Chapter 2
2
Sitting on an old chair he’d fetched from the back of this room, Vargr watched the woman sleep through the night with her blood-stained thumb in her mouth.
His scouting was done, so he could return to the tribe. He might have to carry her.
Nighttime was the best time for travel though that wound might worsen. It’d get worse without treatment too. They had no good medics, and the last biotechie had been killed by a ghoul-guard sniper weeks ago. Without antibiotics, surgery, or that strange ability some biotechies had that promoted healing, she was a goner. Infection was guaranteed.
There was the Worshipper tribe in the next Quarter over; they might have someone who could help, but they had weird views—for one, that humans had brought the disaster down upon themselves by sinning. They, the beast horde, were destined to carry the banner humans had dropped.
Exactly what sins they included, he wasn’t sure. He’d done his fair share in the army.
Just because he volunteered to be a genetic guinea pig, been pumped full of blue shit, it didn’t mean he’d given up on his humanity. Moisture prickled his eyes—both from anger and sadness. Why would you say you weren’t human? It meant everything to him.
He should see if Boaz wanted him to ask them for that biotechie. It might take days to find them and return. The girl would need a miracle, and she couldn’t be more than in her early twenties. She’d be dead before then.
Fuck this war… or whatever it was.
He sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face; the rock-hard callouses scraping down his skin felt good. He studied his upturned palms. At least he hadn’t grown claws like some. Tom had ripped his own face once. Only once. The beaster had learned. Same as he’d learned not to sleep on his wings for too long.
So many questions popped up when he recalled the scene above.
Boaz would be wanting to interrogate her.
For starters, how had she gotten away from the Ghoul Lords on the top floor, and from what he’d seen, with a piece of one in her hand? After years of them occupying the top of the world, no one else had escaped. It made him wonder if she was some new tactic from the enemy. What if he was meant to take her back just so she could locate his friends, his tribe, and bring down an army of those ass-licker guards?
Then… she opened her eyes, and he saw the shiny red flecks floating in her irises. Hair as dark as midnight shadows, pillow-soft red lips, or he imagined they were—soft and definitely kissable—and this.
Novel. He stared.
His eyes were bright blue, as were those of all of the nanomachine-modified beast horde. From early drone surveillance, the Ghoul Lords had shiny white eyes, as did their adapted human guards.
Groaning, she sat up on the mattress, letting the superhero-decorated blanket he’d draped over her slide loose. Even watching her sit up made him wince in sympathy. That rod of rebar was sunk straight through her. A small bump at the back showed where it almost pierced her skin.
He hadn’t dared to extract it.
Naked. Shit. Looking seemed sacrilegious. Her tits, those rendered him a little dumb in admiration. The shift of them when she made the slightest movement made it difficult to meet her eyes. He had to keep reminding himself to be nice and couth.
Few women had been chosen for the Experiment by Dr. Nietz. Fewer still remained alive, though there were the plain human females.
This girl seemed oblivious to the Lure, and this close to the top floor it was damned strong. Humans, generally, had to be hobbled to prevent the Lure pulling them upward to the GLs. Maybe he should tie her down when he slept? It would be wise if the wound didn’t incapacitate her. He didn’t fancy being stabbed because he was in her way. Or losing her.
He should find her some painkillers. Most medication was past its expiry date but still had some effect. A few made you sicker once expired. Swings and roundabouts.
“ What are you?” he said quietly, not really expecting a proper answer.
“Cyn. Name…” She worked her mouth, cleared her throat, with a crease appearing on her brow. “Is Cyn.”
“Are you human?” He smirked. “Though you’d not say if you weren’t human, would you, cutie?”
“Cyn.” She reiterated firmly. “Not cutie.”
“Don’t like cutie?”
“No.”
“Sweetie?”
Her lip curled into a half-smile. “Fuck you.”
Vargr chuckled. “I’m Vargr. Russian name courtesy of a dad who had a thing for odd names.”
He still wasn’t sure what she was except she had fire. He sobered. If she didn’t die, it would be a shame to kill her.
“I should find you some clothes.” He’d almost grunted that out because his dick had chosen to rise hard against his pants.
“Pull out this?” She nodded at her stomach.
“No. Don’t. We need to—” His mouth fell open and he lurched upright, for she’d grabbed hold of the end, muttered something, and dragged at the bloody, twisted piece of metal. It emerged from her guts.
“Well. You are something, now aren’t you?”
Fuck, even he wouldn’t have done that. Mostly because it was stupid. Luckily none of her intestines had decided to stick to the metal.
“Jesus H.” Vargr wiped his mouth. “Keep your hand on it to stop it bleeding. I’ve got bandages. Let’s dress that.” And pray.
