Chapter 18 Oblivion #2
Kit engaged the headset. "Buckle up. Stay seated. Breathe lightly." He inhaled shallowly. "Brace."
His nightmare of his past life flashed behind his closed lids with every torturously slow blink.
The shaking rattle of the ship. Rin in his arms. The heat. The lack of air.
It was all being replicated now.
Except, he didn’t have Rin with him.
Kit was alone.
And—
The ship shook, making the vision of the Stars beyond the window dip, until they turned into one long streak of brightness amid the dark of the galaxy.
The oxygen levels were depleted. His head grew light, chest tightening.
Kit pressed the radio, speaking into it. His voice was incoherent from lack of air.
"Mayday, mayday. This is Blackfall of Division 07. Ship headed to Sibeth…" He struggled to draw in air. Everything blurred in and out of focus. "A blast below—oxygen hit."
Nothing but static.
His finger slipped on the button, and the rotating pilot’s chair he sat in groaned as he fell back, dizzy.
It swiveled, and through bleary eyes, he watched the Hunters.
They were out cold, heads tipped to their chests or leaning to the sides, kept upright only by the harnesses strapping them to their chairs.
The whole ship rattled, and Kit’s eyes flicked up. That sounded like—like the ship was being boarded. Had the call for help gone through?
Everything went hazy and dark. It was so hot, even his sweat felt cool on his skin. He stayed like that for what felt like forever, until the rattling ship roused him back to awareness.
Dull, hollow thudding noises echoed.
With blurry eyes, he watched as smoke hissed through the ship. Through the grey tinge of smoke, figures decked in black and wearing oxygen masks stormed in—assault rifles held rigidly in their hands as they swept through the darkness.
When had it gone dark?
Kit groaned, fingers twitching.
His gaze drifted to the controls, finding the warning lights off and the board dark. Only the light of the Stars glowed through the window.
A strange sound broke through the dull ringing in his ears. His head turned.
What he saw—
A dream?
Or reality?
The masked figures leveled their black, sleek rifles at the passed-out Hunters.
One raised a gloved hand, making a gesture with his fingers, then fired.
A suppressor dulled the sound. The Hunter jerked.
Blood and brains splattered from the hole in his head.
Sprayed on the dark wall of the ship. Dead.
Then the next. A dull thud. A body jerking. A spray of red and brain matter, cutting through the grey mist.
When the Hunters were dead, their lifeless bodies held up the straps, slumped in their seats, the masked figures turned to Kit.
He wheezed, fingers slipping over the controls as he tried the radio one last time. It clicked. Didn’t work.
He undid his harness, falling to the floor. The ship rattled and rocked. He gasped.
Just as boots stopped in his line of sight and the tip of a still-hot barrel touched his chin, burning, forcing his face up, the whole ship jerked to the side as a fiery explosion roared.
Pain exploded up Kit’s right arm. Everything went dark.
When he came to—could’ve been seconds or hours later—something wet was on his face. His body was crushed to the cold floor of the ship. He tried to push himself up. Pain lanced up his right side. He groaned; the sound was distant.
Sweat blurred his vision as he lifted his head. His right arm—
Vomit churned in his gut, burning its way up his throat. He barely had time to turn his head before he was sick all over the floor. It mingled with ash and blood and metal and broken body parts and—
He shook.
His arm was crushed. Bone, jagged and splintered and too white, sticking up from his elbow and wrist. Pieces of shrapnel stuck out of his bicep. Blood darkened his uniform.
Metal framework littered the ground, crushing the masked being that had been before him in a heavy heap. The rifle was twisted metal, the barrel jutting out along with a crushed leg. A twisted, gnarled hand poked from beneath it.
Kit sobbed. He could only think of one thing. One person—
Rin.
Through the haze of dark grey, another masked figure made their way across the rubble. Kit didn’t even have the strength to lift his head.
His lips were parted, sucking in stale, recycled air. It wasn’t enough. The figure bent, a hand braced on the ground. Blood splashed beneath the figure’s hand.
A silver injector came toward Kit’s head. The figure gripped his hair, the blood on his fingers wetting Kit’s cheek as his head was roughly turned to reveal his neck. He groaned, unable to move—for every breath sent agony through his right side.
A coldness pressed to his neck. A sharp bite of pain, like a thousand needles piercing his flesh, straight to the bone.
Oblivion.
Kit woke up to a cold touch against his cheek. Or maybe he was too numb to feel warmth ever again.
