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canyouhearthelight · 1 month

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I forgot how hard the therapy chapter hits, but it definitely still feels needed. These kids are so messed up by all this, not to mention the things that happened before Imperator.

Hugs to them all (Jonathan, don't squish me please).

Project Praetorian 26: Vulnerability

Molly's first testing session, followed by group therapy! Yay! Shiloh talks about anxiety, and there is discussion about healthy shit about the way labor gets divided in this little found family! Molly and Echo talk about their feelings! So does Mark! So does everyone! It's NICE! The testing isn't but did you expect anything else! Beta-read by @canyouhearthelight and @writing-with-olive

Molly

The floor was freezing under her feet as she collapsed out of the tube and crawled towards the robe.

Other praetorians rushed around, pulling her to her feet, their bodies already garbed back into the robe, and Molly clawed at her skin once she was clothed again, trying not to cry. Being covered up…it had been humiliating, beyond words. If Koleth wasn’t so utterly inhuman, almost as much as the machines themselves, it would have been worse.

Even as it was, there was a part of her that had almost felt…almost felt like the pain itself wasn’t so bad, almost like a penance for having gotten Annette killed. For being the reason her family had been at the camp when…

She was wrapped back in the robe and shaking, but why was she looking at someone’s feet?

Oh she was on the floor. Why was she on the floor?

Casey was shouting, shouting that someone had fainted, and Koleth was calm. “Medical, enter testing chamber, perform an inspection.”

The doctor, the one who’d injected her with that awful chemical was coming towards her, checking her pulse. She pulled Molly’s head up and began checking the pupils, Molly flinching from the bright lights, and then reported, “No concussion, higher than average pulse. No signs of chemical or radiation burns. I’d have to run a more advanced scan for signs of any other damage, but it’s more likely to be a psychosomatic reaction from stress.”

“Thank you, Medical. Test subjects dismissed for psychiatric debriefing with Dr. Leon.”

Molly felt herself shuffled with the other kids, brought back to the dorm, where she quickly changed back into her normal clothes the instant she was back in the room with the other girls. She felt herself shaking, heard Casey talking - talking to her. She didn’t reply, and Casey spoke again.

“What?”

“I said, you passed out in there. What’s going on?”

“I just…Is it always like that? Stripping down in front of scientists and each other, that burning feeling, the screaming in the machine?”

Casey shrugged. “I don’t feel it as screaming, but basically, yeah. It’s always torture. And eventually your powers and resistance to the chemical develop as far as the rest of us have where you strip all the way down, so they can give you more mutagen and blast you with more rads to burn it fast enough.” Casey saw the look on Molly’s face and stopped. “I’m sorry, I’m not helping. Look, it isn’t as bad as it sounds. No one looks at anyone, you saw how we all acted - we all just try to get it over with as fast as possible.”

Molly nodded. “Yeah, no, I believe that none of you - or Koleth - are going to look at anything I don’t want seen. My problem is more that…I don’t want the other staff looking. Like the Lab Techs, or…”

Echo shrugged. “Yeah, we got modesty screens for a reason. The only people who even could see are each other, and maybe Doctor Bailey, who has seen all of us during physicals. And who had enough of a career in medicine before that that for her it’s just bodies. We’re all just lab rats here.” The bitterness in her voice was obvious, but the contempt was oddly comforting for Molly. It meant that there was no chance of adding anything sexual to what was already happening to them.

“So…what’s the debriefing?”

“Group therapy. Leon talks to all of us. About what happened. Day after tomorrow we have combat training. We’ll talk about scheduling with you if Vergil didn’t already.”

***

Shiloh

Group therapy always started the same way. Sitting around the lounge, mostly in pajamas, usually a few hours after testing. Vergil had claimed a small chair by the door, farthest from the AC unit, while Mark and Casey sat close to each other on the couch, with Echo joining them, next to Casey. Xavier was leaning back in an armchair, with Jonathan claiming the other one in the room. Shiloh contented themself with a beanbag, which allowed them to stim with the small, rolling balls inside the bag under their grip whenever they weren’t sign-talking, and Molly cast a look around before eventually pulling a small, rocking lounge chair a little closer to Vergil, to Xavier’s left.

Leon entered the room, and took a seat. “Alright, everyone. A lot has happened since the last time we did a group session. We have a new member, longstanding members had their first…” The therapist winced, “Live-fire engagement. Curtis told me to get that phrase right. Does anyone want to go first? And before you say it, Xavier, Mark, you may not try the joke hazing where you say “newbie goes first.”

Shiloh rolled their eyes - Leon refused to get military terminology right and seemed to be under the impression the team was unaware that she and Curtis had co-conspired to be able to kill Volkov.

Echo went first, which did startle Shiloh, Echo usually preferred to stay back and listen.

“Honestly, feel pretty good. Got a lot done, dealing with the headaches of getting hacking done with the alien shit. Uh, weird feelings. Koleth wanted to talk to me about the whole… accomplishments thing, and that was actually the catalyst for the whole breakdown I had earlier where I needed to talk to you all about what I needed moving forward, because…” Echo shrugged. “I don’t know. Never gotten any respect from an adult before, would have killed for it from a long time, but the idea of getting it from Koleth was horrifying, and the idea of spending more time talking to her than to you was…yeah, no.”

Leon looked pointedly at Mark, and Shiloh glanced over as Mark responded, doing the usual SimCom of signing and speaking. “Alright, yeah. I talked to Leon about a similar problem. I had a call with Franklin a little while after our big meeting, and it was weird. Same reason, he was…he talked to me like someone he thought he could talk to like some kind of protege. I just… I didn’t know how to handle it. The idea that he sees something in me that…it makes my skin crawl, and I don’t know what to do about it, but I understand. I’m sorry, Echo.”

“Does anyone want to talk about the actual combat? I heard there was something that happened with actual chain of command that Curtis was worried about, in terms of actual military discipline.” Leon pressed, looking between Mark and Echo.

Shiloh grinned. It hadn’t been a bad idea, but they could tell that it was going to do things to Mark’s ego. Curtis had all but choked when told that he was in command now, in total violation of military protocol, but he’d adapted as fast as he could.

Leon nodded. “Alright. So. does that feel like something that…you know what I’m not even remotely qualified to question that. Fine. Who wants to share next? Shiloh, do you want to?”

Fuck. They should have known the arrogant posture, even with the quiet rubbing of the beans in the bag, was going to cause problems, especially in the current environment when everyone had been quietly talking about their nerves with…

“I’m nervous. I hadn’t seen the effects of the alien weapons up close, and even in the fucking testing they’ve been doing, Mark managed to melt the skin of his left hand. It wore me down pretty bad to grow it all back, and that was a tiny injury. I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to do if I have to actually get dozens of people back on their feet to fight again. Maybe if they’re all only lightly wounded, but seriously hurt? I’ll be passing out after the first two or three. Maybe I can stabilize them and have serious doctors fixing them, but…” The tension left their shoulders. “There’s not a lot I can do. It’s just me. And there’s so little margin for error, and I’m scared, because…what am I gonna do when it’s triage? When a bunch of you are hurt? When I’m not able to save all of you? Because we saw what those things could do and right now we’re trying to figure out the counters, but there’s a limit and eventually we are going to get unlucky and I don’t know if I can…”

Shiloh broke off, and found themselves stimming on the beanbag, rocking slowly. They wanted to believe that it wasn’t just the fear, it was the helplessness. In the middle of the kinds of fights they’d be thrown into, it wasn’t that they couldn’t fight, but that they were no more able to inflict damage than the normal troopers. Which meant that they couldn’t really help stop the damage from happening, either.

Xavier spoke. “If we get good enough, we should be able to make it so that never happens, right? That’s why we’re pushing on the weapons testing, to avoid that being a thing that can come up.”

Leon grunted. “Yeah, which brings me to the next problem. Mark already seriously hurt himself working on that - how badly are you all willing to hurt yourselves to accomplish this? I mean, you all did see the level of firepower the aliens came down with, and I fully get that what you’re doing makes sense, but I want to ask you all a question. Echo with the computers, Casey, Mark, Xavier, Shiloh, with the weapons testing, Jonathan and Vergil with conventional training…how certain are all of you that you haven’t been using that as a way of coping with just…fear?”

Jonathan snarled. “Yeah. We are. No shit. We’re all we’ve got and those things have weapons that…fucking shit body armor doesn’t mean anything, and cover barely does. We don’t even have to be that close for it to hurt us. Shiloh can heal us from it but only to a point and we’re…fuck, yeah, of course we’re trying to get some kind of control. We actually got to see those things, and there’s no way out of THAT that isn’t…that isn’t through them.”

That was so fucking real that Shiloh almost cried. It was fucking terrifying. It hadn’t been real, until now, it had just been Imperator, but now, suddenly, even the horror of the testing, of the torture, of the abductions, that had been supplanted by the knowledge that they were expected to fight…that.

Vergil said something, slowly signing it after. “Rip and tear? Only way out is through?”

No one laughed, and Vergil shrugged. “I don’t know what to do. We’re…” he was more halting, stopping to sign as he went. “I could do it, but there’s…”

Mark broke in. “If they could get here, if they can expand between planets, there’s billions of them. That was a handful. One ship. They could have thousands. And I don’t know what we’ll do if they strafe from orbit. I know that’s above my paygrade, but…” He shrugged. “It’s a lot.”

“Does anyone have a perspective on this that might be helpful?”

Casey

No one spoke, and Casey found herself looking at Molly, who looked tiny, and terrified, at just how grim things were getting.

“We did promise each other. And we’re making progress on the alien weaponry. We don’t have to do it alone. The ships are being picked apart by engineers from all over the world, right? Echo broke the computer, so maybe we can do this. We’re not screwed, and like Mark said, some of the heavier stuff is above our paygrade, so maybe other people have ideas. Or can get some.”

Leon nodded. “Right. Not everything is your responsibility. As much as you will feel pressured to perform, as the war goes on, as much as you’re going to be forced to grow up too fast, please keep remembering, not everything is your responsibility. Which…” She shot a lingering look at Casey.

“Were you the one who suggested bayonet drills with Curtis, by the way? It’s hard work, and I can’t imagine that ever being useful in actual combat.”

Leon blinked. “Uh…”

Casey shrugged. “I know you said I was struggling with expressing anger, and it has helped, I just…yeah, he said we’re cutting back on that because it’s not practical for the kind of combat we’re doing now.”

“I asked if there was anything useful for harnessing anger, he said yeah, he knew an exercise for it, I didn’t know it was bayonet drills til after he started doing them with you, but after you started doing them it started being a lot easier to get you to express anger in healthy ways and to get you to set boundaries as well as making you more comfortable with the kind of violence that’s going to be expected of you, so…I wasn’t going to tell him to stop.” The psychologist was not remotely ashamed.

Mark perked up, and Casey knew it was not a question of if he was reassessing but what, Xavier simply nodded, Shiloh gave Casey a lazy grin, and Jonathan looked vaguely unsettled.

Casey blinked. “Ah. Anyway. Uh. I’ve been talking more with Echo, as she knows, and I…”

“The issues we’ve been talking about.”

“I mean, uhm. So, it’s been a little harder, because I’ve had a few new kids here, and I’ve been…trying not to mother them too hard, but it’s easy for me to fall back into them, though with Molly it’s easier to avoid because she just got out of the hospital and I’ve been busy with weapons testing.” She shot a guilty look at Molly. It had taken time to convince herself that it was okay to not spend time every day in the infirmary near Molly’s bed, but Leon had eventually given actual orders that Casey was to be barred from that wing at least every other day in order to force her to recognize that that was not her responsibility.

“How has that felt?”

“Like I’m doing something wrong. Like I’m not allowed to take the break to go sit down, or read, or make myself some tea, without making sure everyone else is okay first. Without checking in with Vergil and Molly, without making sure that the dorm is clean.” It seemed so…stupid. It wasn’t like the others wouldn’t help if she had asked, but it felt natural to just do it.

Mark was quiet, and then spoke. “Case…”

“No.” Casey surprised herself with the vehemence of her voice. Before she could let herself be stopped by the anxiety, she continued. “I don’t want to hear it right now. I know, I know you haven’t just been ignoring it, but while you and Xavier have been doing “brain shit” while dealing with all the calls from Gideon and all the brass, you could still be actually…I don’t know, checking in on me.”

She saw Leon nodding out of the corner of her eye even as she took a deep, sucking breath. Mark nodded. “Of course. And I’m sorry.”

“For what it’s worth, Casey, I’m sorry too.” Jonathan said, quietly. “I should have been helping as well.”

“Yeah, same.” Echo grunted. “Or at least coming home early enough to be able to.”

“We’ll talk about a chore schedule in the dorm, maybe.” Casey said, quietly. “It’s been something I’ve been talking about with Leon, with how I was kinda…trained to be parent number 3.”

Leon nodded. “Right, and not everything is your responsibility. You’re still a kid.” An uproar of shouts burst over that, and then she said, “yes, yes, I am well aware of all the irony contained in me saying that in this context, and I am well aware that some garden variety parentification is the least of any of your fucking problems, but it is definitely one of the ones I’m actually qualified to help you solve rather than just give you the coping mechanisms to mitigate.”

There was a brief moment of laughter at having actually gotten Leon to curse, but for a moment, everyone was laughing, and Casey felt her sides ache at the release of tension.

Then Molly spoke, very quietly, as the laughter died down. “Ever since I got here, you’ve all been talking about this like it’s normal. Is that for real?”

“It’s not…none of us think this is normal.” Xavier spoke slowly. “It’s more that we’re…probably not going to get to go back to normal. This is going to be our new normal. All we can do is look after each other. So…we try to just get into the routine and not freak out over it, you know?”

Molly’s mouth twitched, then she gave a brief, “ah.” A small cough, then, “Why do I feel responsible for…what happened?”

“Because you’re human. And you’re unlucky enough to have been the first person to have been recruited out of an alien encounter.”

Molly suddenly bolted up. “So when do I start training? I want to be ready. I want to start being ready to do what the rest of you do, and start…”

“Two days from now, but…Look, it’s important you understand that you don’t have to fix this, or win the war on your own.” Mark was the one talking. “You got unlucky. What happened wasn’t your fault. And you don’t have to make up for it. Whatever you’re doing here, focus on something you want to fix in the world. We have to win the war to have the power to fix it. And we have to be alive to make the demand.”

Molly froze. Something worked in her brain. “I want a world where Annette wouldn’t have had to wonder if people loved her. I don’t know what would have had to be different, but…I want a world where everyone knows they matter. Where people don’t just have their lives turned inside out in an instant by that kind of massacre. No matter who it’s by.”

Casey remembered, before her kidnapping, the shooter drills. Wondered if that’s what Molly had meant, or maybe she’d been referring to the news about the bombings in the Middle East and Africa.

“That’s a good one. Focus on that. Once we get through the war, we’ll be able to do that. Don’t try to die for anything, but be willing to live to make that happen.”

Molly took a breath. “Alright. But I still want to push. I was a perfectionist as a musician, and I want to learn to use my powers the same way. We all just talked about the dangers of that kind of fight, and…we probably can’t afford to be anything else, right?”

Leon was wincing, and Casey knew ahead of time what was about to happen. She glanced at Mark, who slowly, almost imperceptibly, nodded, and Casey felt a flash of irrational horror that she couldn’t quite explain.

Casey answered as delicately as she could, wondering why she felt guilty for doing so. “We’ll take it slow so we don’t get hurt. But yeah, we do need to be as close to perfect as we can get.”

#writeblr #original fiction #writers on tumblr #Project Praetorian #found family #The Project #traumatized characters #original sci fi #humans are space orcs #science fiction

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canyouhearthelight · 1 month

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Chapter 18: Social Engineering

Lights, Camera, Action! Lash and Nils go public and dare people to call their bluff. The interview goes slightly off the rails, with good reason.

@baelpenrose, as co-author and beta reader for this chapter, did a great job making sure the reporters were as 'paparazzi' as possible.

I can fake a smile

I can force a laugh

I can dance and play the part

If that's what you ask

Give you all I am

Christina Perri, “Only Human”

Lash

By the time Lucas had returned to the hospital, Mori had pulled herself together and was in full combat general mode. Neither Nils nor I had clued her in to our plan regarding shaming the hospital into covering the cost of care for everyone involved in the fire, and I was grateful that he hadn’t mentioned it in front of her. With her focused on our parents’ care and haranguing doctors and nurses for updates, I could focus on dealing with the reporters who were already descending on the hospital.

Nils was hovering next to me, his hand close to mine. “Important to ask because a whole lot of people are going to ask unimportant shit and we need to be on the same page to avoid idiot drama that will deflect from our goal: we’re a couple or just good friends? It doesn’t matter what our answer is as long as it’s the same one.” He took a breath. “If you don’t have the emotional bandwidth for that, easy way out is ‘we stick to whatever bullshit they feed us until the cameras go away and something else dominates the news cycle’.”

I thought it about for a brief moment. “We’re going to be doing a lot of lying, let’s have one less to keep track of. Stick to the truth: we’re friends who recently went on our first date and you were meeting my parents when everything went down. If someone sticks a camera in my parents’ faces later down the road, they won’t have to think to confirm that.”

He nodded. “That works well enough. Okay, so to clarify our story: The hospital admins - someone even I, with all my familiarity with the hospital staff don’t know by sight - offered this to the people injured in this crisis as a one-time matter because they recognize the extraordinary circumstances involved. They recognize the crisis in the community and have risen to the occasion. We can say some nice things about the doctors that let them share the glory the local news is going to be throwing at us because hey, local news loves a hero. Hospital will be really reluctant to give it back if they can trade for political favors later.”

“Oh, I cannot wait to hear you say nice things about your father. On camera, where everyone can see it,” I teased, trying to bleed off some of my anxiety. Truth be told, any anonymity I had up until now was about to be blasted out the window when we spoke to these reporters. And I would have to use my real name, or my online persona was toast.

