Chapter 12 #2
I take another step forward and it shrinks back, snarling and snapping, but not attacking…
Halting, I see the flash in my visor’s proximity censor. “Found two,” I tell them, and Arc curses.
“Already on my way.” Risk’s comm crackles, interference from the crevasse.
The second cavrinskh clings to the ice wall ten feet above my head. It’s using the injured one as a lure… Interesting.
I’m used to being stalked by them. They’re intelligent. They won’t want to wait for the others to get here.
Our guns are calibrated specifically for them. As long as I get the shot off in the correct place…
The calculations take a few seconds. The computer integrated in my helmet does them without prompting.
I don’t think I can wait for the others.
Taking one more step, I plant myself, making sure my balance is right so I can twist and…
The cavrinskh moves a moment before I pull the trigger. But it jumps straight at me.
The pulse burns through its open mouth, its body slamming to the hard ground in front of me as I turn the gun on the wounded creature.
I don’t plan to shoot it, but I don’t lower my gun.
When I don’t move, it turns, scratching at the walls, looking for a way out again.
There’s nowhere for it to go. And this time when it turns back to me, it’s… afraid.
That makes me drop my weapon. That used to be enough to make them pounce, but it doesn’t get the chance.
The detonation is startling because it’s silent.
One moment, it stares at me with a panic glimmering in its eyes, the next, its skull caves in between them.
The charge is so focused, it barely splits the skin open enough for brain matter to ooze out.
Risk slides to a stop beside me as I stare down the creature’s corpse.
“Jess was right,” I tell him.
He goes to the creature while I scan the walls for the third. “Whatever it was,” grimacing, he turns the remains over. “It was implanted. It’s not naturally occurring.”
“I didn’t think it was.” Survival mechanisms in nature simulate death as a means of escape.
Someone is doing this to them.
ARC
Hefting the carcass onto my bike, I watch the Zone while Shock and Risk drag theirs from the ravine.
We’ll have to make a stop on the way home. Dead cavrinskh only attract more cavrinskh.
“I’m confused,” Shock says as he drops the cavrinskh behind him. “They weren’t trying to make it out of the caldera… what did they want?”
“I don’t know about those two, but this one wanted me to chase him.”
Cavrinskh thoughts are sharp and scratchy. They’re rarely more than one word and that one word is often just spit out of their minds on repeat… Like they were given a basic command and are set to follow it, no matter what.
Risk makes an unhappy noise and lifts his cavrinskh onto the back of my bike too.
“Take mine and get home, now.” If someone wanted all three of us out here… “We’ll get these to the pit and be right behind you.”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice.
And once again, I let the bike go wherever it wants to when I hop off of it and hurry upstairs. If something happens to it, Risk can fix it.
I only get half way.
Kissu sits in front of a closed door, growling. Bad feeling place.
He stamps a paw once, twice, three times. Lock now. Seal soon.
The door leads to the long dormant geothermal units. The equipment inside is useless, gathering dust for decades.
“Is something in there?” I’m as quiet as I can be in case the answer is yes.
Ghosts. He stands, takes a step back, and sits again. Things Sisan does not want inside.
But not a cavrinskh. Not a person.
I don’t bother locking it. I take a quick trip downstairs to Risk’s workbench and grab his welder.
When I get back, I tell Kissu, “Go back to Chrys.”
I don’t want her to come investigate the noise.
As soon as he’s out of sight, I light the torch and draw hot lines down each side of the jamb, across the top… I’ll have to ask Risk how to deal with the bottom.
Leaving the welder beside it, I follow Kissu’s path back upstairs.
He’s laid out across Chrys’ lap and she looks up at me, incredulous.
“He’s decided I am not going anywhere.”
She’s rewarding him for her imprisonment with scratches and pets.
“I asked him to keep you from investigating.”
“Well he did a good job.” She looks me over. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“Not a scratch.” I hold out my arms and let her take a look. “Nothing odd happened while we were gone, did it?”
“There was some noise downstairs.” She scratches between Kissu’s ears. “He wouldn’t let me investigate that either. But it just sounded like something fell over.”
I don’t like that.
“Was it heavy, or light?”
She shrugs and tries to remember. “I don’t know… But I think it was metallic, or maybe wet?”
Laundry. Kissu sneezes in disgust. Water fell.
“Kissu says it was a water issue in the laundry.”
Chrys opens her mouth to say something, but can’t.
“Why is the geomech room welded shut?” Shock goes to the fire, warming his hands so he can touch her shortly. “Risk can only tell me that Kissu said to do it.”
He’s finishing it for you right now. Fixing it.
“Because Kissu told me to do it, and I trust him. He said there were ghosts and bad things. I didn’t argue.”
“Um…” Chrys says and we both look at her.
Kissu has gotten up and is huffing air out of his nose. Smells like…
He huffs more, going to Shock and pressing his muzzle right up against Shock’s stomach. Sniffing at his hands.