A face came into view. One familiar to him.
His mother’s.
"Mom—" Kit rasped. Something inside his head pounded in warning. She wasn’t to be trusted. He was too tired to turn away from her touch.
Everything hurt. Sick, twisted agony wrapped around him. He couldn’t move.
His eyes unfocused, tears leaking from the corners as her face swam in and out of view, replaced by a white ceiling—so pristine and clear, he could see his face reflected back at him. It was all warped.
He was unrecognizable.
His arm—
Flayed flesh, white bone, and mangled pieces of metal sticking up from his shoulder and wrist.
It hadn’t been a dream.
His face was so pale, his skin blended with the tiles of the ceiling. Bloodless. All the blood that should’ve been in his body was on his clothes, dripping from the wounds in his arms.
Kit’s eyes unfocused again. He couldn’t keep focused for longer than a few seconds at a time. Each breath hurt his lungs. His chest rattled, threatened with a cough. He didn’t want to, scared of the pain that it would bring.
He wanted death.
Please.
The hand was back against his face. "Kiton," his mother said.
He blinked up at her. "What—have you—done?" he slurred. "Why am I—here?"
Where was here? This white, lifeless place that smelled like bleach and medicine—and the faint tinge of blood, that could never be scrubbed away.
His mother’s eyes grew cold. That coldness pierced through the throbbing near-dead haze gripping his consciousness. This was wrong. Something about this was wrong. He was faltering, heartbeat skipping, and his mother didn’t shed a tear.
No. Her eyes hardened as she peered down at him.
"We know."
Two words, and Kit’s faltering strength left him. He sagged against the hard table he lay on. His body was too mangled to fight against it. Death would be welcome from the pain inside him. All he knew was pain.
His mother stepped back, replaced by his father’s stern features.
His father wore a white coat, just as his mother did.
His mother’s profile blurred as she turned to speak with someone else, a passing doctor.
The room was buzzing with activity, scrambling nurses and doctors.
Snapping latex gloves and preparing surgical equipment.
It was meaningless to Kit.
"What did you do?" Kit asked his father. The words were a brief bit of strength, gone in a flash as he breathed raggedly on the table.
"What we had to," his father said. He snapped his fingers, and a doctor appeared, beginning to cut Kit’s ruined, blood-soaked uniform off him. The fabric stuck to his skin, and he gasped in agony as it caught on the ruins of his arm.
"…amputate?"
Sounds went in and out.
His reflection blurred as he stared at the ceiling.
He watched through the distorted reflection as the doctors removed his clothing.
His nude body was a mass of cuts and bruises and weeping gouges, bone sticking out.
His chest was cracked, caved in near his shoulder.
He tried to make his fingers twitch, but it only lit up agony inside him.
He gasped. Everything went dark.
Voices tugged him from blissful unawareness.
"Oxygen…"
"Permanent damage..."
"What do you want us to do?" Those words came in clear.
It was his mother’s cold, unfeeling voice that answered:
"Save him. No matter the cost."
He felt as though he were a specter, watching the whole thing, hovering in the air.
Like his Soul detached from his body. Life was too cruel for such mercy, though.
An oxygen mask was fitted over his face, nearly too much for his damaged brain. His thoughts tripped over themselves.
He couldn’t think.
He opened his mouth to speak, and only got a sweet-scented lungful of air. He wheezed.
Hands stilled him.
His mother’s face came back into view. She wore a surgical mask and gloves, a headlamp fixed to her temples.
"Don’t try to speak. The oxygen loss permanently damaged your brain." The sweet-scented oxygen made him dizzy. He tried to hang onto her words, but they slipped through his grasp. "When you wake up, everything will be different."
Sabine Blackfall pressed the bone saw to her son’s mangled arm.
A white sheet was draped over his lower half, dark straps keeping him buckled to the bed as she worked.
The team of doctors and surgeons eyed her warily as she removed the limb. As if her cold precision was something to be alarmed by.
The arm was lifted with steel forceps, placed in a sealed box. They would need it later to make the prosthetic, to model it after his size and shape.
This all had to happen. Sabine was only slightly apologetic; it was so gruesome. He was still her son, even if she’d had countless children across lifetimes.
A part of her softened to him, saw him as more than a means to an end.
It was why she wanted to save him. Instead of killing him completely, she would repurpose him.
He would still be Kiton Blackfall, her son, only better.
Blood spurted from the stump where his arm had been, covering her coat and turning it a grisly red.