The thought immediately made my heart sink, tears prickling my eyes. Toast. The burned out cafe, all those lives wasted… and for what? Because some hateful asshole thought he had the right to -

I didn’t even realize I was speaking out loud until Nils bumped me with his shoulder. “Hey. I’m not going to tell you it’s okay, because it isn’t. But right now, we can honor the dead by taking care of the living. So let’s focus, okay? We can figure out whoever did this and get it back in blood later.” He offered me his hand. “For right now though, let’s go get some debts waived.”

He gave a very subtle gesture towards the window, where to my horror, I could already see news vans outside, prevented from accessing the building. Vultures. I took a deep breath, took his hand, and squeezed it. “We look like burn victims, right?” When he nodded, I nodded back. “Then let’s do this before someone stops us.”

The moment we stepped outside the door, hospital wristbands conspicuously visible, we were swarmed. I played up my shock by turning slightly into Nils, shielding my eyes. Four microphones were shoved in our faces, a female voice demanding “Were you at the fire earlier this evening?”

“Yes,” I answered. “We were inside with my parents when the fire was started.”

“Are you saying the fire was deliberate?” came a male voice from behind the blinding lights on the cameras.

“Absolutely. Someone blocked the exits and threw a burning bottle of something into the cafe.”

Nils took over at that point. “Molotov cocktails. The cafe had been the victim of several attempted arsons prior to this, according to the late owner, Ahmet Yildiz, who had, by the time this last fire claimed his life, given up on getting a proper investigation. He died attempting to help evacuate his customers and community.” His voice was clear, cold, and his words managed to bring across institutional neglect without actually blaming anyone of importance. “He wasn’t the only one.”

“We were lucky,” I choked out through a lump in my throat. “We have minor burns and some smoke inhalation, but right now my parents and many others are in surgery or the ICU. One is in the PICU.” As that last part sank in, some of the reporters and camera people around us gasped. “And we are all the lucky ones. At least three people never made it out, and we don’t know if everyone else is going to make it.”

A burst of chatter from the back of the reporters, then one of the men in the front asked a question I’d been dreading. “Can I get you two to identify yourselves?”

“My name is Elakshi Botelho. My parents, Sahar and Lorso Botelho, are still undergoing tests and treatment.”

“And mine is Nils Andover. My father is one of the doctors in the hospital, and my mother works as a lawyer.”

“We’ve heard both of your names from other witnesses at the scene, several of whom credit the two of you with a bulk of the rescues, what exactly happened during the evacuation?” Nils’ eyes flicked towards me.

I gave the tiniest of nods and took a deep breath. “The only exit was on fire. Nils was able to open one of the metal gates over the other exits. He, my father, and Uncle - Mr. Yildiz helped carry people out while my mother and I wrapped everyone in whatever cloths we could wet to keep them from getting burned or inhaling smoke. Nils and my father managed to get me and my mother out just before the cafe exploded.” My voice was trembling towards the end, and I let the tears just roll down my cheeks. I was too tired to fight them, and it probably helped our cause anyway.

“Have you spoken with authorities about the attack?” the first woman asked.

“With all due respect, I have been more concerned about my family and my community,” I responded. “We plan to speak to authorities when they reach out.”

Nils gave my hand a small pump, as though communicating silently that I’d said the perfect thing, then responded to the next question. “What went through both your heads when the fire went up?”

“Need to exit, wait, the exit is on fire, hey the windows, wait, the windows are blocked and they’re hot, oh wait, I have a leather jacket that can protect my hands while I open them.” Nils managed to drag his normal sarcasm with a trace of entirely uncharacteristic humility as though that was a chain of thoughts that would have occurred to a normal person to describe it all so dismissively. “Following that, ‘hey, leather jackets are fire resistant, I should probably help get people out,’ and somewhere in there is ‘thank God everyone here is sane, compassionate, and also helping’.”

He took a breath. “Genuinely though, it’s amazing how much everyone came together in the fire, her dad, the cafe owner, her, her mom, everyone just kinda went for it and tried to help as much as possible, evacuate people as fast as possible, tried to help medic as much as possible. The hospital’s risen to the occasion too, in the face of all this: they said they were going to take care of the victims of this attack without charge, and they’ve been giving the victims amazing care.”

The reporters went wild when Nils dropped that bit of ‘news’ on them. One managed to shout above the others a question about whether Nils’ family connection to the hospital had anything to do with that decision. “Both our fathers work for the hospital,” I confirmed when I felt him jerk like he’d been shot. “But the hospital has very much made this decision out of recognition for what can only be called a heinous act of terror committed against a small community.”

“Is it appropriate for you two to apply terrorism charges to an unknown…”

Nils’ voice cut across the question, coldly. “We just walked out of a building that exploded - killing at least three people - because a bunch of people set it on fire because they didn’t like that the owner was from the Middle East, after the building had been graffitied, repeatedly, with anti-Arab racial slurs. Terrorism is ‘violence committed against civilians for political reasons’ - what the FUCK would you call this if not that?”

I noticed that Nils left out the ‘by nonstate actors’ part from the definition of ‘terrorism.’ Regardless, murmurs rippled through the crowd. The point had been gotten across and given them something to chew on for local reports. The first reporter to recover decided to pursue that point. “Is there anything you would like to say to the people who are responsible for the fire?”

By this point, I was shaking with emotion and dying to go back inside and sit down in a quiet place, see my parents breathing. “You burned down a popular shop full of customers who were minding their own business. There are women dying upstairs for drinking tea and gossiping about their grandchildren. My cousin, Imran, is dead because he was picking up pastries for his wife and daughters. My parents are severely injured because they were there to meet the young man I had just gone on a first date with. You attacked people for being people and having lives. You are a coward, and I hope you have every day you deserve for the rest of your life.” In that moment, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I spun, pulling my hand free from Nils’ and storming back into the hospital.

I heard Nils answer one more question in a capacity that barely managed to conceal impatience verging on contempt - though that might have been my familiarity with him, the reporters seemed charmed - before I heard him rushing after me.

“I think we did it, Lash. You alright?”

Brushing tears from my cheeks, I laughed bitterly. “I am the furthest thing from alright. I want to see Mama and Baba, and I want Baba’s beard to scratch my cheek when he hugs me, even though I know his face is burned and his beard is gone. I want Mama to be nosy and pat my cheek and her bracelets clatter and her rings to bump my cheekbone like they do. I want Mori to be here to visit, not to help make sure my parents are going to survive. I want to go get coffee and have Uncle wink at me when he sneaks me extra baklava, and I can’t have any of it.” Without even thinking, I turned and buried my face in his chest, charred leather smell be damned.

“We’ll stay here for them, okay? We’ll be the first thing they see when they wake up. Promise. Your mom isn’t going to be long - it’ll be longer for your dad. But your mom should be coming out within an hour or two at this point.” Nils hugged me then, as though on impulse. His chin fit exactly on top of my head, and he was patient enough to let me ugly cry on him until all I was left with were sniffles and hiccups.

He said nothing about what I must look like after all that, only steadying me. “I think you need your sister right now. Let’s go find her. She reminds me of your mom, so she probably knows exactly what to do.”

#original fiction #nihilus rex #traumatized characters #original writing #modern dystopia #afterverse #writeblr #the miys #arcadian inquisition #science fiction #original science fiction #original sci fi #my writing #friend’s writing

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canyouhearthelight · 1 month

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It Runs in the Family

Hello!

This is another of my short fics I promised. It's been done for nearly a year and change - longer if you recognize it from part of "The Miys" (It was one of the stories told during a camping trip).

Short explanation is that this is the story of Red Riding Hood's grandmother, somewhat modernized.

Long explanation is that there are a LOT of trigger warnings on this one. A lot. I avoid getting graphic for the vast majority of the ones I am about to list, but I am still going to say to take these at face value. With the exception of the last one, none of these are glorified, excused, or otherwise without consequences. The person who does them gets what they deserve (spoiler, but a needed one).

Grooming

Domestic violence

Financial abuse

Parental kidnapping

Murder

I promise the next story has no trigger warnings whatsoever, however. None. Not one.

Credit for this goes to @baelpenrose for being patient in waiting for this to be dropped, and for the author Tanith Lee, who's story "Wolfland" is a very clear and blatant inspiration.

When I was a young girl, I became the Lady of the estate. At eight years old, my mother passed away, leaving me the heir and only child of my father. I grew up spoiled - a princess, ruling the forests of the Schwartzwald, where my father leased mining rights for a percentage and sold the timber for dear cost. The howling of the wolves at night was my wonderland and my lullaby, and I never took it for granted, knowing that I would inherit such riches.

When I was thirteen, I became a debutante: old enough for marriage, suitors knocking down my door. My father warned me to be as choosy as choosy could be, because none of them would be good enough for me, and I needed to find the one who was close enough.

Rolfe came to court me when I was fifteen years old. He came in the darkest of winter, with a basket of peaches from a hot house in the south, still firm and ripe like nothing I had ever seen. The dessert of royalty. When I was seventeen, he returned with a carriage and six shining black horses pulling it. The entire team would be mine if only he could come again.

When I was nineteen, he proposed marriage and handed me a thick velvet cloak, lined with the fur of a wolf, with a clasp that held the sigil of an arrow and a shield. When I accepted my proposal, he promised me that, once we were wed, he would court me properly. For the last four years, he had showered me with expensive gifts. I laughed at him, “How much more properly could you court me?”

We were wed the winter that I was twenty, and that night, after we had said our vows, as I lay in our marriage bed, he came into the room. Red in the face with drink, with a cloth covered basket over his arm, just as when I was fifteen. He handed the basket to me, and with a smile I took off the cloth to find the perfect, hot house peaches, still firm.

But once I lifted one from the basket, I found something coiled and black at the bottom of the basket, like a snake. Pouring the peaches from the basket, there was a bullwhip. As soon as the whip struck the cover of the bed, he snatched it up, wrenched me around with my hair, and proceeded to beat me until I couldn’t breathe any more.

This was my marriage. Rolfe either drank himself to sleep, or beat me until he was satisfied. He needed no pretense - if he was awake, he was beating me.

Finally, when I was twenty-three, somehow, I became with child. When I grew ill and couldn’t keep food down, he called a midwife from the village, hopeful that he finally had an heir. The midwife checked on me, and whispered that I would have a daughter. She then turned to Rolfe, chin held high, and confidently told him that I was with a son, but that I could not be hit, or fall, or trip - that I was not to lift anything heavier than a gown, for risk of losing the child.

Those were the sweetest eight months of reprieve in my life.

The day that I went into labor was the day my husband struck the midwife, who had become my confidant and ally, dead as soon as the child was born a daughter. But what Rolfe did not realize was that, throughout those eight months, she had been by my side at night. “To keep me healthy,” she had said. But in reality, as I drifted to sleep, she would smile with her long, yellow teeth, and tell me stories and lullabies that reminded me of the howling in the woods, putting my mind at ease. I would dream of blood, and meat, and the yellow flowers that grew on the grounds in the dead of winter.

Once I had recovered from the birth, and a wet nurse was found, Rolfe did not hesitate to pick up his whip once more. As he did, my mind often strayed to those flowers and to the wolves I could hear hunting on the grounds. Whether it was these thoughts or having become a mother that made me bold, I never gave it any thought. What I did know was, where before I had done everything to keep Rolfe’s attention away from me, now I demanded to see Annika, uncaring in the knowledge that he would beat me either way, whether with his fists or that damnable whip. I wanted to know that my daughter - my heir, not his - was safe and healthy and loved. He would, inevitably, lash out, and as soon as my mind would drift to the howling in the forest, he would beat me harder.

The wolves became a special enemy to him in the months to follow, as though he blamed them for my boldness. He began carrying a pistol so that he could shoot them on sight as he left the property to spread his malice and my wealth down in the city. When he returned from these trips, I would laugh as I saw his fury, knowing the wolves had been, again, too quick for him. No small part of me hoped they would, maybe this time, be so quick as to relieve me of my burden.

It was the winter that Annika was two when things changed dramatically for the worse. At this point, Rolfe had taken to organizing many unsuccessful hunting excursions on the grounds, inviting his odious associates into my home. My home, I always thought of it, Annika’s home. Never his. The only saving grace of these intruders under my roof was the distraction they provided for my husband, keeping him downstairs to carrouse loudly with them, rather than coming upstairs where I hid. During these invasions, I was able to steal quiet moments with Annika and her nurse. My daughter would babble to me endlessly about all the things she learned and seen, giving me small tokens that she found - a pretty stone, a perfect pinecone, endless amounts of feathers.

It was during one such stolen visit that Annika was particularly demanding toward her nurse, fussing and pulling at her. The nurse seemed to realize what was so urgent, and gave me a soft smile. “Annika picked flowers for you today. I have them in water. Just a moment.” She lifted my daughter and left the room, leaving my heart to momentarily ache at the absence. Soon enough, however, they returned, Annika holding a small vase with the solemnity only seen in a Small Child with an Important Task. I was both startled and delighted to see a small posey of the yellow flowers found only on our grounds.

“Mama!” she cried, holding the flowers out to me.

The nurse smiled again at her antics. “Every one that she saw during our walk today, she would point and say ‘Mama’ until I would pick it for you. I think they remind her of your hair.”

I touched the end of one lock, reminded again that Annika had inherited her father’s dark looks rather than my fair ones. Thankfully, it seemed the only thing she had inherited, as she was fast proving to have a very gentle nature. “I will treasure them, my love,” I promised sincerely and honestly.

Far too soon, however, that visit ended as they all did, with the nurse taking Annika for her afternoon nap. From habit, I went to unlock my wardrobe and pull out the carved box in which I kept all of my daughter’s gifts, quickly and gently touching each one like a talisman before sealing them away again. I then turned to find a place to set the vase of flowers, so that I may be able to enjoy their sight before I dried them and stored those away, as well.

So absorbed in my thought as to whether I should hang them or press them, I committed a terrible error. I did not notice the door to my chambers opening until I heard the crash behind me. I turned, dreading what I would see. Surely enough, the distraction provided by Rolfe’s companions had failed me, and he was now standing in my private space, kicking and swearing at the table he had broken upon falling into it. When he turned his attention towards me, fury shone even through the glassiness of drink. He stomped his way to me, hand reaching already to grab whatever part of me he could.

And then he paused, hand hanging empty in the air, staring at the small table beside me. His hot anger abruptly turned into cold, shaking rage. “What are those?” he growled.

“Flowers, from our daughter,” I whispered around the vise of fear in my throat.

“That useless thing is to be kept away from us both,” he reminded me. His hand suddenly returned to life, a backhanded blow like a hammer knocking me to the ground. Before I could pick myself up or even object, he threw the vase, flowers and all, into the fireplace. My body was wracked with sobs as I watched them wither to ash, only for the sound to be cut off with a boot to my stomach.

The mind is a wonderful and terrible thing, as the nurses that surrounded my bed when I next knew consciousness explained that they had needed to treat me on the floor for the first day, unsure if I was safe to be moved after such a brutal beating. Indeed, though I did not remember the act, a mental catalogue of my injuries implied it had been the most savage one to date. When I asked after his whereabouts, I was assured that he had left for the city shortly after they had arrived, and had not yet returned.

“Bring me my daughter, please,” I sighed. Though I did not want her to see me like this, I needed to know that she was unharmed.

They looked between each other, nervously, before one covered my hand with her own. “We cannot, Lady. I’m sorry.”

“He needn’t know,” I begged. “Please, she is my child and the only good thing left in my life.”

“It isn’t that - “

I struggled to sit up, pain flaring from every part of my body. “Is she hurt?” I demanded hysterically. “Tell me she is alive and unharmed.”

The one holding my hand stood and pressed me gently back onto the bed. “She is alive and unharmed,” she assured. “She has been sent to the city to live with her nurse and her family.”

“He sent her away!?” I screamed, now thrashing to be allowed out of the bed. “I need to retrieve her! Let me go!”

The nurse was far less gentle in her tone, now. “You are not well enough to travel, though I dare not let you out of this bed for fear that you will kill yourself in the attempt. Lay down and stop making your injuries worse, or I shall restrain you without telling you exactly how safe your daughter is.”

“You will tell me either way, or it will not be Rolfe you need fear when I am out of this bed,” I snarled before relenting.

While the other nurses were appalled, the one who had been speaking was an older woman, and clearly used to difficult patients. She simply arched an eyebrow and sat back down, still holding my hand gently. “The Lord of the estate ordered the child sent to the city to live with one of his associates, who recently lost a daughter. The nurse was to travel with her, before being dismissed. Before she left, she confided in me that she knew this man from his many stays here, and would not trust him or his wife with a dog, much less a child too small to bite him if abused. She instead took Lady Annika to stay with her at the home of her sister, who is widowed. She will raise Annika and keep her safe.”

Tears rolled down my cheeks, knowing that there would be no way for her to send word, for fear that Rolfe would see it and find where our daughter truly was. “She is no longer under his control,” I assured myself, surrendering to once again being alone in the hell of my marriage.

Convalescing was a long journey, made no less frustrating by the threats Rolfe made towards those responsible for my recovery. Several of the attendant nurses could be overheard discussing how truly sorry my husband must be, how much he must truly love me, that he was so concerned I recovered. I sneered to myself and the eldest nurse, both of us well aware that Rolfe held no such love. Instead, this was another form of control - if I were to die, I would be free of him, and if that were to happen, he would punish anyone close by for letting me escape his reach. Everything in my life - including my death - was to be decided by him and him alone.

I was able to walk a few, painful steps by the time he organized the burning. Winters in the Schwartzvald were long, and the sight of the yellow flowers reminding him of the daughter who escaped grew too infuriating for him to bear. His solution was to burn them out, each and every one within the grounds of our estate. His associates brought their servants and hired men, placing bets on which would find and burn out the most. I could only watch from the window of my chambers as my beautiful, wild forest became speckled with mud from where the defenseless plants had been uprooted, followed by great bonfires where they were burned. Even the wolves had left when the commotion began, as though knowing that so many men would guarantee that someone would be able to kill them.