Because if she didn’t have sepsis after this, she was luckier than he was on a Saturday night at the races. Than he had been. Still hard to remember it was all gone. It jolted him whenever he slipped. No more races. No more humanity, pretty much.
“Where you from?” she asked him as he rummaged in his pack, fingers pressed to the red-welling wound. Tears tracked down her face. Possibly she was distracting herself by talking.
“The tribe? We call ourselves the Mercantors, after this quarter of buildings. There’s a sign,” he added lamely, waving his hand in the direction of the outer limits of this section where MERCANTOR was one of the few signs left hanging on the side of a skyscraper.
After a few years, it’d seemed natural to name themselves. The Worshippers Quarter had an overabundance of churches, temples, mosques, and now they had their Doctrine of Logical Gods. There was a certain karma of the universe how that’d happened. Buildings were history and meant stuff, patently solid stuff.
“Tell me. Winning?”
He scrambled to translate that. “Us? The war against the Ghoul Lords?”
She nodded, grunted as if something had pained her below. Her fingers cramped in, then relaxed.
He pulled out the bandage pack and the tube of antiseptic. “Hell, no. Hate to rain on your parade, luv, but things are pretty stuffed up, to put it mildly. Humankind is going down the tubes, and we, my kind, the super-soldiers that were supposed to save us all…” He shook his head, sniffed. How to put this kindly?
Nah. It was what it was.
“We are what is left. Guesstimates place us at less than a million, across the globe. Everyone else, is gone, or drawn by the Lure to the top of the world and in line to be eaten by our fun-loving alien overlords.”
Her mouth fell open. “The Lure?”
“Yeah that thing the Ghoul Lords do that attracts humans. Where have you been that you don’t know this? Have you been a feeder all these years? Up there? They’ve been chowing down on humans for years, whittling us down for whatever reason. Breeding up, some think, before they leave us and go somewhere else. Another planet, perhaps.”
She remained silent for a while. “How long?”
“How long since the last organized resistance fell, since we your great fucking saviors gave up and hid in the shadows?”
Cyn nodded, blinking, her hand still flat on that wound.
“Five years. Five long years.”
“Oh.” Tears shone in her eyes.
“Oy? Where have you been? You can’t have been a feeder all that time? Can you? I saw you fall with a piece of GL tentacle in hand. Am I right?”
No answer.
“How’d you do that? Girl, Cyn, no one else has escaped from above, ever. You are going to have to answer some questions…”
Hard questions. Ones to help them figure out if she was safe to have around.
If she survived. Remember?
“I…” She licked her lips then ran on, words spilling more easily, “I somehow pulled off a part of one, and I guess it messed up that thing you call the Lure?”
“Yeah?” So she had no clue how she’d done it?
He bandaged her wound, searched the nearby kitchen, and found a full packet of painkillers in an overhead cupboard, not aspirin – that shit made you bleed. He muttered a thanks to the spirits of the vanished owners—one of those things he did to make the world feel better.
Vargr toed a line in the dirty floor with his boot.
All the fires and explosions as safety features failed or missiles hit, the meltdowns from power stations and other Armageddon-themed problems had released pollution and radioactive gases and made the scrapers shake to hell and back. Immense clouds of smoke and dust had engulfed the planet. Sometimes a whole quarter of scrapers fell down, crumbled into rubble. If there were beasters or humans living in them still, they were dead.
He took a last look around the filthy granite bench tops, the oven, microwave, the half-empty knife block, then returned to her.
He handed her his water bottle, watched her swallow the tablets, wincing as her ribs and muscles moved. What was she? He’d seen her swinging by her fingertips on a broken floor, and that first fall and catch of building edge, how was that even possible? He might do it, or any other beaster, but a plain human, no. It meant she wasn’t exactly human, yet she was also not a beaster.
Those people genetically modified by the nanites of Dr. Nietz were well described in type, well established, and no more types had been created since the doctor’s passing.
How could this cute, sexy, innocent yet tough woman be the enemy? Would be sad to have to kill her.
She was definitely an enigma. He wanted to find out what she was. Maybe there was some new way to fight the GLs? It would be more fun than lying back and watching the world die then rising in the ashes, which was what half the beasters were resigned to doing.
“You have an octopus tattoo on your ass.” Amusement had leaked into his voice.
“Uhh, I do? You shouldn’t be looking.”
“Difficult not to see that.”
“I’d eyeroll at you if everything didn’t hurt. You owe me.”
“Sure. Anytime you want to see my ass, I’ll deliver.”
That did make her eyeroll. “Stay there. Best if you don’t move too much. I’ll be back.”
He figured he knew her size, having had his hands on her. Now to find an apartment that had what he needed.