Chapter 6: Whispers of the Void
"Eve"... The air whispered her name, over and over again. . . ."Regent"
No, not this, not now
Eve was here again. It was here again, watching her from its living fortress on its breathing world. Watching her from beneath the glare of its dead star. Eve knew when she was being studied.
The world breathed all around her as she stared out across the land.
Breathing, watching. Everything subservient to this thing, this presence that knew her.
The massive, ossified triple-helix towers spread across this strange realm seemed now, to be angled towards her. She could feel its gaze boring into her.
Eve felt anger well up within her, she was aware of it, like it was aware of her, and Eve was growing weary of being studied like bacterium under a microscope.
"I've been a lab rat before, I've been a prisoner before, not again"
No response came.
"I've been poked, I've been prodded, poisoned, shot, pierced and burned. They took my... my…"
A lump formed in her throat but she was determined to make her position very clear, whatever this was, she wanted no part of it.
"I'm not something to be studied! I'm not a weapon, yours, or anyone's! I might only be part human, but it's the only part I can say I know, and I never let them take that from me… AND NEITHER WILL YOU… YOU HEAR ME?"
For a few moments there was nothing, then its gaze suddenly intensified to a degree she had never felt before. Eve felt an immense, unseen weight pressing down upon her, encompassing her entire body and forcing her to her knees.
Eve let out a long, tearing roar of pain as her body reacted on an instinctual level and began to change against her will. Her skin began to ripple and alter all over, as her body fought to Armour itself. It took every ounce of her willpower to force the other back down.
Now Eve felt rage well up from within her. "What do you want from me!" she ground out through gritted teeth….
Nothing. No answer came.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!" She screamed.
Absolute silence was the reply. Eve sank to the chitinous ground, unable to summon the will to carry on "What do you want from me?…" she sobbed.
Then, just as suddenly as she felt its grip tighten, the presence relinquished its hold on her. Eve felt it slip away like great weights lifting from every part of her body.
Then, Eve felt a familiar presence, a scent…. "Laura?"
Before Eve was a bed. It shouldn't be there, but it was. She knew this bed, her first one from the Lab, simple and fit for purpose, before Laura had made her living situation more comfortable.
Laura sat on the side of the bed running her hand through the hair of the young blond girl that slept soundly there… it was… a memory perhaps?
"Twinkle Twinkle little star" Laura sang softly to the young Eve on the bed. Eve remembered that. The Experiments hadn't begun until Eve reached maturity, that brief period of just a few months before her cocoon had been a relatively happy one. Laura had played with her, read to her, taught her, comforted her.
"Laura….?"
Laura looked up and their eyes met … but those were not Laura's eyes, they were a view into the endless void.
"How I wonder what you are?…" Laura uttered… no, not Laura, this was something else. "How I wonder what you are?" came across like an unanswered question.
With that, the dead star at the center of the broken sky once again sent out a pulse. The distant, thunderous report ripped across the land, bringing with it, the all consuming darkness. Eve knew all too well what was comig.
Not-Laura kept her gaze fixed on Eve, while gently stroking the hair of Eve's younger self, still sleeping in the bed and continued to gently sing "Up above the world so high…."
"Laura…please" Eve whimpered…
"Like a diamond in the sky…."
"Laura….make it stop" Eve sank back down to the chitinous ground and waited for the inevitable.
"When the blazing sun is gone…."
Eve felt the tide of darkness come over her, through her. Instant biting cold piercing every point of her body and washing her away into the void.
When the nothing shines upon….
"UURRGGHHH" Eve's eyes shot open full of salty tears and she leaned forward. Head spinning. She felt like she'd been picked up and dropped from a great height.
Eve wiped her eyes and had barely gathered her senses before something bright roared down past the grimy window. It had a sound similar to a jet engine.
Instantly Eve was up and alert, more were coming down all around the building, snapping out of her daze. She barely caught a glimpse of what it was, but then another, and another. . . . they were men . . . . Soldiers!
Eve pulled her pack onto her shoulder as more of them roared down to the ground and there were impacts above too as they landed on the rooftop. Then she heard four more distinctive roars at the back of the building behind the far wall . . . they were surrounding her!
Before Eve could even pick a direction to run, the ceiling exploded and three armored men dropped down from above.
Each appeared to be equipped with what Eve could only describe as a Jetpack, something she's seen in sci-fi movies. Eve had seen enough weapons on her travels to know that they were bringing heavy duty ordnance. Two were hefting M249 SAW Machine guns and the third had an AA12 Shotgun with a drum magazine.
