Notto
If they’re bad people, kill them. Evil spreads faster than good.
Rainer remains quiet as we begin tracking this particular pod. It’s likely not the same pod that killed his family, but taking care of this pod might be something he also needs to see.
More than anything, I think he needs to see that these pods are being disposed of. Monsters made the mistake of looking the other way once, thinking that Silence wasn’t going to get out of hand. No one is going to let that happen a second time.
Unlike humans, monsters aren’t complacent enough to let history repeat itself.
We step onto the outskirts of Fillee, which happens to be the direction the pod was heading with its victims. At first glance, the city doesn’t look destroyed, but the closer you get, the more you see. The deeper within the city, the greater the destruction.
The buildings, short and tall, have gaping holes where glass windows had once been.
The glass is long gone. Rarely do you even find it shattered close to where it had once been installed.
Survivors have harvested it for weapons and tools, or time has made it into fine sand, which nature has washed away.
The first building we come across that looks like it was hit by a beast is missing an entire chunk of the corner. It looks flayed open. As we pass by, I’m actually impressed that it’s still standing. That must be some good bracing.
Keary sighs. “I don’t miss the pollution, but I do miss all the sounds. It’s eerie being so silent. You can feel that life once filled these streets and buildings.”
Rainer peers into an open door. “Have you been here before? When there were people?”
Keary nods. “Yep. I won’t pretend it wasn’t overpopulated, but there was a sort of harmony. There was life here, loud and happy. Sometimes the crowds didn’t bring out the best in people, but there was a lot of life here.”
He takes Rainer’s hand and drags him toward a building. Drystan and I follow until we’re standing just inside the threshold of a store. Chunks of the ceiling have fallen in some places, but otherwise, it’s still standing.
There are racks, empty save for a torn piece of fabric here and there.
Shelves empty. Baskets empty. Doors to coolers hang open.
There’s a single mangled shopping cart. A light fixture hangs precariously on a wire from the ceiling.
The checkout lines are dead, dark things.
A sign just inside the door says, “Welcome shoppers.”
A ghost of what was once here.
“The shelves were stocked with food,” Keary says.
“Everything you can imagine. Everything you can’t imagine.
On those racks were clothes. New. With tags on them.
There were toys in the back for kids—dolls and balls and building sets.
There was an entire electronic section where you could buy tablets and phones and computers.
Games and consoles. In the back corner was the automotive section, including all the basic components that you might need for your car.
And there was a pharmacy with toothbrushes, shampoo, makeup, and medicine. ”
He sighs. Rainer looks around, his eyes seeming to touch everything as he takes it in.
“In exchange for a plastic card, you could have anything you wanted. It was all at your fingertips.”
“Keary liked his things,” Drystan says, amused.
Keary gives a wistful nod. “I did. I won’t pretend that I wasn’t spoiled—both by my parents and myself.”
“Where did all those things go?” Rainer asks.
“They’re still locked away in my house.” He waves vaguely to the west. “Safe and sound.”
“On a base?”
Keary shakes his head. “Nah. When we rose up against Silence, there was a single base, the one we visited—Base 6. To be honest, I didn’t think Silence was going to take their attack so widespread. I didn’t think they intended to eliminate humans. I think that took everyone by surprise.”
“Considering they were using humans as disposable wombs, I think everyone was surprised,” I note.
“Like so many monsters, I left our world and came into the human world to escape Silence. I admit that for most of my life, I was like the majority of my world. I kept my head down. Silence wasn’t coming after me or my family or friends.
What they did wasn’t affecting me, so I continued on with my life, thinking I was completely removed from it when I left the monster world. I lived among humans.”
“Then the humans were killed,” Rainer guesses.
“Before that, I joined my friends and family on Base 6 to fight back, but yeah. Then the humans were killed, which meant living off human technology no longer worked. The power grids shut down over time with no one there to maintain them. Fuel. Oil. Food. All depleted as those who survived raided everything they could.”
“You had no choice but to leave your home behind?”
