Chapter 45
FORTY-FIVE
JETT
Jett stared at the mountain of corpses and felt despair.
Amongst that ruin of life, he saw the faces of those he’d lost. Each as dear to him in death as they had been in life. Every broken body part belonged to someone whose life he had touched, someone he doomed by mere acquaintance. It was hard to live with so much blood and so many lives on his hands.
The litany of their names came easily to his mind and lips. He’d recited it over the years, in the dark hours of true night, so far from Sol that its rays could not warm him. So far from Sol that he couldn’t pick it out from every other star in the Void.
He recited the list now, in their memory, adding names of the recently lost.
“Maxi, Luke, Abend,” he whispered as he crept forward, one foot after the other. His squad, captured and tortured due to his arrogance.
“Rune, Ellie, Hash,” he continued. He saw every mistake he’d ever made in a hundred sets of glassy eyes. Every wrong choice, every problem he plucked out of the Void where it should have remained. Every chance he’d had to fix something and chosen to make it worse.
“Augustus, Gin, Jack.” He choked on the names; they were the sins he nurtured deep in his heart of hearts.
The ones he allowed to fester in his soul.
He would never forgive himself these nine among the hundreds.
And he worried that more would be added soon.
Only Eddie’s loss would slice deeper, hurt more, than Jack.
The litany was longer than that, and even Jett’s long-dead parents had their spot, victims of the same system that had destroyed his life.
But those nine were the deepest cuts, the ones he would never forget.
He didn’t know how many more would be added to the list when this was over, when the official death count was tallied.
His list and the Song merged together, a dire dirge for the people Jett loved.
Jett stopped himself. Counting the dead gets you nowhere.
The faces wavered, taking on different, less recognizable features. Ones he’d seen in passing or not at all in his long years walking the streets of Neo-Tokyo.
You are different.
The voice was almost an absence of sound. Jett felt those words at the base of his skull, in the optical nerve fused to his cybernetic eye, and in the artificial tendons in his arm and legs.
The faces of the lost disappeared completely, buried along with the litany.
Jett blinked as despair left him, replaced by a smoldering ember of anger. Beside him the line of Affected still stood, still lurched forward to disappear beyond that towering pile of parts, gore, and death.
You are different, the voice repeated, a hollow crack in Jett’s skull.
Jett shook off the heaviness that had settled in his head and stepped forward, closer to the line of Affected and a jagged crack in the mountain of corpses.
The closer he approached, the larger it loomed over him.
The mass was a mess of people, and Jett couldn’t tell if any were his friends or acquaintances.
He knew that they weren’t—couldn’t be—those he’d lost long ago.
The mountain rotted where it rested, maggots dropping from eaten eye sockets and open mouths, burrowing deep into blackened flesh. Viscera roped around arms, legs, and torsos. Dripping, oozing. Beneath his feet a pool of blood and gore and smashed guts slithered away from the mass.
Around him the sensation of popping and sparkling intensified. The air crackled with static, setting every hair on end and nerve on edge. Ozone overpowered the stench of rot and blood; it rushed through the gap in the mountain like an errant breeze, yet couldn’t even move a strand of his hair.
Whispers in garbled, blood-soaked tones filled the air, chanting in a language that Jett didn’t understand.
The chant grew louder as he approached the Affected. It seemed to come from them, but their lips did not move. He slid between the line of Affected and the wall of bodies, and stopped to stare.
What he had taken for a mountain was more of a crater, and at its center was a glowing mass of darkness.
It rippled and undulated, a Void filled with sparkling stars, tendrils snaking out to capture Affected and draw them in.
It consumed them, glowing brighter, swelling with each creature it devoured, squirming as it sucked them in.
Color and light emanated from the mass and were absorbed by it at the same time.
A fluttering, flickering thing of shadow floated over everything. It flitted from one side of the crater to the other, from that writhing darkness to the line of Affected and back, like a mother watching her child suckle.
It appeared before him, dark eyes concealed in a ratted hood, and stared into Jett’s soul. And he stared right back.
“Get out of my fucking head,” he growled.
The shredded shroud tossed itself back and forth, tauntingly.
You can see me.