“What’s going on?” Shock raises his hands as Kissu circles.
Old smell. Familiar.
I shake my head, watching, waiting for some other clue to what he smells.
When Risk comes in, he gets a sniff too, but Kissu huffs, expelling the air from his nostrils again before going back to Shock.
Weld smell. No. This smell. I know.
We all wait in silence, glancing at each other until he finally sits, head twisted to the side. Why smell filloum.
“What is filloum?”
“They’re extinct.” Risk gets the look on his face that comes when he didn’t know the information before he said it.
He immediately goes to the screen, tapping in the search function and pulling up a series of pictures. “They weren’t even on this continent.”
The creature on the screen is not a cavrinskh… not really. I’ve never seen or heard of these before. But they have six legs and beaks and spines on their backs…
Filloum. Not indigenous. Altered.
Risk reads directly from the screen—for Chrys’ benefit. “A canid creature with a common ancestor to zurgles. Filloum were native to the Southern continent, concentrated near Lasiana. Development and tourism led to their extinction despite conservation efforts…”
“What were the conservation efforts?”
“It doesn’t say. There’s an article there, but it’s been corrupted.”
I look at the creature and I can see more similarities in the juvenile examples.
“You said it was altered.” I look down at Kissu. “Altered how?”
Don’t know. Smell Filloum, don’t see Filloum. Too big, too white, too beaky. He snaps his teeth together twice in mock chomps.
I look back up at the screen as pictures cycle through. “Wait.” I put my hand on Risk’s arm. “Go back two.”
The small, round creature is labeled as a Filloum pup. “I’ve seen one of those before.”
“This information would call you a liar.” But he believes me. Shock does too. Because they are also unsettled by the familiarity of it.
“So, what does that mean?” Chrys asks, staring at the screen, paler than I’d like.
“It means we need answers we can’t get on our own.” Risk picks her up and moves her to the cat tree, and Kissu follows.
When I’m sure she’s out of sight, I make the call.
Trench answers on the fourth tone without looking up from whatever gruesome thing he’s working on. “What do you need?”
“Can you get access to a Filloum’s genetic sample?”
“I don’t know what that is. So, maybe? Maybe not.” He lifts something heavy and bloody onto a tray.
“It’s an extinct canid from the south.”
Jessica peeks into view. “I’m sure some research center has it on file.”
She looks me up and down like she expects me to be missing pieces of myself, or worse.
Before she has a chance to ask what I’m sure will be a rude question, I say, “Cool. Once you find it, compare it to the cavrinskh.”
“Why?”
“Because my zurgle told us to.”
Jessica looks at the screen, eyes narrowed. “You have a zurgle?”
“Yep.” I hang up and sit down, my arms tingling as I try to remember why I know what a filloum pup looks like, even though I didn’t know what it was.
Maybe it was something from before in the depths of my childhood—a toy? Maybe it was in one of the more obscure nature docs Kimba showed us… one of the ones that compared Earth animals and Isia animals.
Maybe it’s not familiar at all and I need to sleep.
I’ve been doing even less of that lately.
Chrys shivers and hugs Kissu close. “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to go back to sleep for a while. Ghosts and monsters and labs full of gore… that’s a recipe for nightmares.”
Wiffan safe. Kissu knocks his head against her shoulder and she pets him without question. Four protect. Never alone.
“Kissu wants to remind you that you have four of us to keep you safe.”
Shock still stares at the screen, and the question in his thoughts concerns me. I let him ask it. “When did you come into contact with a filloum?”
He looks at Kissu like he might be able to hear his answer too… but he can’t.
Kisa, Kissu thinks her name solemnly. Sisan studied for fun. Sisan loved.
He looks at me. Sisan loved Kissu more.
“His first Sisan studied them as a hobby.”
“In the wild?” Shock taps information into the tablet.
When Kissu answers, I say, “Yes.”
“Then Kissu is over a hundred years old.”
“Really?” Chrys asks what we’re all thinking and then scruffs his ruff up and kisses him on the forehead. “He’s just a baby.”
Kissu agrees with her, but I think he’d agree with anything she said.
“No one knows how long they can live, so… maybe.” Risk glares at the screen and then turns it back off. “Let’s try to go back to sleep, okay?”
“Okay,” she says with a sigh, tossing the blanket onto the couch and letting me help her down. “But only because you asked nicely.”
I follow them to the room, but I don’t go in.
Chrys looks at me from the center of the bed, with a disappointed smile. “You’ve got something to do, don’t you?”
Nodding, I glance at the other two, and at Kissu who’s jumped onto the foot of the bed.
She is safe.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Pausing at the welded door, an unsettled feeling falls over me. We need to put a metal plate over it too. I don’t want any ghosts seeping through, real or imagined.
I feel bad when I pull my bike from its place against the wall and grab a full fuel cell. They took the time to clean up, and all I ever do is leave a mess.