"Target acquired" shouted one of the men, instantly all three heavy guns were being leveled at her.
Eve darted, caught a beam and swung herself through the air to avoid the barrage of fire as Tracer and Frag12 rounds thundered through the darkness, lighting up the interior of the pitch black building, pounding everything in sight and sending chunks of brick and shards of wood flying in every direction. The sound was deafening, reverberating within the space.
The walls and floor exploded around Eve as she ducked, rolled and weaved. She took a few rounds to the hip and abdomen but it didn't break her momentum.
Eve had learned control over the other, its forms, its power, its impulses, she forced the change on her hands and forearms, becoming razor sharp claws stronger than steel and the chitin around her hands and arms was able to shrug off the most powerful rounds.
Eve managed to close the distance, she dropped and rolled under their fire towards their feet. With a sweep of one arm, she took one man's legs out from under him, sending him almost into a cartwheel, and in one fluid motion, with the other arm, she slammed her claw into the center mass of the second machine gunner, body slamming him down to the floor which partially splintered under the impact.
The impact set off the man's Jetpack, which sent him hurtling across the floor on his back and smashing straight through a brick wall, taking a portion of the flooring with him which also caused his fallen comrade to crash through to the story below.
Eve could hear more of them on the stairs and only the shot-gunner was left, having expended his drum magazine, he went for his sidearm. Eve weathered several shots to the face and chest before leaping at him.
Her momentum took them both clean through the window and down three stories onto the yard where more of the soldiers immediately opened fire.
Eve immediately pounced through the air, claws bared forward and took down another of the soldiers, his auto fire went wide and actually hit one of his nearby comrades. But there were still more, Eve turned and let out a vengeful roar as more rounds impacted her.
Eve focused in on another of her attackers, readied herself and pounced through the air at her next target…. She never made it.
A sudden flash lit up the night and Eve was blasted out of the air mid leap. Sending her rolling along the damp cobbled yard.
"Hit her again!" one of them shouted as Eve got to her feet, on shaky legs.
This time Eve saw it, one of the men hefted a weapon she had never seen before, a solid, advanced looking rifle with a small array of forward facing spikes where the barrel should be. He leveled it at her and it sent an arcing blast of energy straight into her chest, knocking her back down to the ground.
Winded and burned, Eve struggled to her feet again, but as she took a step towards him, something hit her in the side. Sending piercing pain right to her core.
UUGGHH….
Pain she'd never felt before lashed up through her ribs and under her arm. Looking down, she saw a long steel harpoon-spike protruding from her ribs, it was attached to a cable which, in turn led to another one of the Soldiers wielding another Arc Rifle. This weapon was similar in design, but featured an underslung contraption with a large barrel attached to a spool of cable.
Eve grabbed the harpoon spike and tried to pull it free. She screamed with searing pain as the Soldier hit a switch on his weapon, sending arcing energy along the cable and through the harpoon into Eve. She gripped the spike, but it was no use. She smelled burning and something else… seared meat.
The barbs of the officer's taser earlier had done nothing, Eve had barely felt that, but this was immensely more powerful and it was pierced deep into her chest.
A second soldier approached from her right with another Arc-Harpoon device and leveled it at her.
Eve raised her arm but the man fired his harpoon into her ribs on the other side and immediately sent pulses of energy coursing into her. The Cables glowing orange from the surge.
Two highly charged spikes now pierced her ribs on both sides. The pain was enormous and surging. Eve screamed and curled into a ball on her knees, the agony was like nothing she'd ever felt.
No . . . NOT LIKE THIS!
Eve gripped the harpoons and tried to pull, but they would not budge, and only surged faster… Each time she attempted to grip the spikes, the surge would force her hands away adding frustration to her already immense agony.
She managed to lift her head and saw the remaining men were gathering in the yard and the one with the Arc Rifle was approaching her. He was coming to deliver the kill shot.
Eve struggled to her feet and tried to take a step, but the voltage intensified through the harpoons, as if they had dialed it up further.
Eve screamed until all the air left her lungs, and through the surging in her chest, she felt unable to draw in another breath and collapsed back down to her knees.
The man's eyes met Eve's as he leveled the Arc Rifle to her head, time seemed to slow.
Behind the soldiers, in the distance, in the sky, she saw the silhouette of the living fortress, and behind it, the dead star.
Then you show your little light, twinkle twinkle all the night…
It was watching even now... watching her die.