The voice rippled across Jett’s exposed skin, coating it like oil, like blood.
You can hear me.
“Fuck off,” Jett responded.
There is no need to speak aloud. I can read your mind. See your thoughts.
Jett didn’t flinch when the creature disappeared and reappeared once again. It was larger than he’d expected, half again his height. In the darkness of the hood Jett saw something darker, a shadow within the shadows, moving. Something solid and almost fleshy.
“What the fuck are you?”
I am the Caretaker of this Larva.
Stars flickered to life inside the hood and bored into Jett, lighting up the vague outline of something that resembled a brain and spinal cord. A wave of despair crashed into him, but Jett remained steady. He would not give in again.
You are resistant to our influence.
There was a pause and Jett felt something.
Shock crept up his spine and settled in that empty, heavy spot at the base of his skull.
He refused to respond to the creature, focusing instead on the pain in his head and the bond with Eddie.
He didn’t know or care what influence the creature meant. He just wanted to get to Eddie.
You are bound to an Oracle. His Guardian and Shield. You are bonded forever, soul to soul. You shall share the same fate.
Deafening silence followed. The creature was slow, ponderous; it watched Jett with an intensity that was predatory and judgmental, almost cat-like.
Curious.
Between blinks of an eye, the creature’s face was on level with his, those sun-lit orbs so close they hurt.
A scrap of its form flicked across Jett’s neck, and he struggled against sudden paralysis and overwhelming pressure.
Breath stalled in his chest. He couldn’t look away, couldn’t close his eyes while the Caretaker hovered there, caressing him with its essence.
You are a predator stained by the blood of your own kind. You have taken lives uncounted. Taken joy in that death and destruction.
Ice burned in Jett’s veins, chilled his heart.
The creature repeated his worst nightmare: that he was nothing more than a weapon.
That he could never escape the violence forced on him.
He’d embraced it to fill the emptiness and find a place in the System.
But he thought he’d shed that skin when he came to the Neo-Tokyo.
You are but a shadow of true violence, true destruction. A child of pain that continues to hurt itself.
You are pathetic.
Give in to your nature and you shall wield awesome powers beyond knowledge.
Give in to the Void.
Jett strained against the hold upon him. He needed to move just one finger, to regain some of the control he’d lost.
In the distance a voice cried out and the Caretaker’s attention wavered. It turned and focused, freeing Jett. It disappeared and reappeared a second later.
The Hands of the Larva have returned with more sacrifices. You will soon witness a true predator in its habitat.
“Fuck. Off.” Jett whispered as air rushed into his lungs..
Words cannot save you.
It disappeared and reappeared on the far side of the Larva. Jett thought it did look like an insects larva, a maggot squirming and flailing. It was disgusting, almost pathetic like he’d been called. If this was the true predator the Caretaker spoke of, Jett was not impressed.
The remnants of the Caretaker’s spell dissipated and Jett pushed through Affected, not caring if they fell to the ground or not, and approached the Larva. He kept himself out of sight of whoever—or whatever—the Hands was.
Jett skirted the creature, his eyes on the Caretaker, watching its movements. It appeared to be communicating to something below it and out of sight.
And a plan started forming in his head.
The Larva undulated, reaching for him with slow, sickly movements. He stepped out of the way, not wanting to become a snack for whatever monstrosity was beneath the exterior.
“Sacrifices,” a hoarse voice said over whispered chanting and bloated grumbling. “I have two for the God, and another to join us in worship, Caretaker.” The voice rose and fell, cracked and slurred. It grated on Jett’s mind as a dissonant echo vibrated through his bones.
Jett reached the far side of the Larva, sidled between it and the pile of parts it continually sampled from, avoiding the reaching tendrils. He crouched on the far side where he could see the figures that waited on the far side.
“Fuck,” Jett hissed through his teeth, the plan he’d made discarded in a second. Another formed in its place, tinged with desperation.
He pulled the knife from its sheath, ran a finger along the serrated blade, nicked his finger on the tip. It had to be enough because there was nothing left.
Jett leaned forward once more.
Just beyond the edge of the Larva, below the Caretaker, three figures stood around a kneeling Eddie.