Throughout the rest of that winter and the following spring, a madness possessed Rolfe. I was still too frail to so much as leave my chambers, and he was unsuccessful in his many attempts to locate my daughter. When the wolves returned in the brief summer, he would jump and shoot in the direction of any snap of a twig, screaming at the distant howls that taunted him. By the time autumn crisped the air, I was able to sit at my desk and balance the accounts, scowling at the great amounts of money Rolfe had burned through as though it had been heaped on the bonfires instead of the flowers. On one such afternoon, while the sun was still in the sky, I heard my team of horses returning, pulling the magnificent carriage that he had gifted me all those years ago. As I put the account records away, I braced myself for what new fury had taken him over, wondering if this would be the day he would cease caring about my recovery.

The door to my chambers slammed open, and rather than an angry and violent beast, I was treated to the sight of a drunken and rejoicing man. I was immediately even more suspicious of what could possibly make him so.

“I have found her!” he sang, stumbling in a circle. “I have been celebrating, for I believe I have found the child. I shall go to retrieve her tomorrow!”

I hid my hands in my lap to conceal the trembling fear that had overtaken me. “That’s wonderful news,” I said carefully. “Where has she been?”

He flopped back onto my bed, staring at the ceiling, an empty bottle dangling from one hand. “Freiburg im Breisgau,” he laughed. “The stupid bitch took her to the wrong city. But she will be home tomorrow, where I can keep an eye on her again.”

You wanted her kept from your sight and mine, and she is, I thought. Can you not leave her be? I pressed a hand to my forehead, willing the fear and the headache to retreat. “I will have the servants draw you a warm bath. I am sure you are cold, and would like to be clean when you see our daughter again.”

He mumbled from the bed, incoherent, and I carefully limped to the door to summon someone. After I made my request, I painstakingly made my way down the stairs for the first time in nearly a year, stopping again and again to let my dizziness fade before venturing further. Despite my slow and deliberate progress, my mind raced to find a solution that would keep my child safe - far safer than I currently was. It was only when the howl of a wolf rang out from far too close to the house that my attention was drawn outside. A great, black beast with wild yellow eyes stood in the first snowfall, no more than thirty meters away. “You don’t scare me,” I scolded it quietly. “I have lived with a far more terrible beast than you. I would welcome your teeth in my throat if not for my daughter.”

To my surprise, the wolf made a yipping noise, as though it was laughing at me, and turned to walk away. Immediately behind where it had been sitting, as though its eyes were still staring at me, spots of yellow broke through the snow. Impossibly, the yellow flowers had returned. Although this time, it was autumn, and the flowers had always bloomed only in deepest winter. Hypnotized, as though not in control of my own body, I walked to the great doors I hadn’t been outside of in years, painfully pulled them open just enough, and walked, barefoot, into the snow.

The lullabies and stories from the midwife who died to bring Annika into the world came back to me. There is a wild magic in the flowers that grow on the grounds, but only when they grow out of season. Eating these, and only these, will make you strong enough to change your life. However, no one alive can tell what form that strength will take, only that you must be willing to sacrifice everything in order for the magic to take hold.

Soon enough, I stood in the snow, looking down at the flowers that should not exist anymore. Falling to my knees in reverence and exhaustion, I plucked one, holding it to my face so that I could smell its fragrance. The thought crossed my mind that the midwife had been insane - after all, she had lied to a violent man - and that the flowers would poison me instead. “My life is the only thing I have left to lose,” I whispered.

That is where Rolfe found me, after night had fallen: kneeling in the snow, surrounded by the stems of over a dozen flowers, their yellow heads now gone. “What do you think you are doing?” he roared, yanking me to my feet by my hair. “You are not allowed outside, stupid woman. The wolves will eat you.” It was only then that the flowers that had been too far to reach caught his eye. “Did you plant these!? Only to spite me??”

“No,” I choked out. “They grew back on their own, I planted nothing.”

“You lie,” he spat before walking back to the house, my hair still wrapped in his grip. I cried out in pain as he dragged me up the stone stairs, my wet and numb feet scrabbling and failing to find purchase. Once inside, he turned me to face him, hand still in my hair, and gave me a measuring look. “Still too frail,” he muttered.

Relief flooded me, believing that I was safe. Instead, to my horror, he grabbed the front of my dressing gown, tearing it from my body and throwing me painfully against the stairs. I fought and struggled with what little energy and self-preservation I had left, but in the end, he left me bruised and bleeding on the cold stone as he stood to re-lace his pants. “This one had better be a son,” he instructed me before spitting a mouthful of blood onto my bare skin - mine, from the bite now oozing on my neck.

Slow, hot, impotent fury filled every fiber of my being. I would have laughed at myself, if enough of my mind had been present to think - I was too exhausted and injured to cover myself, much less to exact any revenge or violence on him. One servant came into the hall, and stepped toward me to assist, only to be stopped by a second. “The Lady’s husband does not want us to touch her, on threat of death. He ordered that if she can move enough to disobey him, she can move enough to clean herself up.”

Tears of frustration rolled from my eyes and into my hair. I could barely move my head enough to look out through a nearby window, and that is what I stared out of for the coming hours. Snow falling, the moon slowly climbing higher and higher into the sky. When I could keep my eyes open no longer, I closed them and listened for the chiming rustle of the flakes falling through the trees, for the crunch and howl of the wolves.

At some point, I drifted off, cold and alone on those stairs. But in my dreams, I was warm, and powerful. Stronger than I had ever felt in my life, even before I had been married. I felt boundless, free. And dangerous, oh so dangerous. I wanted to run, and dance, and laugh at all the things that thought they could control me. In my dream, I could pick myself up from the stairs, and I did, smiling. I danced up them, leaping powerfully toward my chambers. I felt no fear - not of Rolfe, not for what he would do to Annika, none. I revelled in the unfamiliar sensation, wrapping it around myself like a blanket. As I drifted further to sleep, I registered the sound of Rolfe shouting, but let myself drift deeper and deeper, until I was dreaming like I had when I was pregnant - dreams of blood, and meat, and yellow flowers. Those dreams had been so comforting, left me so happy, and I let myself feel those things now. I remember thinking that this must be what dying felt like, as everything fell away.

But alas, it was not to be death, for I did awaken the next morning, as a servant I did not recognize stoked the great fireplace in the sitting room. I found myself lying on a chaise, covered with a blanket. That must be what Rolfe had been shouting about, I realized. Wrapping the blanket tightly to my chest, I saw the child that was tending the fire - too old to be Annika, thankfully. I ignored them, instead taking stock of my condition. I felt far less injured than I expected myself to be, although still naked, dirty, and covered in blood. A gasp told me that the child realized I was awake, only to be confirmed a moment later as I heard them take off towards the kitchens, crying “The Lady is awake!”

It must still be early morning, for the head nurse who had stayed on as my personal staff came from the kitchens, where the servants typically ate. Swiftly but unhurried, she came to my side to check me over. “You are filthy my lady. I already have them preparing two baths for you - one to clean you, the other to soak the chill of that damned floor from your bones.”

“Can you help me to my chambers?” I asked, accepting the second blanket she wrapped around me as she helped me carefully stand.

“We are preparing temporary rooms down here for you,” she advised in her typically brusque manner. Her no-nonsense nature had been the main reason I took her on, so I waited for the rest. “There was an incident last night, and unfortunately your chambers will need much repair.”

“An incident?” I started.

She would only shake her head. “I will explain after you are clean, not one minute sooner.”

True to her word, she insisted that every inch of my body be scrubbed, including my scalp, and then checked me for injuries again before allowing me to lower myself into the second bath. Finally, when I was seated up to my chin in warm, fragrant water, I asked again. “The incident.”

She sat on a stool and took a deep breath. “Some idiot left the doors open last night, with you laying on the stairs for all and sundry to see. Unsurprisingly, the blood must have attracted a wolf, for one made its way to your chambers and attacked my Lady’s husband. He was found this morning with his throat torn out and great chunks of him eaten.”

I was grateful that she and I were alone, and that no one could see us. I felt only relief that he was gone, and confusion that a wolf would have walked right past my hurt and bleeding body, only to attack a strong and healthy man. My nurse, who had never held any illusions about Rolfe, seemed more irritated that my rooms were damaged than bothered by Rolfe’s death. “So, he is dead?” I asked for confirmation.

“I do not recommend that you see the body,” she insisted. “Very messy business. But yes, you are a widow, my lady. I would offer my condolences.”

Left unsaid were any actual condolences. We did not lie to each other, and apparently were not beginning to.

Once my water started to cool, I was dried off and again bundled up, this time in warm clothes rather than fashionable ones, and taken to a small, cozy room on the ground floor. It was too small for a fireplace, but seemed to share a wall with the kitchens, as it was far warmer than my chambers had ever been. I was tucked into the bed and covered with several quilts before she would allow me to touch my account books - apparently someone had taken the foresight to retrieve them for me. “You may work on the accounts, but you are only to get out of bed to relieve yourself for the next four days.”

I tried to protest, but she was not alone in her assertions. The cook stepped into the doorway, bearing soup and a scowl. “You get your rest now that you can. Nothing needs done that would need you on your feet.”

Accepting the requirement was the first in a great many changes on the estate after that day. I was able to return my finances to a more stable state, although it required the sale of more lumber than I was entirely comfortable with. I was able to write to Annika’s nurse, who agreed that it may be safer for my daughter to stay in the city, although now she would be able to visit and be better provided for. Once Rolfe was buried, word traveled fast that I was now quite a young widow, but any potential suitors were too put off by the wolves that once again freely roamed the grounds to return after being told they were, under no circumstances, to shoot a single one. If this gave me a reputation for being strange, so be it - my first husband had made my life hell, and I had no wish to repeat the experience.

Annika grew to be a lovely girl, then an even lovelier woman. She never developed her father’s vicious nature, although she never developed the wild nature I had as a young woman, either. She was very gentle and kind, and if I was far more discerning of the men who courted her than she was, she never complained. In the end, it was a businessman she married, one who was fascinated by the wolves and terrified of me, but loved her enough to ask me for permission to marry her. When they had a daughter of their own, I was told fairly but firmly that I could only give her lavish gifts on her birthday, for fear she would be spoiled.

It was when Lena, my granddaughter, was nineteen that Annika passed after a long illness, and her husband passed shortly after of a broken heart. When I wrote to give my condolences, I also advised Lena that this meant she was now my heir, and would need to travel to the estate to learn what that meant. I knew, through Annika’s letters, that Lena had grown into a beautiful, opinionated, somewhat wild young woman. She would be unwilling to visit, so I sweetened the invitation with a cloak of thick velvet, lined with wolf fur, from when I was her age. And I explained that it was not a request, but a requirement of her inheritance. She had much to learn of estate handling and finances.

And even more to learn about the wolves, both human and animal. About yellow flowers and the special liquor we made here at the estate.

#it runs in the family #red riding hood #fairy tale #adaptive fiction #abuse #domestic violence #revenge #vengeance #my writing

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canyouhearthelight · 1 month

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I genuinely don't remember which platform I mentioned this on, but I will never not love the bar being just yeeted into a bookshelf

Shout out to the best joke I’ve ever told, WWDITS style.

(His name is Timothy)

#deaf #tiktok #queer #video #funny #actor #everything needs a deaf #wwdits

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canyouhearthelight · 2 months

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Poor Molly... I know there is a lot going on, but poor Molly.

Project Praetorian 25: Team Dinner

Everyone sits down for massive heaps of food in the mess, and the team enjoys a night of each other's company. Some pleasant conversations before the next day's testing. Beta-read by @canyouhearthelight and @writing-with-olive.

Shiloh

It took an annoyingly long time for everyone to shower and dress in the evening relaxed wear after training, and for everyone to gather up. They were starving, putting Mark’s hand back together had taken a lot of work, and watching the theoretically brightest members of the team snarl and drive themselves insane trying to figure out exactly what to do with a plasma carbine hadn’t done their mood any favors.

So by the time Echo joined them and they all walked down to dinner, Shiloh was ready to eat a person.

They looked sideways at Vergil, who was twitching and pulling at his shirt in a way that indicated overstim.

Damnit. As much as Shiloh wanted to be a pissed off, callous, cranky asshole, as much as they were half convinced it would be easier. It was really, really hard to see another kid go through overstim and not want to help, at least a little.

So they tapped Vergil on the shoulder and nodded. Then signaled Vergil to stay close to them.

As they all approached the cafeteria, they could see Casey and Echo link up and start talking, checking in on Molly but also checking on each other, while Mark and Xavier chatted more about whatever the fuck they were still obsessing over from todays’ weapon testing - they hoped, intensely, that those two would lighten up at some point - but then they saw Jonathan hustling over, keeping up.

The cafeteria had arranged into something actually nice - a rare treat, a pasta bar. It was a black site, but occasionally they put on something nice for the staff, and since they couldn’t be bothered to put on separate cafeterias for staff and lab rats, the Praetorians got to eat the same.

Well, Shiloh was fairly convinced that the real brass got something better, but you know. Good enough.

Shiloh slapped a plateful of buttered noodles onto their own plate, in huge amounts, something simple, not overstimulating, then followed up - filled a second such plate, not quite as full, and handed it to Vergil. They set their plate down on the counter and signed, “Simple flavors. Not overstimulating. It helps, trust me.” They picked up their plate and walked towards the table, sitting down to relax, even as others followed behind them.

Jonathan heaped his plate high, with meatballs, mushrooms, and enough spaghetti to kill someone. It made sense, while Jonathan basically didn’t have physical limits, the molecular contractions his body went through did consume energy like crazy and it did take a lot of food to keep him going.

Echo and Casey were fussing over Molly, making sure the girl had enough to eat, and Xavier and Mark were nagging them to make sure they were eating, and Shiloh could almost feel Casey worrying that the food would be too hot for Vergil, even as Vergil moved to take the first bite.

As everyone sat down, Casey signed, and Shiloh watched. “So, Echo wanted to talk about some issues they’ve been having with…how things have been going, some team stuff. Like she’s kinda been left out of a lot of stuff.”

Shiloh saw Echo look at Casey warmly, and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, accurate. I know it’s…kinda my fault for pulling away, but it’s also like…I came from Aventine. You guys went through all this with each other, I spent my first year and a half at Imperator in isolation from other test subjects, you know? So I came over here, not really knowing how to join in the team, and knowing you guys had come into your powers together, not having to discover this with the rest of you guys. And it felt like it was one thing when we were all planning an escape together, but now, that we’re kinda trying to figure on what to do next, I kinda…feel lost.”

Shiloh blinked - Echo hadn’t been isolated from the rest of the team since arriving, not on purpose, but if that had been their perception, that was a problem. Jonathan spoke first, trying to be kind, “I’m sorry, Echo. We didn’t mean to make you feel like that and I’m sorry we did. Is there anything?”

“Part of combat training, one, and I know that’s a little on me, I’ll stop blowing it off for my own parallel stuff, but you gotta actually integrate what I can do into the drills the way you guys do Shiloh’s medic stuff.” Shiloh could acknowledge that made sense - Casey had explained what Echo had been doing while Echo was working with the alien ship, and it made sense to make sure they could do that.

“I also…I don’t know, Leon was talking about all of us taking more time to spend together,” Casey added in. “Which would probably be good anyway, since we’re gonna have more and more people arriving, including Molly, and getting to know all of each other would probably be a good thing.”

Mark nodded. “Yeah. Regular team meals. Probably going out together more regularly on leave, as well. We don’t have solo leave, but we may want to make the rule among ourselves that we have at least a semi-regular “all together” leave as well.”

Shiloh thought about that. It seemed like they were trying to force something, but at the same time, this was the closest to family they had ever known.

Echo was looking around, lines of tension slowly leaving her shoulders, and she signed. “Thank you, guys. Uh…I got the lexicon working, by the way. Or, started. We’re going to be able to start figuring out more about the aliens pretty soon.”

The table almost started applauding, but Echo, Casey, and Jonathan all shot glances towards Verg that quelled it and everyone simply switched to the ASL equivalent of applause.

Echo smiled, said, and signed back, “Thanks. Now, about testing tomorrow, think we oughtta jump the new kid and explain it to her before…”

***

Jonathan

“Yeah, we probably should.” Molly had been quiet, as though still adjusting to everything.

“So,” he said, continuing to sign and talk at the same time, “First thing you should know, this thing I’m doing with my hands? We all do it, and you’re going to learn to do it as well. It’s because Shiloh is deaf, and while they have hearing aids that allow them to operate in combat, they prefer doing this most of the time. It also allows us to avoid being eavesdropped on by adults who are not Leon or Curtis, who are the ones we want to be talking to. We’re gonna make sure you learn that pretty fast.”

Molly seemed to take that in with a degree of bland acceptance of someone generally still in shock from what she’d already learned that day. “Why are you eating so much?”

“My powers require a lot of calories. Even worse, it’s possible that there’s others we haven’t seen yet that would require more.” He didn’t understand that but they’d told him that and he figured he should probably get it out of the way.

“So…what’s…testing? And why do you all seem so nervous about it? Like why did Vergil go from talking all upbeat and cheerful about everything from weapons to serious injury to being shot at, but the minute testing came up he got really nervous?”

And there it was. “Ah. Uh…” There was a long pause.

Mark took a stab at it, before being cut off by Xavier, Echo, and Casey. “It’s a thing that they do to us…”

“It’s how we get our powers. They take us down to the lab. We’re all going to be together for it. And we’re all going to be together afterwards. None of us are going to die.” Casey was speaking.

“It is going to hurt, though, and it is going to be embarrassing and scary. You’ll talk to Leon after, and we usually crash in the dorms for a bit, altogether, after it. Stay close together. It really wipes you out.”

Molly was not looking reassured, and she finally burst out, “OKAY! But what, specifically, happens?”

Xavier broke in, and spoke slowly. “We all go down to the lab, in hospital gowns. They take our vitals. They inject us with a chemical cocktail of a complicated mutagen. You and Vergil then strip down to your underwear and get into a tube that will run complicated radiation through you to break down the mutagen in a way that will mutate you. The rest of us, because we are further along in the process and are getting a higher dose of both mutagen and rads that can be blocked by clothing, strip fully naked and get into tubes that push more rads at us, which will also mutate us. We all get out of the tubes, ignoring the excruciating pain, put our hospital gowns back on, get our vitals taken again, and head back to our dorm to be debriefed by Leon. Then we eat junk food, read, play video games, and cry into each other’s shoulders. None of us look at each other during the “less clothed than we want to be” parts. If needed, we carry anyone who faints and redress them.”