Keary nods, shrugging. “Something like that. It’s safe. The sun protects it from would-be raiders. But yeah, it’s a lifetime stuck in the past. No longer able to sustain the lifestyle it had been built on. I guess maybe I’ve been roaming around ever since, trying to find… something.”
“Trying to find Rainer,” Drystan says, giving him a wide, toothy smile.
Rainer bows his head, trying to hide his shy smile in return. I wouldn’t have guessed this man was shy.
“I didn’t shop here. I usually shopped online. Everything I could possibly want was delivered right to my door.” Keary sighs nostalgically.
“Huh,” Rainer says. “What a way to live.”
Keary shrugs and turns away. “Come on. Let’s go find the pod. Stores make me wish for a different past outcome.”
Rainer buries his fingers into his lut’s fur.
I’ve noticed he does this almost every time we walk.
At first, I thought having the beast at his side was a sense of security, but after observing him for weeks now, I think it’s comfort and companionship.
I’ve heard him talking to his lut as if she can respond. As if they’re having a conversation.
It’s probably a good thing that the lut found him.
We travel around the outskirts of the city. Over the last hundred years, we’ve yet to discover pods residing in cities. If they take over any already existing habitations, they’re remote. They know they’re being hunted.
Interestingly, they haven’t made a single attack against monsters that we know about since we destroyed their facilities.
They focus on hunting humans, but only those in small camps.
I’m sure there are a lot of questions we should be asking, but we know that by keeping them trapped within the technology-stripped human world, they’re crippled.
They can’t resume what they’d been working on.
However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t working on something. They definitely are. I think we all know that they’re not killing the humans outright. They’re taking them alive.
Which isn’t a good thing.
I wonder if that means they have technology we’re unaware of. Are they making further progress than we know? A hundred years is a long time—plenty of time to make some advances. Are the pods that we find and exterminate nothing but distractions to keep us busy?
Do they have a way to access the monster world, which is still brimming with technology, and we’re just fooling ourselves?
It takes us an hour to find them. They’re closer to the city than I would have expected.
As we approach, I can see why they’re so close.
There’s what had likely once been a garage.
A place where people took their vehicles to get worked on.
There’s smoke coming out of a chimney that isn’t original to the building.
The smoke has a foul smell that makes my stomach churn. Rainer coughs and pulls his shirt up over his nose.
“Is that burning flesh?” Drystan asks, his face scrunched.
We don’t answer. I’m pretty sure it is.
The sounds coming from the garage are quiet but steady. I hear the grinding of a saw. The muffled sounds of… screaming. We get closer, keeping as hidden as we can, which is proving difficult since the garage is surrounded by open space.
It’s a good spot to occupy. It’s not easy to sneak up on them. We’re as close as we can get without being spotted, which is still more than a dozen yards off.
“What are they doing?” Rainer asks.
I shake my head. From this distance, it’s impossible to tell.
Impossible to see. All we have to go on is the constant movement of bodies, the smell of burning flesh, and the muffled screams that carry to us every few minutes.
Other sounds come and go. Something that sounds like a manual saw.
Maybe the sound of an axe slamming into a block of wood.
There’s a grinding sound, something against metal.
“I don’t like this,” Drystan says.
I glance over at him. His eyes are always a deep, dark red. That’s the one part of him that never seems to change. Even now, that red remains, but the rest of his eyes has turned very dark. His skin has turned dark and foggy yet translucent in some places.
The reason he’s been dubbed a “soul” is because of this right here. When his skin turns transparent, we don’t see his skeleton, muscles, organs, or anything else. We see straight through him as if he’s a ghost.
I know for a fact that he bleeds. I know he has a heartbeat. I can feel his bones when I touch him. So the fact that he becomes transparent is unique to him as a monster.
The Silence scientists made a mistake when they started leaving the genetic code of the experiments wide open. It meant that they could become whatever they needed to be—not just when it came to genitals and fun shit but also when it came to defense.
