Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

I check the back as Volga checks the front of the ship. Ea

ch pod I open reveals a new scene to fill my nightmares. By the sixth corpse, I’m right numb, and starting to wonder how the hell civilization plods on with all this going on behind the scenes.

Is this what war is? It’s so bloody…jarring. I always thought by watching the holos and the parades that it was more sophisticated, organized. But it’s just so…blunt, clumsy even. Is this what my brothers see every day? Even if they come back, is this what’s behind their eyes?

I keep looking despite the dread and find a treasure trove of emergency supplies: medkits, thermals, water packs, survival boxes with a thermal stove, and protein cubes. I stack these outside the ship after giving up on finding anyone alive.

Then, toward the back of the wreckage, something moves.

At first I think it’s a rat. Then I see fingers and realize they belong to someone in a half-deflated crashpod. I pull it open. The woman’s face is pale. She is unwounded—except for the shard of metal that has nearly sliced her body in two. “Fig.” Her eyes flutter open. The tracework of her white tattoos is queerly bright in the darkness. She doesn’t recognize me. “Fig,” I say quietly. I touch her hand. It’s cold. “Oy, freelancer.”

“Psappha?” she says. “Thought I’d…have more time. It’s not fair. I had more…to do.”

“Fig, can you hear me?” Might hate her, but hard to hold on to hate for someone who’s in two pieces. “Fig, it’s Lyria. The Red.”

“The Red.” Her eyes come into focus. “Oh,” she says in disappointment. “You? ’Course I don’t get a better heir.” She snorts. “It should have been someone with some skill. A freelancer.” Her eyes close. “Get the Obsidian.” Blood bubbles on her lips. “Get the…crow.” Frowning, I call for Volga. She doesn’t answer. “I feel it unsyncing. Moisture wicking off the tendril root. Just like she said.”

She’s babbling. Seen it before when people go.

“Figment said,” she says, talking in third person now. “Where is the bloody crow? She can use it. With that blue blood, she’ll carve an empire.”

“Just hang on. Help’s coming.”

“Idiot. I escaped. Was gonna be the greatest freelancer who ever lived. Still had that bitch Bonerider to…”

Her mouth contorts. Eyes go all crazy. She screams into my face. I rear back, but her hands dig into my wrists with insane strength. She makes a hacking, vomiting sound, like an old engine dying. Her eyes strain from her head. Her body starts to seize and her mouth froths. A lump moves along her face, like a snail trapped beneath the surface. It goes from the top of her nose, swells a nostril, and then it bursts forth.

It looks like a tiny metal squid with hundreds of hairlike arms tipped with little fibers. I scream as it springs at my face. But her hands won’t. Let. Go. I thrash as the squid thing crawls over my eyes. Intense pressure in my nostril. It’s cramming its way into my nasal passage. I struggle to breathe. Then there’s pain unlike anything I’ve ever felt. A hundred needles between my brain and my nostril. A cascade of fire on every nerve ending. Raw pain down my spine. Spasms of light explode. Fig becomes a pulsing red thermal monster. Then she goes shock white. I see her bones. Her organs. Her blood moving through the network of vessels like the map of Hyperion’s tram lines. Even the food in her belly. A pulse thunders in my brain. Still Fig has not let me go. The pain comes again like a huge tidal wave, and then it rolls back, leaving my brain leeched of sense. When it subsides I shake in stupid horror.

Fig’s eyes roll back into her head. A voice comes from her mouth that belongs to no human.

“O my mountain hyacinth,

what shepherds trod upon you

with clumsy, rustic foot?

Now you are a broken seal:

a scarlet stain upon the earth.

Figmentum es

Figmentum es Figmentum es

FIGMENTUM ES FIGMENTUM ES FIGMENTUM ES”

Accolades, sister. You have killed Figment. You are Figment. Do not report for duty, a soft female voice says within my head. My wrath be thine.

Then it is quiet and Fig is dead.

VOLGA CROUCHES OVER A man in the gloom, pumping at his chest. She gives up, sits back on her heels, and looks at me in weariness. “Lyria, what is it?”

“I…I don’t know.” I shake my head, unable to find the words. Did it really happen? I’d think myself mad if my nostril wasn’t all cut up and bloody. Is the squid thing in my brain? What does it mean that I’m the Figment? What duty am I not to report for? How do I explain that a little monster just exploded out of Fig into my nostril? It’s inside me. Whatever it is. It spoke to me. It’s silent now. There’s no pain. Just the sound of the wind and the creaking of metal and huge trees all around us. The world itself feels evil.

“Fig’s dead,” I finally say.

“Impossible.”