Molly looked like she was about to start panicking, and Mark shook his head. “It doesn’t take that long, and we do get modesty screens. No one looks at us, if that helps at all.”

Molly gave a helpless laugh that sounded a little like insanity. “This can’t be real. This can’t be real, right?”

Mark gave Jonathan a nod. Jonathan turned towards an empty table and deadlifted it without even a grunt of effort. “You aren’t hallucinating. He can in fact do that.”

Echo glowered, and Casey took Molly’s hand. “I know it’s scary, but please. This is real. We’re gonna get through this together. We’re all in it together, okay? Breathe with me. Deep breath in? Keep going for two, three, four. Hold it for two, three, four. Out, two, three, four.” Molly nodded slowly.

Echo nodded, and Jonathan remembered the first time Casey had tried that on one of his panic attacks. “Yeah, this is real. Look, no one is going to hurt you. We’re going to protect you. Promise.”

Molly took a breath. “This is real. I’m in a horror movie.”

“Eh, more a shitty YA teen thing, probably.” Mark said, casually.

“Okay, nothing about Volkov should be YA. Come on.”

“He’s not part of her life! He died! We did that. Her part is YA!” Jonathan felt the need to stick up for Mark on that one.

“You killed people?”

“Uh..” There was a long pause. “Yes. Mostly aliens, some of us have killed people, two when we tried to escape, one guy who shot Casey and Mark in training, Vergil got him, and…Actually Curtis shot Volkov but we were very much the reason that happened.”

Molly turned to Vergil, who shrugged. “You saw the alien I shot, and I told you I had. You saw them gunning down aliens. Why is this surprising?”

“I didn’t know you’d killed a person.”

“He shot Mark and Casey. It’s all the same at that point. You’ll understand soon.” His tone reminded Jonathan of Mark at his worst, of Jonathan’s after a hard fight, even, oddly, of Echo coming out of a computer trance - cold, flat, empty of humanity.

Molly shuddered. “I…I’m scared.”

Casey nodded. “That’s okay. But you really are going to be okay. And you’re going to figure this out. But part of that is, frankly, celebrating the time we have together when bad things aren’t happening. So,” she said, grabbing a handful of sodas for everyone. “Curtis got a bunch of board games for us, who wants to try some tomorrow after testing?”

Echo nodded. “In.”

Mark and Xavier followed up. “Same.”

Jonathan was next, and he snapped his head over as Shiloh was signing “As long as no one expects me to play charades.”

Vergil agreed, and Molly shrugged, before quietly agreeing. “Yeah. Guess I better learn my way around.

Everyone’s phones buzzed, and almost everyone pulled them out. They were network-only - only able to communicate with phones in Imperator’s network, but still.

DR MOM:

Curtis and I had to spend a lot of time arguing with Stricken, but the requests we’ve been pushing for came through. First off, kitchen access for you guys one night a week, so you guys can work on your own meals. Start putting together shopping lists.

Other point, which for some reason you all? Forgot? You’re getting paid now, not a lot. Officially it’s a different expense, but there’s a bank account for each of you that you guys get access to. For college or life…after this.”

Holy shit. Holy shit. A future they could plan for. That was…

“Okay so how is it that during the negotiation with Franklin, none of us thought to ask for money for this shit?”

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #Project Praetorian #Original Fiction #The Project #original sci fi #found family #traumatized characters #humans are space orcs #original writing

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canyouhearthelight · 2 months

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Tragedy and plans aside, I think one thing this chapter really highlights is how different Lash and Nils are when it comes to family and community. Yes, Lash argues with her parents, but at the end of the day she cares incredibly deeply for them. And she knows just off the top of her head all the comings and goings of her community, their stories, all of it.

And then you see Nils interacting with his father, as opposed to how he interacted with even just Lash's parents. His father is an obstacle, not an ally, and definitely not family.

Nihilus Rex 17: Embers

Nils and Lash deal with the aftermath of the firebombing, and Lash talks to her sister. Nils deals with his father, and both of them begin planning how they're going to pay for the victims' medical treatment. Cowritten by @canyouhearthelight.

The pull on my flesh was just too strong

Stifled the choice and the air in my lungs

Better not to breathe than to breathe a lie

'Cause when I open my body I breathe in a lie

Mumford and Sons, “Broken Crown”

Nils

The halls of the hospital were always too white, too sterile, and too bright. Honestly, the perfect kind of place for my dad to work - if not for all the people screaming and asking questions about their loved ones. I was weary by the time we arrived, the pain from my minor burns beginning to wear on me, but we managed to check in on both of Lash’s parents before she or I got serious help.

Neither of us needed much - minor medicine for the burns, some checks on our airways. A bit of shouting from nurses that I’d known since I was young that I should have come in sooner.

Critically, combined with my knowledge of the system that you pick up by osmosis, and the fact that both her parents were here, I got the information we needed.

Lash’s parents were going to live. Her mother was in worse condition, despite what we originally had thought - the smoke inhalation had taken a horrible toll on her. She had been touch and go for several hours, and her refusal to come in might have killed her if we hadn’t forced her. Her father, on the other hand, was still in serious danger of losing his leg, but was no longer at mortal risk. The sheer number of casualties from the fire meant that we weren’t given beds, merely checked on and sent on our way - common in triage, especially for people who weren’t hurt.

As I slumped down by the wall, I smiled at Lash. “That…that has to be a relief, right? Your parents are going to make it.”

She nodded numbly. “Mori will be here soon, it will be nice to have good news.”

“I’m…I’m sorry about Uncle. And Imran. And…everyone else.” I was still shaken. I had barely known Uncle. I couldn’t imagine how Lash was feeling.

Lash’s hands rubbed her face roughly, with complete disregard for the burn on one cheek. When I pulled that hand away gently, she stared into the distance. “Fatima has three girls, I think the oldest is ten. I don’t know how she is going to handle losing Imran. And Auntie… They’ve been married since they were teenagers. She’s never been alone, their kids and grandkids live overseas.”

“God.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, pushing in despite the pain where cinders had hit. “That’s awful.” Footsteps made me look up. A tall man who shared my build, with the same cold, dark eyes and short-cropped hair of the same shade as my longer locks, was approaching us.

“Nils.” His voice was concerned and I forced myself to my feet.

“Father” My voice came out cold, and tired.

“I heard you were at the fire. Why didn’t you answer my calls?”

“I was busy dealing with a crisis, and I wasn’t hurt badly. I texted you back to tell you as much so you and mom didn’t worry. Incidentally, between my fashion sense and the first aid lessons, I wound up being pretty okay at helping people.” That last was delivered with a trace of sarcasm - my ‘punk’ fashion sense had never been popular at home, but the medical training had been taken well.

The concern in his eyes didn’t waver, and it ironically only pissed me off further. Concern, in my parents eyes, was always the emotion that coupled with finding reasons I shouldn’t be doing anything but developing as a promising white collar professional rather than doing anything to help anyone. “Why were you sprinting into a burning building, Nils?”

“People were in it. Some of them were friends.” I felt the stubborn streak rising that always happened right before I said things that could never be unsaid, before I said flippant shit that put a whole lot of distance between myself and my parents.

“He saved my parents,” Lash said, slowly rising to her feet. “And he didn’t sprint into a random burning building, he was in there when it was set on fire and the exits were blocked. If he hadn’t helped get people out, all of your patients would be in the morgue instead of surgery.” The tired tone never left her voice, but she still spoke with that steady sense of conviction she’d had since I met her. She had barely met my father, and was already clearly done with his shit.

I suddenly felt warm hearing her voice. “There is also that I was inside when it was set on fire to begin with, yes.”

My father looked between us for a long moment. “You haven’t introduced your new friend. I’m relieved you’re putting yourself back out there. I wish we’d met under different circumstances, but…I might have rushed to assume that you were spending time with people who were making you reckless after Jessie…”

I felt an immediate surge of rage. “Her name is Lash.” I took a breath. “And she’s had better luck talking me down from reckless plans than anyone else. And don’t bring up Jessie if you want me to be cautious.” The irony of either of my parents, who hadn’t known how close I’d come to suicide by cop after Jessie’s death, how…

“Mr. Botelho is dealing with surgery. I tourniqueted him, but you may want to check in on your hospital's best pediatric imaging guy.”

My father shrugged. “Dr. Traviss is on it, he’ll be fine.” He suddenly looked at Lash, then something seemed to click. “Oh. Oh.” I sighed explosively with relief at that - one of the best vascular surgeons at the hospital was working on Lash’s father.

“And Sahar Botelho? Who is her doctor?” Lash demanded.

“Parks.”

I started chuckling.“Oh, yeah. Okay. She’s fine.” My father bitched about almost everyone, compliments were rare - I’d never heard him complain about Parks. “Your parents are fine.”

My father, seeming to realize he was meeting with a patient’s family member and realizing I was fine, looked almost relieved when his pager went off and he had an excuse to leave.

Lash started to follow him, a look on her face like she was dying for someone to fight with and her target had been acquired. She seemed to think better of it, though, and turned on her heel to pace instead. “I need my computer - any computer. Where is my phone? Mori can pick it up for me. She has a key to the apartment, for emergencies. And I need my power bank.” She turned to look at me, eyes wild. “Where is the nurse’s station? I need pen and paper, they’ll have it, right?”

“In that order: what do you need it for, probably still in your purse, if your sister is anything like you she is absolutely not going to stop by the house for your stuff while your parents are in the hospital, and yes, they will, but seriously why do you need it, and finally: while we are both only mildly wounded we are still wounded and had smoke inhalation and were told to rest and sit down. Actually sit down and just wait for a second.” I was aware telling any upset woman to calm down was a little bit like dipping your balls in honey and slapping them on a fire ant hill, but “you’re hurt please slow down and rest” had to be different. Right?

She at least stopped pacing, which I took as a minor victory. “Nils. This?” she waved a hand at the shiny hallway and directory on the wall. “Costs money. I can sit and rest and also start fundraising and working on commissions to pay for as much of it as possible. You may not realize it, but almost no one who was in that cafe has health insurance, much less the money to pay for even a single test. Baba, Mama, me, yes. You, yes. The mother with the baby, who is probably in the PICU right now for smoke inhalation? Neither of them can afford that. But funds are the only thing I raise better than hell, so hand me my purse and let me message my sister. She won’t go to the apartment, but she will send Luke.”

I handed her the purse, then a thought occurred to me. “Hey, Lash? Slow down on fundraising. We’re gonna have cameras here really soon. I’m about to piss off my father in a big way. We can help these people out with a social engineering bit instead of a hack - I mean if you want to do something with medical debt later, sure but right now…Behold our assets.” I spoke quickly, quietly, ideas forming as I spoke. “We are a young, very pretty couple that was hurt just badly enough to look more serious without being hurt badly enough to look deformed, perfect for cameras. We just helped a bunch of people escape a burning building that was set on fire by domestic terrorists - and a whole lot of people are swearing we are the heroes of the hour. We are definitely getting interviewed on six o’clock news tonight. We say, with my connections with the hospital and the fact that your dad is the hospital’s go-to for pediatric imaging, that the hospital is treating the victims of this fire for free as a matter of corporate stewardship? Hospital will prefer to curse us privately, but publicly will smile along with clenched teeth and leverage the city for political favors with the good publicity later.”

She glanced up from her phone, eyes narrowed. I could practically see the gears turning in her head. “We can definitely sell it, although I can see it coming back on Baba in a bad way. I’m still going to get the fundraising going, if for no other reason than to cover the funerals for those who aren’t here - unless you have a magical uncle who works for the city and won’t sue you six ways to shit for claiming the city is going to cover that, too.”

“We can work on the thing to make sure it doesn’t come back on Baba, and yeah, we can work on fundraising for funerals - actually, let me start. I’ll drop a few hundred into a gofundme. And I know someone who has the money for full body, full color portraits and really likes Love Hina and My Life as a Villainess - I’ll ping him your info.”

“Talk about a classic…” she muttered. “Let me get the gofundme set up, and a couple more places for people to donate/commission stuff. Plus, my inbox is backed the entire fuck up with lanky anime boy requests - fully clothed ones, thank the gods. XXXHolic has gotten really popular again, along with some others.” Her head snapped up, and she started waving. “Mori! Over here!”

I heard a slight scream, then felt myself shoved aside before Lash was crushed in a tight hug by a woman who looked like a slightly taller, slightly rounder Lash, who was talking fast. “You text me that Mama and Baba are hurt and then you tell me to get your things and you tell me they’re fine with no extra information…Elakshi, if you ever…” She spoke all this while apparently doing her best to squeeze all her worries out of Lash.

“Mori, this is Nils,” Lash managed to get out, slightly breathless. “Nils, this is my sister Mori, which I am sure you figured out. The short humans are my nephews, Jamal and Rihad.” She managed to squirm loose enough to look her sister in the eyes. “I need to tell you what happened, but not in front of the boys. Where is Lucas?”

“Going to get your things and then parking the car.” Mori snapped her fingers at her boys to get their attention. “Jamal, I need you to take your brother into that waiting room.” She pointed firmly to the windowed area. “Do not disturb other people, but keep both of yourselves in there until either your father or I come get you. Auntie Lash needs to tell me boring adult things.” ‘Boring adult things’ seemed to be the magic words, because both boys did as they were told without any argument. It was kind of impressive.

As soon as the door closed, Lash guided her sister to sit with her where we had been moments earlier. “A group of people firebombed Uncle Yildiz’s coffee shop. We were there. Mama, Baba, Nils, and I helped get everyone out that we could, but Mama’s lungs aren’t in good shape and Baba - “ She choked slightly on her words. “Baba’s leg was very badly hurt when the shop exploded. He may lose it, but they are trying to avoid that.”

“Elakshi! That is not fine! They are not fine!”

Lash cut her sister off. “They are going to live. They are alive. Not everyone was so lucky.”

Hands flashed as Mori started smacking Lash on the arms and shoulders. “You do not tell me to get your things and then tell me that our parents are not fine!” The smacking stopped and Mori pulled Lash in for another bone-crushing hug, burying what sounded like sobs into her hair.

I was not at all sure I should be intruding, but coughed. “Your father has the best vascular surgeon working on him. Your mother is being looked at by one of the best ENTs available. They should both be fine. Genuinely.” I slumped back down again. The day was beginning to hit me all at once and I realized that if I was going to sell a thing to the media I needed to try to be a little more rested.

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #original fiction #Nihilus Rex #the miys #arcadian inquisition #modern dystopia #traumatized characters #cyberpunk #Afterverse #prequel

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canyouhearthelight · 2 months

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I am hesitant to admit I have a favorite character, but if I do it is a tie between Echo and Shiloh. Pretty sure that any time Bael asks for my opinion on a POV for a chapter, he is literally taking bets with himself which one I will ask for. If not both.

Project Praetorian 24: Reflection

Echo deals with some feelings about her ongoing role in the team, because yes, I did notice that she was slowly being sidelined and I thought I'd make it textual. Thanks to @canyouhearthelight for pointing it out and challenging me to do something with it in text rather than just course correcting without comment. She, as always, did an awesome job beta-reading.

Echo

It was a strange feeling, honestly. It wasn’t unusual to be alone when she worked, but it was the first time it was really starting to get to her. She ran a hand along the sleek, almost ultraviolet metallic surface in front of her, trying to spark it to life.

It was strange though, for all the Praetorians talked about being a family, she was increasingly isolated from them - forced, more and more, to stay separate. Not by them, not actively, but there was a sense of…she’d developed her powers at Aventine base, not Palatine, which was one part of the problem. She hadn’t gone through the process with the rest of them. Had developed a lot of her powers on her own.

Then there was the matter of what those powers were - and combat training. Sure, she could fight, just like Shiloh could, with just a gun. But when you were mostly expected to do intel stuff…How much time were you really gonna spend on the range, even as opposed to someone who was at least expected to be able to survive a battlefield to save the wounded? She had been blowing off training a little, which she supposed she probably shouldn’t, since she could be part of storming alien craft, now that she knew, but…

She took a breath and texted Leon. I need to talk to you about some stuff. That shit about isolation is getting to me, like we talked about.

It felt weak to admit it, but she’d been taking care of her younger sister on and off for so long, that…when you had a kid sister who called you ‘Mom’, when you didn’t have friends, then when you finally got dropped in with another group who might, might be the first group ever who even could understand anything, it hurt to wind up feeling alone in a crowded room.

Echo let her hands run across the metallic surface and felt them light up, and focused in on herself. Come on, motherfucker, come alive for me, let me work you over.

She felt a spark, and pushed her consciousness down the snapping edges of her nerves, down the firing synapses, out to her fingertips, trying to remember all the code she knew, even as the interface came to life and she pushed past her body and into the alien system.

The first time Echo had breached a human computer, she had been staggered by how eldritch its mind had seemed. Computers didn’t think like people - didn’t think at all, didn’t “understand” things except as sets of data and patterns that AI could vaguely piece out and predict with algorithms, and it was one thing to know that as a nerd and another to truly understand that trying to “talk” to one directly, with your brain directly linking into such an alien consciousness, your brain essentially mapping synapses onto something that was only electric impulses fired between circuitry and allowing you to superimpose your will onto it.

But now, confronted with a system not even designed by humans, she was forced to reevaluate.

For the first time she was beginning to understand what a real alien actually was.

The data screaming into her brain wasn’t incomprehensible - she wasn’t sure if some component of the way her powers interfaced with the computer allowed her to bypass a language barrier or if her brain was simply superimposing language models onto the system in a way that she wasn’t fully aware of, but the information that came - in the order it came in - was staggering.

Alien words, ones which offered no translation, flooded into her senses. Some of them may have had rough translations, some may not. Data regarding ship capacity, some of it aerospatial and way above her paygrade. But the way the aliens calculated, almost their entire navigation system, their programming - it almost broke her brain, gave her a splitting headache. She tried to focus herself, pushed on one particular component.