They thought they were making the ultimate weapon, which, I suppose, they succeeded at. Drystan and other teko like him are weapons the world has never seen. Especially now that he’s not kept in a state of terror.
Now that he has control over his life, he doesn’t cower in a corner when he’s faced with pods. Not as he once did as a small child. He is what they made him. He is the monster they should fear.
“Think you can handle doing some recon without engaging?” Keary asks him. “Or should I go?”
Drystan’s gaze remains locked, and he doesn’t respond for a minute. “You should go.”
Keary nods, then he kisses Drystan’s cheek and steps into a bright ray of sunlight. Rainer’s eyes widen in surprise.
“Woah,” he says.
I grip his hand and take Drystan’s too. He didn’t react at all to Keary kissing him, which means he’s already on his way to exploding right here and now. And not in a fun way.
“Come on,” I urge them, gently tugging on their hands. Rainer lets me pull him, though Drystan is very reluctant. “Look at me, Drys.”
Drystan takes a deep breath but eventually turns his gaze to mine. “You’ll get your chance. But we need you to be aware of your surroundings and not get caught up in your anger. Can you do that, or do you need to sit out?”
He scowls at me, but I know he’s thinking about it. He’s always very aware of his mental state. “I don’t know,” he answers eventually. “I’ll decide when Keary comes back.”
I pet his cheek softly, over and over. Rainer, probably taking note of what I’m doing, begins petting Drystan’s hair. At first, Drystan doesn’t notice either of us. I know when he does though. He’s caught between bemusement and glee.
Kaida gives a yip and a growl. The three of us turn to where she’s staring at the garage. There’s a very distinct beam of sunlight moving around. Nothing that will be noticed up close, but from afar, it’s very obvious.
That’s when the screaming starts.
I grip my men’s hands and yank them along. “Let’s go, lut. I hope your teeth are sharpened.”
“What’s wrong?” Rainer asks.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I assure him, though I don’t know if that’s entirely accurate.
Something set Kaida off. As an animal that doesn’t make a lot of verbal noise, it’s not something I’m going to choose to ignore.
Not when Keary’s surrounded by monsters who would kill him if given the chance.
My fear for that possibility overrides my senses that they’ll likely not be able to kill him.
He is a god, as he’ll quickly remind anyone who asks.
But even gods die.
“You know how to use that knife, right?” I ask Rainer.
“If you’re looking for me to tell you I’ve had formal training, you’re going to be waiting a while. But I can swing it around and shit.”
I huff.
“Your lut will protect you.” We will protect him. I don’t want him to feel self-conscious, though, so I don’t say that right now. He’s used to his pet protecting him. I still remember when he shot a quill right back at the beast who shot it at him. He’s fully capable.
I’m going to choose to believe that as we storm into the small settlement of tyrant monsters.
I pull a hunk of thick pipe from the ground as I pass.
It’s still attached to something that had once been there, so there’s a loud, painful groan as I yank it loose.
The ground shudders and cracks beneath our feet. Kaida keeps Rainer upright.
Sweet baby Drystan has exploded with a scream, his entire body becoming covered in nasty-looking spikes. One of the monsters who had been on their way toward him is impaled by his body.
Drystan shakes him off. A line of laser-focused sunlight cuts straight through the building. Kaida dives away from it as she whips her spikey tail around, slamming it into the chest of a shifter mid-shift. Rainer has his knife out.
Leaving them to take care of what’s going on inside, I circle the back of the building so no one tries to escape their fate. Just as I set up post, a back door flings open. Three men in lab coats come barreling out, running straight for me, but they stop short when they realize I’m standing there.
I lift the hunk of pipe and wait for them to decide what they’re going to do. While they debate their options, I commit their faces to memory.
“You will not live longer than the next hour,” I warn. “No matter what you choose to do right now.”
They don’t like my threat. Stupid monsters. I think they’re taking lessons from the idiot humans who used to think they were running countries. They deluded themselves into believing they were infallible.
I’m about to show them that they die just as easily as their human victims, and I’m going to make it just as painful too.