide valuable insight. Still though, right now we’re surviving. The time and energy it would take to find a way – if there is one – to stifle those flames, could and should be put towards other things. Right now, we have a grand opportunity to utilize our scientists and the greywaster laboratories to advance important things like agriculture, technology in general, and finding a way to rid ourselves of those proxy parasites. Now that millions of dollars will no longer be wasted on cloning Sky; I predict some great advancements in the next decade.”

“And get the military back up to snuff too,” Kessler said with a nod. “Best thing you can do now is proxy-proof Atlas and build it up, get the population up too. That’s more workers, more military. Hell–” Kessler shrugged, “–the documents are there from how Silas, Sky, and Perish did it last time, right?”

“Yes, we’ve taken a lot of knowledge from those files,” Elish said. “Now, we just need to steady our course and keep those worms out of my city.”

There was a small knock on the office door, then Grant’s young voice.

“I see the plane coming, Master Elish,” he called.

“Thank you, Grant.” Elish snuffed out his cigarette and rose. “There’s a dust storm approaching Vatos that Killian is fretting over. If I don’t return tonight for the boy, don’t sound any alarm bells.”

“And if you don’t return by tomorrow?”

“I will, but the contingency plan is the same. Luca is still the only one who knows where you are. He’ll come and fetch Grant and continue bringing you supplies until I am no longer incapacitated.”

Kessler nodded along to Elish’s words, then trailed him as they exited the office and followed Grant to the foyer. “I still find it so funny how that sengil turned out,” he said. “All three of your kittens actually. I assumed Killian would be useless without Reaver. And that crazy one? I wouldn’t have trusted him with a pea shooter.”

“Once given the chance to grow and come into their own, all three have excelled.” Elish began lacing his boots. Grant grabbing Elish’s jacket and dragging it towards him. “Malachy has thrived in the entertainment field and has become a veritable celebrity. The trick was placing them in roles that were suited to their personalities.”

“Much like Silas did.” Kessler said this with such praise in his voice. Elish dismissed a twitch that was tugging his lips, denying the outward display of annoyance his brother’s words brought. He’d done everything to cleanse his thoughts of Silas Dekker, as he’d done the lingering memories that the wretched king had branded on his brain. But his brothers and most of those who were around before the white flames consumed the king still spoke of him with a reverence that constantly soured Elish’s mood.

At least the men that Elish kept in personal company knew better, and the little ones brought into this world were being raised to know who was king and who wasn’t.

It was Elish who’d brought the human race back from the brink of extinction after the Worm King and Proxy Jade attacked, not Silas. Silas had given up, was nothing but a cornucopia of anxiety, depression, and sadness. There was no question he would’ve been useless evacuating the residents of Skyfall, useless rebuilding Irontowers and keeping the human race from collapsing in on itself. Silas would’ve hindered progress with his madness, not aided it.

But still, Elish’s brothers constantly brought up Silas, waxed poetic about how things would be better once Silas was free of the flames, how he’d know what to do. None of them seemed to remember how broken the former king had been before the fires reclaimed him.

Time had been kind to Silas in the eyes of many, not just the family but the refugees of Skyfall. Since Silas disappeared into the white flames on the cusp of Skyfall’s destruction, peace times and Silas’s reign went hand-in-hand. Silas’s rule was viewed as a golden age in humankind’s history, whereas King Elish was triage, damage control. Even though Elish had silenced the loudest voices of protest, the spoiled elites and terrorist sympathisers, he had no golden era for those to look back on fondly.

But Elish wasn’t king because he thirsted for the love of the masses, or because of some inner need for power and control. At first, he wanted to rid the world of Silas Dekker as one would cleanse their body of an infection, and the crown going to him was a mere biproduct being the first born, the heir. Now, it was a necessity. There was no one else who could hold the human race above water as their last ship sunk to the depths around them. Elish was the only person qualified to take on such a task. The crown was his burden, not his prize.

It was up to him to keep his people alive, just like it was up to him to keep his family safe.

But with all of that being said, this high throne to which he sat also offered something that no other seat would.

The best vantage point in which to watch the dark mass slink around the broken roads of Skyfall. One that let Elish not only observe this entity but have the last word on what was being done to capture him and bring him home.

Because even though Elish had convinced himself that he was doing all of this to protect his family, to save the human race, the more time that went on, the more a lingering suspicion grew.

That Elish and Kessler were not that different when it came to protecting what they loved, and perhaps that was one of the reasons Elish felt compelled to help him. Kessler had reached his limit when it came to losing his sons and had turned his back on his old life due to not being able to handle yet another loss.

And this suspicion, this nagging feeling in the back of his head… it whispered to Elish that the moment he had Jade in his arms, he’d flee this city, this family, this crown upon his head, and never look back.

Everything I do, Jade. I do it for you.