She forced herself to think of her entire vocabulary, computer, math, science, history. Everything she could that even might be relevant, might be analogous. Try to upload a language model to impose for the sake of translation, even as the pain got worse and worse, until finally she felt her connection slipping and pulled her hands off of the interface and fell to the tile floor, catching herself before the impact.

Her head pounded, and she took some deep, staggering breaths. She pushed herself up, and then crawled forward, checking the interface without using her powers.

Rather than the alien glyphs she’d been staring at the last several times, before she’d tried pushing all the way in with her powers, some of the data was starting to be displayed with the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals. In other words - she’d glitched its languaging and actually uploaded a lot of her language model into it.

The next step…

No, the next step, she realized, would be to get a linguistics focused computer in here, and synch herself to both of them, use herself as a medium between them and then force-impose a human translation on the alien machine, while adding the alien lexicon to the human linguistics machine to get a working translation model as quickly as possible.

Echo picked up her phone again. “Koleth. We have a linguistics-modeling computer anywhere?”

“Why?”

“I’m about to make language barriers and linguists obsolete for this war. Or at least give them a hell of a headstart. Was experimenting with my powers. But to start, I need a linguistics modeling computer with translation software for me to work with, brought to where the alien ship is.”

“I can arrange to have one brought, yes.” The scientist’s voice was intrigued. “Should be about 30 minutes. Tell me the results of your experiment later. I look forward to hearing about it. I’m getting all sorts of interesting data today. First you, then the physics data off the plasma weaponry…”

Echo wondered what the hell had happened, then it hit her that this might not be a conversation she wanted to have with Koleth. Or more accurately - she didn’t want to be a person who could converse with Koleth more easily than with her peers.

She sat on the floor and texted Casey - the two of them, at least, had been getting a little closer since Molly had arrived in the hospital wing, more bonding over the reality of being elder or eldest sisters. “What’s going on with the weapons test?”

Casey didn’t respond - not too surprising, she figured, she knew that phones usually weren’t on the range, and she figured that if they were close to plasma discharge they’d definitely have left them in the lockers to keep the little computers from getting cooked by the EMPs let off when the bolts exploded. Echo sighed. It would be about 30 minutes before someone actually brought the damn computer she asked for - possibly longer, if someone hadn’t kept accurate inventory of where the damn thing was.

Which meant she had thirty minutes to kill. She opened her phone again and texted Leon. “Hey, I know you’re probably busy, but can you please call me? I’m…I’m in the alien ship and I don’t…the other kids are all working and I don’t want to be alone right now.”

She had barely sent the text when her phone started ringing. She allowed herself a little smile when she picked it up.

“Hey, Echo, are you okay?”

“Just lonely. Wanted someone to talk to - and everyone else is working, so…I wanted to call, you know? Where are you?”

“I have about 20 minutes before I have to be in a meeting with Stricken, so I’m getting my notes together.”

“Gotcha. I don’t know. I just feel like…everyone else has powers they can use in a fight, you know? I’m…I don’t. I have powers that would actually get me killed if I’m fighting, so they have to watch out for me, and I can fight the way Shiloh does, but…if they bring me along, to the kind of fights they’re expected to go into, I can’t get someone back on their feet super fast like Shiloh can. I’m just kinda…dead weight, compared to the rest of ‘em. Maybe I can recover some cool tech, but that’s about it. So I haven’t been in as much combat training, and I can tell that I’m kinda…getting distant as part of that, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

Echo could hear Leon biting her lip on the other end. “I don’t know much about fighting. That’s more a Curtis question. But it seems to me you slipping the cameras in that training match made a big difference. And I’m pretty sure learning about the enemy is a big part of war, so if you can do that, it definitely isn’t dead weight. But it sounds a little like you’re withdrawing because you don’t think you can be part of the group?”

“Kinda? I got dropped in here with all of them kinda already having a dynamic, and rather than just kinda finding my powers and fumbling through that process with them, I showed up about as far along as any of them and had to integrate, knowing as much as some and more than most. Makes it hard to make friends.”

“You didn’t seem to have that problem when you were planning the breakout.”

“Yeah, but ever since we got back, we’ve been having this…there’s a sense of purpose, but as we’ve been integrating into Imperator…I don’t know, it just feels like I’ve been pulling away from the rest of them. Or pulled away from the rest of them. Like Vergil’s been pulled into shit, but I was at Aventine, so I have to try to relate to people who’ve been training together from the beginning and not siloed off to avoid information compromise or escape til all our captors were ready.”

Leon almost audibly winced on the other end of the phone. “Echo, I know what I’m about to suggest is painful, and I know you’ve been in a whole lot of situations where this would never, ever work for you. I know it’s hard, but I do want you to at least listen to it, okay?”

Echo could feel herself tensing and before it was said, knew what was going to be said. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“Tell them. Tell them how it feels to be cut off, or feel like you can’t approach them, and feel like you’re more and more left out because you don’t know how to approach it. You can bring up not being sure how to approach combat with your power set, or just…talk about it. I can also raise the idea of more regular team meals, but at some point, this is going to be something you should bring up to them.”

Echo shuddered and thought about the idea of baring her soul at any of the others. “I don’t want to whine at them to fix shit that’s my fault to begin with - they’re gonna blow me off.”

“Honestly, they won’t. I can’t tell you how all of them were when they first got here, but trust me. You are not the only one who’s needed to have this conversation. Promise.”

Echo thought about asking but realized it would run into patient confidentiality. “Okay. If you really, really think it’d work.”

“I think it would, yeah. I can start on the idea of more team meals, if you want? Or…”

“Yeah, that’d be nice. Maybe get us access to the kitchens once a week so we can make our own food with all the facilities?”

“You are not the first one to ask for that.”

Yeah, she knew that, in no small part because Mark, Xavier, and Casey had all mentioned it before.

“Please push it though, I think it’d be good.”

“Yeah, gonna be talking to Stricken, I can bring that up. What are you doing in the ship, by the way?”

“Working on a working translation matrix. For intel reasons…” Something clicked for her. “Son of a….Hey, doctor, I had a thought. Tell Stricken and Franklin if you get the chance that I don’t think we need to hire a replacement for Volkov. We don’t need an interrogator. If I can get a translation matrix going, and I can break into any system the enemy have? We can get intelligence analysts, and I can take over the interrogation on just machinery. Start the Praetorian integration into Imperator. Make it harder to get rid of us, and make it harder for us to turn on them.”

Leon paused. “I’ll bring it up, but you may want to talk to the team about…”

“Then hang up. I’ll call them. Promise. Just…Thank you, for your advice.”

Leon’s voice was proud on the other end as the psychologist hung up and wished her luck.

Echo picked up her phone one more time and dialed Casey a second time, hoping that she’d pick up this time, that they’d be done with their practice.

This time, she actually did. “Hey Echo! Sorry I missed your call earlier, things got really busy during weapons testing. Mark got hurt, nothing Shiloh couldn’t fix, but it made things go long because Mark and Xavier got stubborn after that, and it didn’t stop until I told them I was getting too tired to keep heatshielding.”

Fucking boys. “That is definitely a guy thing.”

“Oh I know, my little brother did the same shit when he was trying to learn how to ride a bike. Skinned his knee like six times, wouldn’t stop trying till there was blood trickling down it.”

“Heh. At least we have Shiloh.”

“We do have Shiloh and thank God we have Shiloh. You should have seen Xavier with grenade practice before you got here.”

“I’m really glad I didn’t, he wouldn’t be anywhere near as cute if I had. Speaking of, how is it that you still think Mark’s cute after he’s been dumb enough to reduce his skin to a liquid state and want to keep going?”

“Changing the subject - how’s it going in the computer system?” Taking the admission of the point, Echo didn’t press. It would never stop amazing her that two boys who had basically masterminded the breakout could be so goddamn stupid about…everything. You only needed to hear Curtis shout at them about one too many gun-based innuendoes once…

“I breached it. To a…surprising degree. Like, waiting on a language-modeling computer to make translation problems irrelevant. Once I do that we’ll have a working translation model.”

“That’s amazing.” Casey sounded impressed.

“Yeah, I wanted to ask Mark and Xavier a thing though, can you put me on speaker?”

“Command squad shit?”

“Kinda?” Her voice was apologetic.

Casey sighed. “Done.”

Echo spoke to the others. “Hey, guys, thought. We might be able to start moving our own people into Imperator’s ranks. I have a shot, right now, of replacing Volkov as an intelligence officer against the aliens, given what I can do to alien computers. We might be able to start actually getting into their command structure, and making ourselves much, much harder to replace or get rid of.”

Mark’s voice was still a bit tight. “That’s a really good idea. Yeah, do it. Raise it to whoever you have to. Gives us a lot of advantages. Oh, uh. Don’t know if you saw, Echo, but we have testing tomorrow, Vergil told me.”

“FUCK!”

“Yeah. Sorry about that. Good news, cafeteria’s serving pasta?”

“Best consolation prize. Uh…see you there soon? I’m still waiting on a linguistics modeling computer.”

“We’ll wait for you.”

“Seriously?” Echo paused, then launched. “Actually…Can I talk to you guys about something a little more serious? It kinda feels like, ever since we got back from the breakout…” it was awkward, fumbling, and she waited for the recrimination. “I feel like I’ve been pulled more and more away, like the fact I can’t really fight means I get kinda overlooked or left out, and I know I’ve been kinda pulling away myself, but…”

“Yeah, no.” Xavier spoke first. “I can see how you’d feel that way, and I can see what we’ve been doing. Uh…don’t really want to do this over the phone, really don’t want to do this right now, we will wait to eat with you. Til everyone is in the cafeteria. You good to talk about it then, over some food?”

Echo felt a strange flood of relief. “Yeah. That sounds…that sounds really good.”

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #Project Praetorian #the Project #original fiction #humans are space orcs #science fiction #original sci fi #sci fi #traumatized characters #found family

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canyouhearthelight · 2 months

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Nihilus Rex, Ch. 16: "...and Tragedy"

Pretty sure that title says it all, so I apologize in advance. Please don't kill me!

Co-written and beta-read by @baelpenrose, so he's partially to blame. But he did pick out the song lyrics!

Warnings for racism, hate crimes, off screen deaths of minor characters.

Save yourself a penny for the ferryman

Save yourself and let them suffer

In hope, in love

Mankind works in mysterious ways

Nightwish, “Planet Hell”

Lash

Despite Nils’ earlier errors, the conversation with my parents was going surprisingly well. At some point, Nils had let slip that he didn’t get along with his father, and Baba just let the floodgates open on how hard it was to deal with man. Apparently, Mr. - sorry, DOCTOR - Andover was a complete and utter bastard, even by Baba’s very forgiving standards.

To say Nils and Baba got along was a huge understatement. “Oh no, sir, I’m not offended, everyone knows that he’s a great surgeon and an amazingly mean person. I think there’s a running gag somewhere about not letting him near the patients until after they’ve gone under?”

Baba chuckled - practically a roaring laugh for him - and nodded, knocking one hand on the table. “Yes! The nurses are the only people who are not intimidated, and seeing them physically drag your father away from a patient is often the highlight of my day.”

“It’s probably the highlight of the patient’s day too, they just don’t know it. Trust me, waking up to that frowny, disappointed-Catholic face when you’re already in pain…not ideal.” Nils grinned.

Mama started to say something, but I didn’t hear her as the sound of broken glass made Nils’ head jerk over to one side. “Nils, it’s a cafe. Glasses break all the - “

“Something is burning,” he cut me off. “Chemical burning, not food burning.”

Just as he said that, another crash led to one of the aunties we had been watching earlier jumping up with a scream, beating at the hem of her skirt. Another auntie threw the contents of the nearest cup on it, steam pouring from what had been a burning piece of fabric. Nils stood, yanking me to my feet by my arm. “Start getting everyone out of here,” he demanded. “If you smell gas, find another exit.”

I grabbed my parents first. “Someone is setting the cafe on fire,” I explained. “We need to go. Find an exit that isn’t on fire, and go through there.”

They took off, grabbing people as they went. Usually, Uncle’s shop was wide open, with doors that rolled up rather than windows, but tonight was especially chilly, so most were closed and locked down. Each one I touched was scalding hot, and the only option was one that wasn’t on fire yet but reeked of gasoline. “Lift your skirts!” I shouted, heaving the door up and gesturing people through. “Don’t drag it in the gas!”

Another wash of heat from behind, and I heard Nils shouting something, along with Baba and Mama. Both my parents were determined to help get as many people out as possible: Mama hurling any available liquid on clothes as they caught, Baba carrying older women out and rushing back in for another. Nils had pulled his leather jacket’s sleeves down over his hands and wrenched open one of the latches on the rolling window shutters before shoving it up. Flames roared on the other side, and I saw my father pick someone up and rush through, shielding them from the heat with his own body.

Mama and I took the hint and started yanking cloths from tables and shoving them in a sink full of dirty water, ignoring complaints as we wrapped them around people who could not get out fast enough under their own power. Each one, Baba or Nils would lift and carry out while we found the next, dunking whatever cloth we could in any water we could find. “UNCLE!” I screamed. “You have to get out! UNCLE!”

I couldn’t see him anywhere. “Did Uncle get out!?” I shouted at Baba.

“He is not on the outside,” came the response as a young mother and her baby were wrapped and ushered through the flaming exits.

Smoke started filling my throat, and I dropped to the floor, coughing for cleaner air. Someone pulled at my arm, and I yanked it back without looking. “UNCLE!” I screamed again before another coughing fit.

“We have to get out of here!” Mama was pulling me, Nils was pulling. A blast of fire came from the kitchen as shocking cold, stinking water poured over my head. “NOW, Elakshi!”

Mama and I were ushered out by Nils and his singed leather coat, Baba on the other side. I fell into the cold night air, gasping thirstily for it, as Baba ran back in one last time, shouting something I couldn’t understand. My vision swam as I tried to look around and count faces, desperate to find all of them.

I was still frantically looking for a handful of people - Imran, Uncle, one of the aunties who constantly tittered at me and Nils - when I was shoved to the ground by an unearthly noise. I shoved myself from the ground, hands cutting on the asphalt, to see Mama hit the ground coughing, Nils barely standing and holding up Baba.

“Lash, help!” Nils was coughing. “Press your hand down, here,” He planted a point on my father’s thigh. “Broken glass hit him. Hold it down no matter how much he yells. I have to get a belt off and make a tourniquet or he’s gonna die.”

Hot tears streaked down my face as I did what he told me. Baba groaned, and I pressed down like I was trying to crush his leg into the pavement. Nils ripped Baba’s belt off and tightened it around his leg, hard, twisted it, pinned it there with a pen, hard enough to make Baba shout. “Sorry, hold it here. DO NOT TAKE THIS OFF until the doctors look at it. Please.” His eyes were blazing.

“Check on Mama!” I begged, cranking the tourniquet as tightly as I could, slamming my shoulder into Baba’s chest to both keep him from moving and hide my sobs. “She can’t breathe.”

Nils sprinted over and I couldn’t see what he did, but he seemed to be giving Mama an airway check, then water, and pulled her over towards me, slowly sitting her down away from the fire. “Your dad got the worst of it. Your mom needs oxygen when the medics get here, best I can do is keep her from overexerting in the meantime. Keep her calm. I’ll keep an eye on your dad.”

Frantically, I ran my hands over my mother, checking her for any hidden injuries. I took several slaps to the arms and two directly to the face, but kept checking. When I was satisfied, I turned to Nils and Baba, where Nils was doing the same I had done - pinning Baba to the ground with one shoulder while cranking the tension as tight as possible on the belt around his leg. A smaller explosion within the cafe snapped my head up, and I started running. “UNCLE!” I screamed, still not having seen his face outside the now-burning shop.

A hand darted out and yanked an ankle out from under me, just in time for a lanky, leather-clad leg to pin me down. “I have two horribly burned and wounded Botelhos right now. I do not need a third. You can’t help him. Your mother starts,” he coughed, then finished in a snarl, “screaming she’s gonna die. Her lungs can’t handle that right now. Keep her calm.” Nils' voice was furious, and panicked, but as driven as I’d ever heard it.

I nodded numbly, going to reassure Mama while glancing around frantically. The young mother Baba had practically carried out was bouncing her screaming baby, and my nerves unexpectedly started calming. I don’t know that I had ever been so happy to hear a baby scream so hard in my life, but it was the reality check I needed in that moment. Those of us out here were still alive, by inches or miles, and we had to stay that way to keep the bastards who had done this from winning.

I pulled Mama to a sitting position. “We need to keep everyone calm,” I told her, well aware of what drove her more than anything else. I saw Nils mouth something that could only mean ‘tell her not to start shouting’. “I am going to prop you up where you can keep an eye on Baba, and I am going to bring people who are upset but not hurt. Can you help me keep them calm?”

This woman - my magnificent monument of a mother - looked at me like I had deeply offended her and all my ancestors. “Set me right there,” she gestured to a spot close but in clear line of sight to Baba and Nils, “and bring them to me.”

I did exactly what she asked. As neighbors came down to bring water and blankets, Mama commanded them like a general with her armies so that I could focus on those who were injured and needed more. Even then, Nils would shout what people needed, and Mama would command if someone didn’t listen. Someone would start wailing, looking for a family member who was unaccounted for, and after Mama started coughing, I did my best impression of her.

“It is the living who need us now. We will attend the rest when these are in the hospital.”

Baba was the first to go in an ambulance, with Nils shouting down his objections. “You may have waited too long to save the leg already and I don’t want you throwing a clot. GO!”

Every argument of “damn the leg” was met with an aggressive “you could still die, and then who will make sure the babies stay still for an x-ray”, until Baba surrendered under a murderous glare from the three of us. After that, it was the elderly, burn victims, smoke inhalation victims - a whole new argument from Mama, one which required sedation - and finally those of us who were part of the walking wounded were left to lick our wounds in peace.

“You should go, Lash. Your family’s hurt.”

“I need to call Mori,” I responded before adding lamely, “My sister. In case you didn’t pick up on that. She… she’ll want to know.”

