|| Sunrise Gray ||
7.
Back to the past…Seventeen years ago (2119)
A noise came from the hall…Braithlyn Anne removed a knife from her skirt. Breathing low and soft, she waits…She could kill him with the knife, not her power. "Sunset," she hears him looking for her, his voice like metal, "…Sunset…Come out, come out wherever you…" Braithlyn Anne looks at the boy beside her and shakes her head…His eyes are wide and black, skin golden and green in the change of a young drell through puberty…Braithlyn shakes her head again, warning him from making any sounds, "…Don't hide him from me, Sunset Red…I'm coming for both of you—" The door opens…
Braithlyn Anne swings the knife with both fists, launching all of her anger, weight, adrenaline…The beautiful fury of years abused by him…She lands it into his chest.
Stiv screams more in shock she would attack him…Braithlyn Anne screams with terror at finally having done what she has wanted to do all these years…These past months of using her in his torture and torment…
Tonight was the last of it…
She hears the growls of the batarians coming as Stiv reaches for the hilt, landed firmly into his chest and butting against his covering poncho and bone, flesh…Braithlyn feels for the key to her brace around her neck, taking the knife out as he gasps and falls to his knees, the red eye laser flashing. She reinserts her blade into the pale eye.
"Help me," she whispers hoarsely to the boy drell, tossing him the set of keys, "…Find the one for the brace on my neck and free me," she keeps stabbing Stiv, terrified he will somehow overpower her as she attacks him, or the batarians will come in time to save him, "…Free me, please!" she pleads to the boy…
Kolyat shakingly fumbles the set and moves the keys towards the girl's brace…He sees the circle on the dull metal above the ring of worn skin, red and raw…His mind a perfect camera, he identifies and remembers each rod on the key set that doesn't work…Until one does…He frees her…
Braithlyn gasps as the brace stops blocking her power and she grasps its hated metal in her fingers, latching blood-slickened fingers to the key rods in Kolyat's hand. "Run," she warns the boy, whose black tints reflect the pink maelstrom forming from her eyes, "…Run and find cover," she screams.
Kolyat stumbles over his own feet as he turns and runs from the pink fire that is released from the girl standing over his mother's murderer, and tripping through the next door, he stumbles onto his mother's body…
He grasps her hand—
"Run," Braithlyn screams again, and there is a sudden violent crack that makes him think the world is opening beneath them…He frees his mother's still-warm hand.
Their feline faces, cruel four eyes searching for her on each head, are seen for only an instant…
The power snarls out of her, a beast kept in a cage and taunted for years…
"You're all dead," the girl's voice screams.
His home was once a quiet place, full of tense peace but never so much noise as that night…It was wild.
She tears through the walls of the left wing of the house, where the batarians have come running towards the bedroom—from where Stiv's screams issue. Blood of an ochre hue slaps the remaining surfaces.
Kolyat slams the closet door shut behind him and crawls into the safety cabinet, having run from the bedroom through the extra doorway, the hall to the bathroom, by the fixtures in the bathroom itself, out beyond the kitchen opposite the left wing…
The girl's screams make him sob.
The smell of strange fire…Not quite burning, not quite smoke…It fills the air as the screams of the killing and the dying stop…
Braithlyn Anne collapses into a heap on top of Stiv Kay's body, the remains of the batarians skewered across the walls, floor, and ceiling.
Opening the door of the safety cabinet, Kolyat emerges, unable to stay inside much longer…He wants to return to his mother…The silence irks.
Braithlyn Anne stirs and suddenly backs off Stiv Kay's stench and form, a gasp coming from her.
Turning and stumbling to her feet, she picks up her shoes, the skanky little hooker heels Stiv bought…
She looks for the boy.
Dropping the shoes with a clatter, she trips and walks through the hall into the bathroom, glimpses herself in the mirror, keeps going…She finds him over his mother in the kitchen.
She sees not her carnage, but Stiv's and the batarians', "…I'm sorry," she whispers, "…I'm sorry I…I didn't stop them. You don't understand," she realizes with a whisper…
How smart he is, how lucky he was to understand the keys and the blocker.
"You gotta come wit' me, kid," she waves her hand for him to get up.
The sound of rain can be heard through the air tunnel of the hall connecting kitchen to bedroom, half the wall at the end in the bedroom gone.
She reaches for the boy's strange pajamas, nothing more than a shift and stained, wet pants that would have reminded her of silk if these weren't saturated, "…You have to come with me," she holds onto his neck and shoulder through his collar, the drell-child staring in fear at her eyes, "…Who's gonna take care of you?"
She looks from his black tints to the eyes of the mother.
She was beautiful before Stiv and the batarians went to work.
She raises her face, looks at the boy staring back, "…I know…I know what it's like," she knows it's useless to try and make him understand…She doesn't care. "You need to get up…I'll take you out of here—you can't stay with her, she's dead…You need to go to a police station or something…I'll bring you and leave you there, okay?"
The drell doesn't move.
"Don't take this the wrong way," she stands from her kneel over the body and jerks him onto his feet.
Putting his hand into hers, she drags him towards the broken entrance.
Tilting her face to the rain from the sky, Braithlyn Anne stands outside the mansion in that blue grass field on Kahje in Moorem…She dwells alongside the purring power in her mind, enjoying the sensation of reconnect.
If her mind had fingers, she would be massaging and petting.
Opening her eyes, she remembers the hand in hers. "Let's get out of here."