It was now or never, she had to let it loose. Eve felt it within her as the voltage intensified again, causing her to curl into a ball on her knees. Her claws raked along the ground, ripping up cobbles and crushing stones. Her body began to twitch and then convulse.
One by one, quills stronger than steel burst from Eve's back. The men intensified their attack for a third time, prompting another howling scream… but the Human scream was replaced with an animal-like roar. Long and loud.
The Other was rising. Eve screamed out into the sky as she writhed under the attack, the pain was intense to the point of phenomenal. Her skin began to change and lose its pigment, becoming translucent, hardening and re-aligning into segmented chitinous Armour, hair solidifying into a mass of writhing, snake-like tendrils.
Rising up from her knees, Eve pulled up a leg, planted her foot, rose to her feet, the Ark rifle blasted her again center mass, this time only knocking her backwards, but not taking her down.
Rather than harming her, the energy infused and permeated throughout her body, travelling along her nervous system and began to surge again, her internal structure glowed bright red as the energy coalesced within her.
The Surge built, and built and grew within her. Gripping the cables attached to the harpoons and throwing her head back to the sky, roaring with all her might. Eve released as a pulse of energy radiating outwards from her body, causing both Arc Rifles attached to her to violently explode. Blasting the men holding them into a bloody mess.
Then the traveler in the dark, thanks you for your little spark…
The pulse knocked several more off their feet, who had been in close proximity, and the Soldier who was about to deliver the coup de grâce with the Arc Rifle was blown into chunks of viscera, when his Jetpack detonated.
Eve felt a new level of focus.
Rounds hammered at her from all angles, but her chitinous Armour was unphased. It was then that Eve became aware some of the soldiers were no longer firing at her.
Someone else had entered the yard from the gate at the far end and had taken down two more of them with precision shots from an advanced looking assault rifle.
She only caught a brief glimpse through the smoke and muzzle flares as the figure, a woman, darted from cover to cover, returning fire, taking down two… no, three more of her attackers, the third of which was also armed with an Arc Rifle.
Eve saw the streaks of energy blast skyward as the Soldier dropped, his hand clamped around the trigger.
She could not see which way to go, if you did not twinkle so…..
Eve had to use this chance, she wouldn't get another. She wrapped her clawed hands around the harpoons one final time and pulled with a renewed vigor. The pain was immense, but this time the harpoons came free and Eve threw them to the ground, the metal clatter lost in the cacophony of gunfire and Eve's roars of rage.
Eve pounced on the nearest Soldier, knocking the weapon from his hands when he turned it against her, before swiping her claws downwards and bisecting him from neck to hip bone.
As the Soldier collapsed to the floor, Eve thought that before this night, she had never taken the life of a human being, but these Soldiers, whoever they were, had forced her to break that streak.
Eve leapt through the air, landing between the last two Soldiers. One was firing at her, the other at the newcomer. Eve swiped one with her clawed hand and picked the other up by the throat when he turned, attempting to bring his weapon to bear on her. Eve let out a final roar of rage into his face before dashing him against a nearby wall.
And just like that, the old refinery and the surrounding forest fell silent again.
Eve could now focus on the newcomer. It took her a second for recognition to set in, when it finally did, Eve could hardly believe who she was seeing.
Consuela Álverez whipped her rifle from right to left, policing the dead Soldiers she had taken down, satisfied, she then looked up at Eve. Their eyes met as Álverez made her way towards her with zero trepidation at seeing her in her Other form.
Álverez abruptly set herself in a firing stance and leveled the assault rifle in Eve's direction, causing Eve to go into a defensive stance, claws bared.
Álverez opened fire, loosing off a single shot. It took Eve a moment to realist the shot was not meant for her…
Turning to look behind her, Eve saw one final Soldier drop to his knees and collapse to the ground holding his throat.
Eve let out a long drawn out, rasping breath and set The Other to rest, feeling a sensation of free fall back into her human form.
Changing to the Other and returning always took it out of her in a big way.
Eve looked back at Álverez and the two stared at one another, wordless. Neither, it seemed, knew what to say. Both breathing heavily. One from adrenaline, the other from an impossible level of exertion, even for her.
Beyond Álverez, the vision of the tower and the dead star faded away, giving way to the star-filled night sky and the sudden inrush of fatigue made itself felt.
Not-Laura's voice was the last thing that echoed in Eve's head. She felt her legs give way her body sink to the ground as everything went white.
Though I know not what you are, twinkle twinkle little star….