“I can drive if you need. Call on the way.” he paused, then added, “Since the hospital is on the other end of town, it’s…probably better if someone drives you anyway.”

I felt myself falling into my mother’s role, unexpectedly and out of a habit I hadn’t realized I had until now. “The apartment needs to be locked up. I need to do that. And I need to let Uncle’s widow know… she shouldn’t have to hear about this from strangers. Baba and Mama will ask, so I can’t go to them without doing those things.”

Nils looked at me. “Lash. If you don’t want to go yet, if you can’t face it, I won’t make you. But your sister can lock up if she lives with you. Since you’re calling her. And Uncle’s widow is another call you can make. It’s a bit of a drive, it’s on the other end of the city.”

“No,” I cut in. “Mori lives an hour away, with her family. And I don’t know how it works for your family, but I do not want Uncle’s wife hearing this from a stranger. I can - and have - faced what is happening to my parents. But, when they wake up, they will ask these things, and I have lied once today. I will not lie about something so important.” I drew myself as tall as possible and sniffed back a sob. “You may escort me, if you wish, and then drive me to the hospital. Baba is in surgery, and Mama is in triage, so I can do nothing for them right now. But I can do the right thing for other people.”

Nils looked at me for a long moment, then he nodded. “Come on, then. Call your sister on the way to meeting with Uncle’s widow. We’ll tell her first.”

His phone started ringing, and he glanced at it and hung up. I only barely made out that his father had called him. “Come on. Let’s make sure you tell who you need to tell.”

#nihilus rex #afterverse #prequel #traumatized characters #the miys #arcadian inquisition #original fiction #science fiction #original writing #original science fiction #writeblr #modern dystopia

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canyouhearthelight · 2 months

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Updated to include a link to the Masterpost for Nihilus Rex, since Bael actually updates his masterpost consistently.

Masterpost-Ception!

Now with more Masterposts!

Now that I’ve started working on projects other than Miys, I am going to start compiling links to each work here so that it’s easy to find and go through the parts if there are any.

Humans Are Space Orcs

The Miys <Chapters 1-100> <Chapters 101-200> <Chapters 201-233>

Nihilus Rex (Masterpost on @baelpenrose bc he updates it consistently)

Horror

Leather Houses <Part 1> <Part 2> <Part 3> <Part 4>

Cyberpunk

Machine is Perfect, but Flesh is Free

#the miys #lydia woke up #leather houses #my writing #writeblr #lights masterpost #machine flesh #nihilus rex #afterverse

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canyouhearthelight · 2 months

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i updated it due to current happenings

edit: FUCKING REBLOG IT. LIKES DONT MEAN SHIT!

#trans #tumblr bullshit #trans rights #trans rights are human rights #transgender

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canyouhearthelight · 2 months

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Hearing the sheer weirdness of Imperator seen through poor Molly's eyes is... Refreshing, to be honest.

But I still hate what she is going through.

Project Praetorian 23: New Kid

Hey did you wonder what Molly was up to? Wondered how she's been doing after her horrible introduction to all of this? Don't worry, we have you covered! Vergil is gonna give her a nice tour of the place while everyone else gets a handle on the new equipment and the new reality. Beta-read by @canyouhearthelight and @writing-with-olive. I forgot to do this two chapters ago when Molly was first introduced, somehow, so I do want to take the chance now and shout out that Molly's character concept was originally dreamt up by @learntolive-again.

Molly

“My relatives will be coming to get me. And…is there any sign that anyone else survived?”

The psychologist shook her head. “Imperator already ensured everyone believes there were no survivors of the ‘freak explosion.’ And…no. No other survivors. The aliens hit the place quick.”

She shuddered, looking at the psychologist. “Are Annette’s parents alive?”

“Who?”

��The girl who was hiding in the shed with me when…”

“Oh. I honestly don’t know. If they weren’t there, probably. There’s no evidence the aliens attacked anywhere else, for whatever reason.”

That seemed so hideously unfair, so fucked up - Molly’s parents had been good, had taken care of her, had loved her, and had loved Annette when Annette’s parents had failed to show up for basically anything for her, but her parents had died where those neglectful jerks had survived - and Annette hadn’t.

She still remembered the moment both of them had broken cover, assuming the alien could shoot at most one of them. It had hit Annette.

Annette had died so she could survive.

“Molly…”

She almost screamed at the psychologist when she realized some of that had been out loud.

Leon seemed to be reading her mind, because the next thing the child psychologist said was, “It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

“But she could be here. She could be here if I wasn’t. Or if…”

“If the aliens hadn’t arrived and turned what should have been a good day into a horror show. None of this is your fault. The fact that that happened is the fault of the things that came to kill you.”

“Why am I here?”

Leon winced. “Because, just like the other kids who fought that day, you can be given superpowers. And those things are going to come back.”

Molly took a breath. Revenge. Protection. Redemption, some way to make it up to…

“I…should I….”

“No. None of us should be here. This is wrong on a staggering number of levels. But if by that you mean, ‘should you still be alive’ - then yes. And you are here, and it’s my job to help you cope with it. Do you need…?”

“I want to see the rest of this place. With one of the other kids here.” The words were out of her mouth before she’d had time to consider them.

Leon peered at her, closely, then picked up a phone. “Vergil? Molly wants to be shown around. Can you show her the place?” She listened as someone said something at the other end. “Thanks, sweetie.” She turned towards Molly. “Vergil will be here to show you around soon. He was the last member to join the team before you.”

***

An hour later, she was walking around the base she’d been taken to, trying to get her bearings. Five of the other kids - Mark, Jonathan Xavier, Casey, and Shiloh, she’d been told - had been on the weapons testing range since she’d gotten out of the hospital, once they could start working on figuring out the alien weaponry. She had barely talked to the last one, Echo, who had been buried in the lab, under supervision, trying to break into the computer on the alien ship.

Vergil was walking next to her, his blue eyes bright, and his gangly form moving with way too much confidence. “Over that way is the hangar - we’ve been out in an aircraft exactly once, which was the day we met you. Motorpool is there - you can still see the ricochet marks from the day we tried to escape.”

Ricochet marks? What the hell had happened? Why were they trying to escape? It was terrifying to be here, but….

Vergil seemed to have read her thoughts, and continued on, “Oh, right, you haven’t been through testing yet, you’re not at why you’d want to escape. Don’t worry, it gets better.” Before she could interrogate what that meant, Vergil’s phone buzzed and he picked it up. There was screaming in the background, but a voice was coming over. “Hey, Vergil, if you see Curtis on the tour, let him know we’re going to be late to dinner. Mark stripped the magnetic sheath of a plasma bolt too close and Shiloh is regrowing the skin on his hands.” Molly had a hunch he’d toggled the speaker on purpose, like he was trying to get her to ask questions.

A few minutes later, it started buzzing again, and Vergil picked it up, toggling speaker once more, and this time the voice she could have sworn was just screaming was now speaking. “Very late. I want to get the hang of this before we call it. We almost have it right, and I want these things exploding in their hands.”

Molly thought for a moment she’d take a turn and start screaming where the voice on the other end of the phone had apparently left off, and just barely managed to tamp it down and hiss, “How…how is he back to normal?”

“Shiloh. They healed you, right?”

“I mean, yeah, but how is he not freaking out if he had his skin melted off?”

Vergil paused. “Honestly that might just be Mark? Once he starts focusing he is just absolutely terrifying in his determination not to be distracted by anything. He might also be using his powers to block nerve transmission, though Shiloh beat the shit out of him last time he did that.”

Molly began feeling vaguely desperate. “Wait, so how the hell does all of this happen? Also, why am I here? What kind of…everyone keeps saying I’m going to get powers like you have, but how? What does that mean?”

Vergil stopped. “Was…was that not covered? Uh…” He paused, and stopped. “So. You’re going to be deliberately mutated and tested on. It will give you superpowers, but it’s gonna hurt. We all go through…” He winced, and abruptly the walkie talkie on his belt opposite the phone burst to life with a crackle of static.

“Motorpool this is Training Field, Jonathan is coming your way to help you move the APC as requested.”

Vergil continued talking as if that was even remotely normal. “We all go through some really rough things, but we go through it together, support each other. Leon provides therapy, and Curtis teaches us how to fight - there’s a reason we knew what to do when we were taking on the aliens. It’s kind of a family? A messed up one, but we’re all close, and you get used to this…”

She took a breath. There had been a lot that had happened to her over the last few days. But being asked to deal with this, to think of this as a family, these strange kids who thought nothing of being tortured and fighting monsters, only days after…

“I had a family.”

Vergil shrugged. “Yeah, and I had a foster home that was working. Mark, Casey and Xavier had families. I’m sorry, Molly. I shouldn’t be like this.” He finally looked her in the eye. “But we all got thrown in at the deep end. I was the last new kid here, and you’re probably not going to get much more time to adjust than I was. I’m trying to show you around as fast as I can, so that you can start getting into the swing of it. Because there’s probably no exit from this.”

She slumped down and stared at the too-white tile floor for a long time. Then she asked, very quietly, “I’m scared to ask, but what’s an APC and why are they calling Jonathan to move one?”

Vergil snorted. “It’s an Armored Personnel Carrier, AKA ‘light tank.’ Jonathan has super strength, so they probably want his help moving it, I heard them arguing about a broken hydraulic jack earlier, which they’d normally use to move one of those for repair.

She just shook her head. That didn’t sound real. That couldn’t be…it could. She’d seen the aliens come down and turn her whole world inside out. “You were the new kid here before. Was it like this for you?”

“I got black bagged out of a foster home by these two CIA dicks who the other kids beat up because they were mad that the CIA dicks were literally making me wear a black bag over my head.” Vergil’s voice was light, but there was tension underneath. “A bunch of the other kids got kidnapped or had their deaths faked. You’re the first one who got recruited after an alien encounter, though from what I’ve been listening in on from the higher ups you’re not gonna be the last. And when I say listening in, I mean literally. Listening in. As in I have super senses and I can hear them through the fucking walls.”

It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t seen him the entire time during the entire time the aliens were fighting. “And…what do you do?”

“I snipe. The alien that was in the room with you, I’m the one that got it. Through the window.” Vergil was quiet. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

Molly abruptly stood up, feeling a sense of resignation and a need to change the subject. “Where do I sleep?” Her voice came out low, tense. If she had to be here, she might as well know where that was.

Vergil nodded, seeming to understand what she was going through. “Sure. The dorms are this way.”

Maybe she was going to have common ground with these people after all. Molly followed him down a bunch of same-looking hallways, up a set of stairs, and across an atrium, with that same horrible white lighting. He opened a door, and suddenly Molly felt a wash of strange relief. It was subtle, but she saw Vergil relax as well when he stepped over the threshold.

The dorms were small, with a lounge containing a beat up couch and small TV. There was a small table, and on it, a portable mess stove, as though the small dorm had been used to cook before, and the little group of kids liked eating together. “There is a bigger mess, and we usually eat there, but every once in a while, now that we actually have access to the kitchens and leave, we sometimes go out and make our own meals. There’s movie nights, usually on Thursdays. Because online school is usually?” he rocked a hand in a so-so gesture, “Slowest that day, that’s the day Curtis does armory checks, and none of us have appointments with Leon. So that’s the easiest day to do it.”

Molly was beginning to feel better - a steady routine, something that she could understand. Like school, orchestra practice, church on Sundays, this was something that she could get. “We have regular weapons and physical training, regular appointments with Leon…yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Anything else I should know?” She said, starting to get a feel for it.

Vergil suddenly blanched. “Yeah…uh…also, testing happens at least once every two weeks. That will hurt. A lot.” His voice was apologetic, and his face looked either shy or ashamed, as if he thought she might be mad at him for all of this. “You’ll get talked to by Leon afterwards, and we always take the day off the next day.”

“What happens in testing?” She felt a prickle of anxiety.

“We’ll talk about that closer to it.” Vergil shuddered. “Oh, uh…sleeping. The end of that hall. Boys dorms on the right, girls’ on the left. You’re sharing the room with Casey, Echo, and Shiloh, the last of whom should honestly have a separate dorm but Imperator sucks and they have to settle for a bed with the girls and a hammock with us, depending.”

Molly blinked. “Huh?”

Vergil looked at her. “They’re nonbinary?”

“Ah.” Molly nodded. She wasn’t totally sure how to feel about that but had a hunch she probably shouldn’t say anything based on Vergil’s tone. “Bathrooms?”

“End of the hall. Oh, and there are games to keep us occupied, but…”

“Is there any way I can get a violin?”

Vergil paused. “Maybe? Talk to Curtis, he supposedly has a guy who can get stuff. Also though, for the sake of my sensitive ears…please play it well, or do it when we’re not supposed to be sleeping.”

Molly put a hand on her chest. “You know where you found me, right? Tanglewood. Where the best young musicians go to practice. I’m really, really good. If I get a violin, I’ll play for you to prove it.”

Vergil gave her the first smile she’d seen, even as she abruptly started blushing at how forward that sounded. “A concert? That sounds amazing.”

Molly flushed, suddenly regretting her decision. “Uh…”

“It’s okay. I would like to hear you play, but…yeah, I didn’t know where we’d picked you up. I got that it was a music camp, but…”

She winced. “Was, yeah.” She looked up. “Does it get easier?”

The intercom crackled. “TESTING TOMORROW AT 0800. Praetorians are to be in hospital gowns and in the laboratory at that time.”

Vergil gave a very thin smile. “Sort of? I’m a lot less afraid than I was a few months ago when I got here. I feel…stronger, more in control. You get used to it, and once you get a handle, you get better. And if you hate that you got kidnapped - get to know us. We’re gonna make the world better once we’re done with the aliens. You’ll meet Koleth tomorrow, but at least there’s no more Volkov.”

“Who was Volkov? And who is Koleth?”

“Koleth is the mad scientist who does the experiments. Volkov was some Eastern European expat interrogator who was working all of us over until we escaped and Curtis, Leon, Echo, Mark, and Xavier outplayed him until Curtis got to shoot him in the head.”

Molly started feeling faint again, when Vergil perked up, looking at his phone. “Oh, fuck yes. The one thing the mess actually knows how to cook well. We’re having pasta tonight. Eat up.”

“Is…I wasn’t able to bring any of my things from camp, other than the clothes I was wearing when…it all happened. So…”

“Yeah, so just go into the girls’ dorm, claim any bunk that doesn’t already have someone’s stuff on it, and throw something of yours there, and that’s yours. Then we can head down to the mess. One second.” Vergil let her go down, even as he pulled the phone off his hip and said, “Hey guys, I know you’re having fun fucking around with plasma weapons but we are having pasta and the new kid is finally out of the medbay. We may want to call it short and actually. Eat together.”

She was barely paying attention, wandering down towards the indicated dorm, and set down the tiny bag she had been given when she left the hospital, which included a hospital gown, a toothbrush, and a comb, on one of the beds. There were only three others out of over a dozen that had anything on them, so she found it easy enough to pick one.

She wandered back out and walked towards Vergil. “Can you show me the way down to the mess?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I can.”

The radio crackled one more time. “Yeah, I think we’re done playing for the day, progress is good so far but I’m getting too tired to keep heat-shielding, and Echo rang a minute ago to say she’s on her way.”

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #Project Praetorian #The Project #traumatized characters #found family #original science fiction #humans are space orcs #original characters #science fiction #sci fi

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canyouhearthelight · 2 months

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The speed with which their interaction goes from chitchat to Nils' terrible attempt to be flamboyantly gay to the Most Awkward Meeting the Parents is... It was fun.

Which is good.

Nihilus Rex 15: Stage for Comedy...

Lash and Nils have a date, and then...certain people show up. This is actually one of the fluffiest chapters we've written with this, with Lash and Nils playing off each other, both in the lies and the way the truth comes out. Enjoy it because this is the last fluff you get for a while. Cowritten by @canyouhearthelight. This is very much more her speed than mine, as you all know.

I wish somebody would have told me babe

Some day, these will be the good old days

All the love you won't forget

And all these reckless nights you won't regret

Someday soon, your whole life's gonna change

You'll miss the magic of these good old days

Macklemore ft Kesha, “Good Old Days”

Nils

“Happy slightly late birthday, Lash.” I sat down at our usual booth in Uncle’s tea shop, and tossed a very particular manga volume with a cyberpunk chick holding some very large guns onto the table in front of her. “Not as good as a comedy club, but if it involves Japanese art, Jeff can find it when I ask him.” I plunked myself down and set down my drink, grinning at her. “Wish I could have gotten it here for your birthday, but…yeah.”

Her eyes crinkled at the corners with a huge smile as she picked it up in both hands excitedly. “I wasn’t even expecting to find it, so definitely beyond better late than never. Do I owe you anything for it?”

“Since I got it from a comic shop where I have the same arrangement as you have with that comedy club, no. I mean, if you want to check the place out, I’d love to show you around there. It's a pretty cool hobby shop and they run some cool events with local artists.” Jeff was an absolute gem, great dude, and ever since I’d gotten him out of a tight spot when some asshole had tried to frame him, he’d decided I shopped free for life.

“So, new semester, and for once we actually do have a class together. Convenient for our cover story. Figure we can get half the assignments done in like a week if we binge?”

“Most likely,” she shrugged. “Macro…. Yeah, week and a half, tops. Unless we just royally screwed that class up.”

“When do we ever make mistakes?” I said, the ridiculously overblown expression on my face hopefully making it clear that I was joking. “At least, ones we can’t easily fix. I’ve had this prof before. Worst comes to worst, I’ll start talking faux intellectual white boy, and he’ll start nodding and being impressed.”

“Because we totally didn’t just mess up the entire economy.”

“I prefer thinking we improved it. And in terms of assignments, there is no way he’s updated his curriculum to reflect what happened there. At most there’s like. One more paper that we have to do talking about it. And we can provide a perspective on that. A very, very funny one.” My grin was becoming less ironic and increasingly “cat that ate the canary.”

She buried her face in her hands. “Can you even imagine? Trying to argue or discuss something we caused and pretending we don’t know the ‘socioeconomic pressures’ behind it?”

“By the time the semester is done neither of us will be imagining that…” I was shaking, trying to hold it in. I put on a ridiculous old man voice as I made duck lips with my hands, imitating a barrel chested man with a slight British accent. “How do you know this was the motive of the economic terrorists responsible?” Then, in my own voice, “Well, you see, it’s just a hunch, but trust me, it’s a good one.”

She took on a serious expression and tapped her chin with one hand. “I wonder, how do you cite ‘trust me, I know’?”

“My best guess is cite something so fucked up that they don’t want to ask how you know that, but I don’t think that’s relevant here.” I leaned back. “There has to be a way though. Like, maybe the gender studies or one of those departments would know? They go more on personal experience than the hardcore academic histories and public policy side.”

“Mental note added to check if it comes to that,” she nodded. “Hopefully it doesn’t come up, but better prepare and not need than be unprepared and need.” She glanced around and groaned. “Nosy auntie brigade, your five o’clock. Already clucking away.”

I immediately turned towards a tall, muscular guy with a short, triangular, black beard - he actually was pretty easy on the eyes, just wasn’t, like, Lash - and gestured at him. “Oh, Lash, sweetie, how are you still single?” My voice took on a singularly fruity affect, and my body language shifted. It was fine, I’d done drag once when I was in undergrad, mostly as a favor for a friend who actually was organizing the college’s Queer club. Even if this wasn’t really my preferred style, sometimes if you wanted to protect someone’s privacy it was easier to lean into stereotypes. “Or is he not your type?”

Now that I was looking he did actually look really good. Deep eyes, broad shoulders, I could see his back moving under an athletic shirt, like…hm. I could fake only being interested in him, even if it would be easier if I wasn’t sitting near the most attractive person of either sex in this shop and very possibly the whole city.

Lash followed my gaze before choking back a laugh. “Imran is married and nearly forty, ‘bestie’. Also, he’s my cousin through some very complicated family accounting that I do not understand, except that he is actually related to me by blood.”

“Well, that does rule him out of my dating pool once and yours at least twice over.” I leaned back, and dropped my voice back into its normal register, lowering it to a whisper. “Okay, think they’re good?”

“One is arguing that you’re bent, two are completely unconvinced,” she muttered. “I don’t recommend hitting on Imran, though, if that’s your next brilliant plan. His wife has a wicked right hook.”

“The things I do for you, babe.” I put back on the over the top voice. “Nah, honey, I trusted you when you said he was married, I’m not looking to get involved with a married man, that seems like the kind of thing that gets everyone hurt and isn’t right anyway. Maybe that guy in class, that sandy blonde one with the sea green eyes? You thought he was cute too?” There was no such boy but playing that we were rivals for some ambiguously maybe-gay maybe-not queerbaity show reference would be easier to act and maybe deflect suspicion.

The look she gave me almost made me flinch - clearly she caught the reference. “I think he’s dating that art major, the guy with the blue eyes and permanent bedhead? I see them together a lot.”

“Hun that art major has been at that school for ages, hardcore closet case with no chance in hell of ever coming out, he is wasting his time there. Either of us has a shot at doing better.” At this point I was just playing around to see if I could get her annoyed at a bad show and turn this whole charade into a joke on multiple levels.

She waved her hand dramatically. “Too much baggage either way. He mentioned the other day that his younger brother is a drug addict, I don’t want any part of that.”

“Your loss.” I leaned back and took a sip of the coffee. “He’s told me about his father, I think he’s pretty great for getting as far as he has.” I took a beat and reflected on the hypocrisy of the joke we’d both just made. I’d point it out later when we were alone.

Lower. “Now?”

“Hard to tell, they aren’t looking over anymore. We might be in the clear.” Her phone vibrated suddenly, and she glanced at it. Her eyes grew wide. “Nope. Not in the clear. Abort mission, abort mission.” The phone went off again while she was frantically gathering her things. She checked it again, this time sinking into her chair, looking defeated. “Nosy Auntie Brigade has won the round. We’ve been snitched on.”

I didn’t drop the effeminate voice. “To whom?”

“They told Mama on me,” she groaned, rubbing her forehead with one hand. “And I have been ordered to stay put, she’s on her way.”

I felt a surge of fear. Despite my confusion at Lash’s deference to her parents, she did still live with them, and I respected her too much to push her on it. “I will stay if you want, or go if you want, but if questioned about me, it may be better if they don’t get to ask why the boy the aunties told them about ran away like a coward. I can turn up the charm, or play out the ruse and just be your gay classmate. Or a work friend who also goes to school with you? Pick an angle?”

Her hand flew out, grabbing my wrist with surprising strength. “Oh no, you are not leaving me to face them by myself. Work friend who goes to uni with me. No lying. She will know. Tell the truth, just not all of it. You are interested in men - not a lie. If she asks directly, spill your drink or something to change the subject. If you run, your cow will never survive the shame.”

“My poor cow.” I gave a slight smile. “I’m not a coward, Lash. I’d only have gone if you told me. But yeah, I figured it’d be better to stick around.” I leaned back in the booth. “Meantime, some tea?”

“One chai, one chai latte. Get baklava, Mama loves them and I need the sugar. And a coffee! Baba is with her, and it will distract him.”

“As you wish.” I got up and ordered the drinks, and the pastry. “Hey, Uncle. How’s the shop been?”

“Decent. Not much more trouble lately. Been quiet for a while.”

“That’s good. You deserved the break.” I tipped him and grabbed the drinks. I took a breath - I wanted Lash’s parents to like me, which was ridiculous all things considered, but…

The doors opened, they must have lived closer than I thought. Two people came in. I could see family resemblance, Lash resembled her mother in build, but her father in coloration, with aspects of both in her bearing, her facial structure, the way her hair fell around her face. Her father was a middle aged man with a mustache and glasses, with thinning hair. Her mother was slightly shorter, with her hair pulled back in a bun, but with the same glossy black sheen that Lash’s had, and she wore gold earrings and bracelets.

They made a beeline for her as I sat down beside her and waited for them to start talking. “Hello, sir, ma’am.”

“Introduce us to your friend, Elakshi,” the woman I presumed was her mother commanded gently.

“Mama, Baba, this is Nils. We work together, and go to the same university. Nils, these are my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Botelho.”

I filed away the last name for later, since I’d not gotten her last name, only her first. “Honored to meet you both. My name is Nils Andover.” I held out my hand to shake, giving a very slight smile and confidence I didn’t feel.

Mr. Botelho scratched his chin. “Andover. I work with an Andover - is your father a doctor?”

I hid my internal wince, hopefully. My father was an excellent doctor but he was not exactly known for being easy to get along with. “Yes sir. He is. I didn’t know you worked in medicine, Elakshi hasn’t told me much about either of your professions.” I hoped Lash would forgive me - I had no idea how either of her parents would react to me using a screen name or nickname they may not have known she went by, and the last thing either of us needed was for them to think it was a pet name between lovers. I could always explain it that way later if I needed to.

Lash’s nails bit into my wrist under the table as her mother’s eyes lit up and she leaned forward. “A doctor? And you let him call you Elakshi? So familiar.”

Through clenched teeth, Lash managed to smile. “I told him to call me Lash, and explained that my given name felt too familiar. I think he was just confused because you used it. And he’s in school for programming.” More nails bit into my wrist.

Mr. Botelho took a sip of his coffee. “I work with your father - I do his imaging. Very talented man.” I noticed he didn’t say he liked my father, just that he was talented. Oddly, that put me on a good position - I had heard the name before, I just hadn’t put it together.

“Oh! That clicks, thank you. I knew I’d heard the name before. Yeah, Dad’s mentioned a Botelho who works in radiology before - says you’re probably the best in the department at pediatric imaging.” I turned to Lash. “My apologies about the name thing, I thought using a real name with your parents would avoid seeming too familiar. Clearly I was wrong.”

Mrs. Botelho clicked her tongue. “So the two of you are familiar with each other? Elakshi, you should have said something sooner! And he is going into programming - very stable field, many opportunities.” She nodded as she took a sip of her chai.

“Let it go, my flower,” Mr. Botelho muttered. “It upsets her, and we do not want to fight in public.”

Tension dropped out of Lash, and she let go of my wrist to reach across the table. “Baba, I only do not want to be embarrassing. Nils is attracted to men, and I did not want to get Mama’s hopes up.” I kept up a poker face, but shifted my weight slightly in a fashion that people told me made me look gayer.

He patted her hand gently. “I fear that attempting to keep your mother’s expectations low is a Sysiphean endeavor. After Mori married well…” He trailed off and his eyes rolled up toward the ceiling. “There is no hope for any of us in tempering her dreams.”

My eyes flickered between Lash and her family. Was this how families who could communicate talked? My parents and I normally just talked politics or philosophy, academic career shit, and avoided anything even remotely related to…feelings, and started getting either real cold or real explosive when that came up. “Sorry to get you excited, ma’am. But no, your daughter and I are friends. We work together. We have a class together.”

“He tried to set me up with Imran,” Lash added, darting her eyes towards me with a glint that made me suspicious.

“Imran is her third cousin on my great-aunt’s side,” Mrs. Botelho chastised me. “And Fatima is very healthy, a good match for him.”

“And stabby,” Lash added. “Very very stabby.”

“I didn’t know he was even married!” I said, holding my hands up. “We were talking about homework and the topic of our options came up, and he walked by, so I asked her, then she explained all that.” Who even remembered family connections like that off the top of their head?

Mrs. Botelho warmed to me almost instantly, patting my hand and forcing a piece of baklava on me. “Now, Mrs. Ferreira’s grandson, Farouk - Very handsome boy, bit of a troublemaker, but he is going into business.” She pointed a finger triumphantly toward the ceiling. “If you truly are not hoping to win my daughter’s affections, he would be a fine match!”

Lash whispered quickly. “The business is drugs, and Farouk is gayer than a tree full of monkeys. She is trying to set you up.”

I blinked, slowly. Mr. Botelho rescued me from trying to respond to that by chuckling. “I don’t think we need to get our daughter’s friend matched with an entrepreneur of ‘experimental pharmaceuticals’.” His eyes did narrow slightly, then he asked a question that made me curious if he bought the story about me being gay. “How did the two of you come to meet?”

“We were partnered by our programming professor on a project,” Lash answered with flawless confidence. “The assignment was to create a small app or widget, one that wasn’t clearly based on an existing one. We decided to make one that would let people rate coffee shops, specifically.” She gestured around us. “Obviously, I had to bring him here so he understood what a five-star rating should be.” For someone who seemed to think her mother had lie-detecting superpowers, she sold that one hard enough to almost make me believe it, and I knew she was shoveling a pile of bullshit.

“And it has replaced, without effort, the twenty four hour cafe I used to frequent. Which only scored around three stars.” I said, easily. “We’ve done a few small commissions together since then, little things for people around the community mostly. Our skillsets cover each other’s gaps pretty well.” True enough, and most of the ones we’d done together had been legal. Among those her parents would ever be able to ask about, anyway.

Lash’s mother narrowed her eyes and pointed between the two of us, bangles clattering. “This. I like this. Partnerships are very much about complimenting each other, and this is a very good one.”

Lash groaned, dropping her head back dramatically. “Class partners, Mama. For projects.”

Apparently that didn’t help. “How do you think I met your Baba? At university - the man cannot keep track of his notes to save his life, and I am very organized. It was enough!”

“God save me, my mother missed her calling as a matchmaker,” Lash muttered, chugging the last of her latte.

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #original fiction #Nihilus Rex #Afterverse #modern dystopia #nils andover #Lash Dalita #traumatized characters #cyberpunk #the miys prequel #arcadian inquisition prequel

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canyouhearthelight · 2 months

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I'm not crying, you're crying...

Or you will be.

#found family #fairy tales #fantasy

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canyouhearthelight · 2 months

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The amount to which I have read this FOUR TIMES and still think "Poor Molly"...

You aren't alone, if you thought that.

Project Praetorian 22: Assessing the Enemy

Curtis and Mark do an after action report together, and attempt to figure out next steps. Beta-read primarily by @canyouhearthelight, with heavy reminders to stop putting in jargon without finding sideways paths to explaining it.

Curtis

Curtis was letting Mark practice giving after action reports for the encounter they’d just had, and the boy was giving it the third try that day.

“Over a hundred civilians massacred. We lost three troopers, though I think our limited losses had to do with element of surprise more than anything. Those weapons were…we played with them a little on the way back, the troopers can give a detailed report. We can confirm they interact with our own powers, so we can turn some of the enemy force against them, but that is going to require a lot of tactical innovation for how much it makes any combat environment - especially concepts like cover - pretty dynamic. We killed 45 enemies, forty one of which were those spindly toad looking things, and four of which were the tall spiky bastards. I will note that ALL our losses were killed by the spiky fuckers, not the toad things. We captured the ship and discovered a sole spiky fucker and a handful of toad things crewing it and gunned them all down. Echo compromised the ship computer, and it is now being hauled back. As a final note, I reccommend some form of call name for different alien species so I can stop saying “spiky fuckers’ and “toad things.” Mark’s exhaustion lent his normal sarcasm a bitter edge. “We also recovered one civilian survivor, and the next time Imperator makes me party to kidnapping a war orphan I will shoot someone.”

“That is not quite how you give an after action report, Mark, but it isn’t…bad.” Curtis was obviously amused. “And I wasn’t informed of that ahead of time either. I will ask - given what she saw, the total lack of other family, and that Imperator was otherwise going to keep her silent for classification, do you believe she had better options?”

“Maybe not but fuck off.”

“No, really. Because I know you’re furious, but more people are going to wind up here for that reason. Do you have any other opinions to add to the report?”

“The effects of the alien weaponry is something weird, and I want the team fucking with those on the training field so we can practice not only firing them, but also seeing if we can manipulate the energy from the rounds as we go - they have some kind of static discharge that fucks with electronic sights, and they give off a huge wave of heat. We should be able to do something with that.”

“Got it.” Curtis rubbed the bristles of hair he had. “Okay. I’m going to add that in. I’ve already had a look at the captured weapons, and the science team are looking at both the bodies and the weaponry - though we’re going to wind up sending a lot of that stuff to other defense contractors to try to reverse engineer it. Big agreement there.”

“Fuck. We’re still holding a few of the blasters back, we have to. Need to figure that out.”

“I’ll put that insistence in the report, sure.” He would - he had no idea if it’d go through, but he could ask.

Mark walked off towards the dorms, looking tired and pissed off, still.

Curtis looked at the report he’d already written.

Enemy reconnaissance group arrived in civilian area - adolescent music camp. Enemy shows typical lack of distinction between combatant and civilian - total massacre of civilian witnesses - over one hundred civilian casualties. Imperator forces, including Praetorians, engaged alien forces.

Enemy forces appear to consist of two distinct species: one large, physically powerful species with spiked, horn protrusions from joints, and the other a shorter, squatter creature that moves slowly and seems to physically resemble a toad. The larger creatures (hereafter “Spikes” - recommend this as call name) seem extremely dangerous and inflicted every combatant casualty, while the toadlike creatures (hereafter “Croaks” - recommend as call name) seem clumsy and poorly coordinated. The Spikes moved with discipline, and effective fire coordination, where the Croaks seemed to move with something closer to mob mentality.

The weapons issued were different as well - the Spikes carried weapons that seemed closer to a rifle or carbine, which seem, after some experimentation, to be able to be reloaded with power packs they carried, though the mechanism of this seems clumsy to the joints on human hands and wrists. The Croaks, by contrast, seem to have some kind of pistol-analog weapon that is not meant to be reloaded - almost indicating that the weapons they carry are expected to outlast their wielders and that any instance where they do not is meant to be compensated for by scavenging weapons from the fallen.

The weapons themselves are devastating as feared - a burst of EMP around the discharge that spreads out to about eight meters. From the blasts themselves, they seem to have a maximum range of around 250 meters, which means that in terms of combat range their small arms is inferior to human ballistics, but the raw power of their weapons more than compensates. Their weaponry can melt through almost any cover within a few shots, and totally negates body armor with a direct hit - and at the end point of the range, the explosion will seriously burn anyone within a meter and a half of the burst for a “hard kill” with an additional “soft kill” radius of any exposed tissue being burned for easily recovered but temporarily disabling wounds within an additional two meters of that. There is indication that their small arms may be capable of damaging or disabling tanks with concentrated fire.

Praetorians seem to be testing their ability to neutralize or redirect the energies utilized by the weaponry, but this is thus far inconclusive. The captured troop carrier has already been turned over to aerial defense experts for examination and reverse engineering. The plasma weaponry, save the two carbines we kept for the purposes of Praetorian testing, have been likewise sent out. The alien corpses are being autopsied for ideas regarding what we can expect.

He’d already talked to some of the lab guys and some of the air guys about what that shit looked like. They were working on gene sequencing both species, but it was already apparent that in addition to being powerful and skilled combatants, the Spikes might also be physically flat out superior to humans in almost every way - stronger, faster, denser bones, better reaction times based on conductive nervous system, etc. There was no such indication of the Croaks, but something else was worrying the lab guys about them - indication of mass reproductive potential. As in “laid eggs in clusters of thousands, possibly.”

Meanwhile, the ship was…Curtis had to admit, his eyes had glazed over once the guys were talking about it, but theoretically, now that they had it, they could find it, and could start working on a way to take it on at least in atmosphere, though it would almost definitely be punishing even on some of the best terrestrial aircraft ever created.

Curtis looked at what the alien guns could do. We can outrange them. They can destroy cover. How…how are we meant to fight that? The most devastating aspect was the EMP discharge - that would make a lot of rangefinding for artillery extremely difficult and dangerous, and maintaining communications in the field almost impossible without actively hardening almost everything, which would be a brutally expensive, logistically intensive process, in a time when they already needed to be ready to essentially draft and train millions of people.

The old marine looked at the report he’d written, thought about what was to come.

Thought about the seven…now eight…children who would be going up against it.

And he sighed, and added two final notes to the report.

Recommend declassification to wider range of military personnel ASAP. Witnessed enemy doctrine that requires personnel training and retraining doctrines in place before mass callup.

Praetorians performed well - due to clashes between Mark Ascher and officer, as well as the efficacy of Praetorian autonomous deployment, recommend separate chain of command for Praetorian units.

At least they wouldn’t be responsible for dealing with incompetent normal soldiers at their backs.

He picked up the phone. “Leon. How’s Molly doing?”

“Terrible. She’s assimilating, but it’s slow. She keeps asking after her friend - like she’s swearing up and down that we missed someone, that her friend had to have made it out too.”

Curtis cursed. He’d seen that with the aftermath of IED blasts. Believing someone had to be just missing, but…

“Yeah. That can happen.”

“Curtis?”

“Yeah?”

“This isn’t going to get any easier, is it?”

“No. It’s only going to get worse. This is…this is what war looks like. And they’re gonna be putting these kids on the tip of the spear for the worst one, maybe ever. I…Doc, I don’t know what to do. I’m a grunt, I don’t know how to…”

After he faltered, she was quiet. Then she spoke. “I’ll help them keep it together. It’s settling in. Talk to them about what they’re doing. You can relate to that. But…Get it back in blood, jarhead. Be with them on the battlefield, whenever you can.”

He felt himself grinning. The corps had long since lost its romanticism to him, but the motto…

“Semper Fi, doc. Always.”

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #project praetorian #original fiction #the project #original science fiction #traumatized characters #found family #science fiction #humans are space orcs

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canyouhearthelight · 2 months

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Nihilus Rex, Ch. 14: Date Night

You didn't really think that yours truly could write this much of a story without some flat out tooth-decaying fluff at some point, did you?

I mean, who do you think I am??

But don't worry, @baelpenrose definitely did his part. Don't let his angsty ways fool you.

Hang my coat up in the first bar

There is no peace that I've found so far

The laughter penetrates my silence

As drunken men find flaws in science

Their words mostly noises

Ghosts with just voices

Your words in my memory

Are like music to me

Snow Patrol, “Set Fire to the Third Bar”

Lash

At six forty-five on the dot, I spotted Nils from across the parking lot behind the comedy club. His expensively worn-out leather pants made me feel a little better about having braved the kohl eyeliner and mascara, along with wearing clothes that actually fit instead of the baggy cargos I wore day to day. It looked like I overshot, though, because he started to walk right past me.

“It can’t be that bad,” I joked, grabbing his arm and startling him into turning around. I forced down the self-conscious feeling that tried to bubble into my throat.

He started and then turned and stared, pale face flushing. “I uh…I’ve never seen you dressed up like this before.” His eyes flicked up and down my outfit, then fixed on my face. “You look amazing.”

I kicked one foot playfully, looking down at my jeans and boots. “Usually I’m trying to avoid being noticed. Pretty sure these boots were made to grab attention - they’re vintage. Borrowed them from Mama, and don’t ask why she owns them, because I don’t want to think about it.” Thank god she did, though - cavalier boots were expensive, and these were actually real leather.

“They look good on you. So does the sweater.” Nils took my arm. “I believe I promised you a drink?”

“Yes, sir. One cherry bomb, let’s go!” I tugged on his hand, leading us to the door. Without batting an eye, I handed my ID and cover to the door guy, knowing he wasn’t going to look hard enough to do the math. Sure enough, he took the cash, handed back the card, and slapped a wristband on to show I was old enough to buy alcohol. Nils just arched an eyebrow at me as he did the same.

Once we were in, Nils let me lead him to the bar and delivered the orders - a cherry bomb and a Malibu sunrise. “You a fan of standup, or just the headliner?”

“Mmmm, bit of both,” I answered carefully. “Not a fan of the kind of standup that goes for the cheap jokes, but the headliner tonight is really clever. You don’t really expect the punchlines, it’s smart.”

“Gotcha. So, uh. What the fuck is a cherry bomb? I’m not like. A mixed drinks expert but I know my way around a bar and I’ve never heard of that one…”

“Ooo, you’ll have to try a sip,” I teased. “It’s cherry vodka and Redbull, kind of a big girl cosmo. Tastes like those sour cherry candies, the bright red chewy ones.” I paused for a second before remembering. “If they’re mixed right. Some places add grenadine, and then it tastes like cough syrup. They should be clear if they’re made right.” Our drinks were set down right then, and I grabbed mine, taking a sip before holding it in front of his face. “See? No color.”

Nils raised his eyebrows. “Swap sips? Thing I ordered is peach, rum, and coconut. Tastes like a melted smoothie, mostly - strong though, but it doesn’t taste like it.”

I reached for his, game for a little challenge. It was smooth, as promised, kind of like a fuzzy navel if it weren’t for the coconut. Not my jam, but not bad at all.

He took a sip of the cherry bomb and smiled. “This is excellent. Not quite my taste for a mixed drink, but amazing. Doesn’t taste like alcohol at all.”

“I know, right? Yummy.” I turned to scope out the room before settling on a table roughly mid way back on the left hand side. Without a word, I grabbed the first thing my hand landed on above Nils’ waist - either a pocket or a belt, I wasn’t sure - and started dragging him behind me. “Gotta snag the heckle-free table before it gets taken,” I explained when he yelped. Something wet sloshed on my arm, and I mentally promised to replace the drink I was probably now wearing.

“Sorry!” he grabbed a napkin and started dabbing at my sleeve as we sat down. “I did not mean to splash that on you.”

“No worries, it’s my fault. And it’s wool, don’t worry about stains or anything.”

“Ah.” He sat down. “How did you find out about this place originally?”

“Really bad day, and I wanted cheering up?” The look he gave me made it clear he wasn’t buying it, so I relented. “They actually found me. Needed some advertising done and some security cameras set up, paid me half cash and free tickets to a show. We’ve been loyal business partners ever since.”

“That makes sense. So you did some art for them and did the systems for the security cams? That’s pretty awesome.” He gave me a strange look, very obviously forcing himself to keep his eyes on mine. “So you take all your shady hacker friends here, or just me?”

I stretched, waving at one of my favorite servers with a grin. “Nah, this is my sanctuary, kind of. Somewhere I can just be young and normal, do completely legal work for legal-in-two-weeks pay. Please tell me you guys have poppers tonight? You were out last time, and it made me sad.” I pouted at the server with the biggest doe-eyes I could manage without laughing.

She scowled at me for all of three seconds before cracking a smile. “Double order, extra ranch?”

Nils pulled out a card. “Whatever she says. She’s just showing me around.”

I bit my lip to stifle the laugh when the server rolled her eyes and flipped her hair in mock arrogance. “Lashy-love does not pay for food. Anything but the drinks are comped.” She looked at me and rolled her eyes again. “New guys. What are you gonna do?”

His face! “I told you it was cute when you thought you won.”

He recovered with reasonable game. “You, Lash, are a genie and not the nice kind. Side note, you get better ‘free stuff’ contracts than I do - best I have is a nerd hobby shop that gives discounts.” He paused as he took another sip. “Though it is nice to finally get actual confirmation on your age. You’re 21 in two weeks, huh?” The lazy grin was back.

“For the record, I’m still trying to find volume seven of Battle Angel Alita,” I pointed out. “But yes. Lash Dalita is twenty-one as of a month ago. Elakshi is twenty-one in two weeks.”

“That’s your name? It suits you. Thank you for telling me. Still can’t use it, right?”

“I would prefer you didn’t, yeah. It’s… kind of the line in my mind that keeps my parents and sister safe. For them, I’m Elakshi. For everyone else, I’m Lash. Lash Dalita can get arrested without hurting my family.”

He nodded, somberly. “I won’t use your real name. Not unless you tell me I can.” he let that sit between us. “Question though - why Dalita? I’m not an expert on Indian or Pakistani culture, but isn’t ‘dalit’ the term for…low-caste, often discriminated against?”

Ooo, not so dumb after all. “It means ‘outcast, untouchable, undesirable’, yeah. It’s kind of a private joke - who chooses to work with the ‘poor, discriminated against girl’, and who steers clear.”

Nils visibly thought about saying something. “No One, apparently.” The tone made it clear that the word was capitalized. “I like your alias. Good signal for solidarity with people who need it.”

I winked as the plate of deep fried goodness hit the table. “You aren’t the only one with clever jokes.”

“Clearly not.” He gestured at the guy who’d taken the stage. “Warm up acts here normally good?”

“He’ll either make us laugh, or make us laugh at how bad he is. Worth finding out, right?”

“Oh totally.” Nils leaned back. “If I can ask, and you can tell me to fuck right off, how are your family doing since…” He left unspoken the obvious. Since the liens released. Since debt stopped hanging over their heads. Since we rewrote millions of people’s financial situations.

I lowered my voice as the opener started what looked to be a truly poor patter. “He’s being Baba - I promise that will make sense eventually. But he doesn’t fully trust good things, so he is putting what he would pay on the car and my student loans into a separate account, just in case he has to end up paying. He says worst case scenario, he has the money to pay, best case scenario, he has extra savings. Truly a win-win, insert self satisfied expression here. For him, that means he is happier than a pig in shit, honestly.”

“And, if i can ask, how are you feeling about no more student loans?” There was something urgent there. His gaze snapped back to the stage and he chuckled. “Wow, you weren’t kidding about win-win with comedy. Latter option, here, but hey, it’s a warm up act.”

“Poor guy, yeah,” I chuckled, snagging a jalapeno popper and drenching it in thick ranch. “Student loans weren’t a huge problem, for me, thankfully - I got lucky. Only had a loan for my first semester, so it was something just north of seven grand. I gave Baba the principal, he insisted on paying the interest because ‘usury is theft’, but it was something around seventy-five a month. I still give him the money, he sets it aside in savings, and I draw a couple more yaoi to make up the difference, just like before.” I took a bite of food and pointed at Nils with the other half. “By the way, South Park yaoi, real big right now.”

“I’d say ew but my most profitable artistic side hustle was Avengers Mpreg A/B/O garbage paid by the page, so…actually, fuck it. ‘Ew, but I’ve done worse’.” He shrugged. “Amazing what internet perverts will pay for.”

“Aww, A/B/O Mpreg not your jam? More of a tentacle guy?” I teased before giving an exaggerated shudder. “Don’t get me wrong, I have drawn entirely too many ovipositors and feet. But those so-called perverts pay really good money, so I refuse to judge them.” I did a mock toast before draining what was left of my drink. “Hmm. Water or another? The dilemma is very real.”

“I’m more of a ‘dangerous women who could kill me’ and ‘cute femboys and/or barra’ guy, which you almost certainly could have guessed from my everything, but that’s hardly the point. Also, I generally space drinks with water because it makes it take longer to get wasted and we’re gonna be here a while. Figure water first, then another?”

“I think we do both, since the water will get refilled automatically, whereas we have to get up to get drinks. Sound good?” I pointed at the plate between us. “Besides. While I am fully capable of eating these by myself, I have no intention of doing so.”

He laughed. “I appreciate you. And yeah, sounds good.” He picked one up and took a slow bite. “Oh, holy shit this is amazing. I love this.”

“The only place I know that makes their own,” I shook my head slowly in disbelief. “Fresh peppers, cream cheese, bacon wrapped, breaded, and fried.” I pointed to the ranch. “Don’t miss out on that shit, either. Extra garlic, extra salt, extra dill. Amazing.”

He dipped the popper in it and took a small bite, his eyes popping. “Oh my god. Lash. How did you..?”

“I will eat jalapeno poppers from any gas station or drive through… this is all the cook in the back. Who I joyfully would one day marry, sight unseen, if he weren’t already married.” I took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. “Wife’s pretty cute, though. You saw her.”

Nils raised his eyebrows. “Damn. Just a husband-wife team run this place, huh? Love it.”

I waffled a hand back and forth. “Sort of. Bartender isn’t family, and I don’t think they’re related to the owner. But if there is a good show, those two are always working. You can imagine she cleans up on tips, between the food and - I mean, you saw her.” I gave him a sardonic look, knowing good and well the man wasn’t blind, no matter how much he was trying to make a good impression. Michelle plus pulse equaled crush, it was just physics.

“I can imagine.” He seemed to decide to take a chance, after weighing his thoughts for a second. “If I may be so bold, though, my attention was rather occupied by another young woman.”

Thank fuck the lights were dimmed, I thought as my face heated up. “Glad to know the effort hadn’t gone to waste,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. A hand immediately flew to my mouth and my eyes widened. “I - I didn’t mean…. Oh, god, I said that out loud…” I groaned and covered my face with both hands.

Nils was smiling, but it wasn’t his usual, something-far-away, private-joke smile, with something else he was thinking about. It was a sincere expression, with an amusement entirely in the moment. “Apparently I’m not the only one who trips over my own words sometimes either? But no, Lash.” He blushed. “I’ve noticed for a while. Hard not to when we did all that together and I got to see firsthand how brilliant you are, how hard you go for…everything.”

Applause erupted around us, and I was relieved to see the poor opener had finished his set. I felt so bad for him, but right now I was too embarrassed to do more than clap enthusiastically that neither of us had died of humiliation. “Hold that thought, I am going to get our next round of drinks. You flag down Michelle and order waters. No lemon, they don’t wash them. And if she asks, tell her tap water. It’s the only kind they have, but she asks sometimes to figure out if people are going to tip or not.”

Nils nodded, face flushing, hopefully harder than mine. I took off to the bar, holding up a twenty to get attention. “One shot of vodka, neat. Then a cherry bomb and a… shit. Malibu sunrise! That’s it.” The shot was delivered first, and I downed it immediately to calm my nerves. When the other drinks appeared, I stuffed the twenty in the tip jar and paid with my card before heading back to our table.

“One Malibu sunrise, as promised for spilling the first one,” I proclaimed, setting the drink down with a flourish before taking my seat. Two glasses of water and an empty shot glass were already there, and I barely set my drink down before tipping my head back with laughter, tears coming to my eyes. “Same brain, I see. I had one at the bar.”

“What’s your shot of choice?” The grin was back, even if the flush was still sort of there, as he, seeming to act almost by instinct, had stood up as I’d come back and sat down.

“Stoli,” I gasped, carefully dabbing tears from my eyes to avoid smudging my makeup. “Just the right price point that I don’t feel bad throwing back, but doesn’t burn or taste foul like the cheaper stuff. You?”

“Jack Daniels. Cheap whiskey, you know. My grandfather was the first one in the family to make any money, said he really liked the kind of cheap stuff he grew up with. Kind of a soothing thing, and he and I were close.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but shrugged.

“My family doesn’t drink except for holidays that require it,” I confessed. “We aren’t Muslim, by the way. A lot of people seem to think that, like I’m some black sheep or something. Baba just doesn’t get the point of drinking, and Mama is too much of a control freak. But Holi…. Hooo, you should see them.”

“Hindu holidays then? Tell me about some of those. Google only gets me so far and I want to know more about you. What’re they like?”

“We’re… culturally Hindu, I guess you could say. On Baba’s side. Mama is culturally Jewish, actually. It’s a weird mix when it gets to holidays - Holi, then Passover, that kind of thing. Funerals are very emotional. Beef and pork are pretty much just out of the question at home, in general. Mama isn’t observant, so fermented foods are okay, and Baba would die without yeasted bread, I swear. But both sides are very family oriented, so any excuse to get together is always an unbelievable amount of people. I gave up keeping track, honestly.”

“Big family get togethers. That sounds awesome. Complicated, but beautiful. Energetic, amazing.”

I wanted to ask Nils about growing up Catholic - a kind of sterility I couldn’t even fathom, honestly, in my messy, emotional family - but the headlining act came on and wasted no time in doing her audience work. “Hands up if you’re married! Keep them up if you came without your spouse! And whose spouse has already messaged or called…”

I took a long chug of water before I started laughing, knowing that I had about thirty seconds before I would start choking otherwise. Sure enough, the first person in the crowd was called upon and Nils’ drink went spraying on the floor as some poor woman called out that her husband had texted asking where the ketchup was.

“Okay, yeah, see why you love her.”

“They asked if we had any clean towels!”

I nodded, my face hurting too much from laughing to give a good response. The second an older man shouted out that his male partner texted to ask if the partner had already had a hysterectomy, I knew any conversation was done for the rest of the set.

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #nihilus rex #afterverse #modern dystopia #cyberpunk #alternate timeline #nils andover #fluff

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canyouhearthelight · 2 months

Text

I will be fully honest: for both this and Nihilus Rex, we are enough chapters ahead that I re-read chapters before posting or reblogging.

I did not need to do that with this one. This is a chapter that just stands out with some old school Bael angst.

Project Praetorian 21: Hard Contact

Alright, guys, gals, nonbinary pals, the moment you've all been waiting for. The moment where the aliens show up and the praetorians fight them. Ready? Beta-read by @writing-with-olive and @canyouhearthelight.

Tw for: Implied/referenced neglect, gun violence, gore, blood, and the answer no one wanted to the question "what would sci fi stock weapons actually do to a human body." Tw for kidnapping as well.

Molly

The concert had been hyped up at the camp for weeks. “Annette, you have the sound set up, right?”

“Yeah, got it, you have the stand…”

“Your parents are showing up, right?”

“Yeah, finally. They said they would be.” Annette sounded nervous. Molly sat down next to her and held her hand, just for a second. Annette and her were both here on scholarship, but where Molly’s parents couldn’t have been more proud, Annette’s had always been pretty distant, frequently making some excuse or another why they couldn’t be at her concerts. The two of them had been friends since they were really little, and they’d almost screamed when they’d both managed to get into the Tanglewood music camp.

“My parents are gonna be here. I’ll ask them to take a recording, even if yours don’t make it.”

“Thanks, Mols.” Annette smiled, the olive-skinned brunette’s little grin communicating more to her redheaded friend than words ever could, and pumped her hand for reassurance.

Mr. Landson, the European conductor, called for both of them, and they rushed over to help get the stage set up.

***

Curtis

His phone buzzed, and he jolted at the alarm, snatching it off his belt. This was supposed to be a day for the kids to focus on their schooling, and he didn’t figure they needed to know about this.

The other troopers were already strapping on their body armor and performing a weapons check. “Alright, troopers.” He snapped out to his squad. Twenty years in the corps. He was about to fight aliens head on, even as he got his gear together, he couldn’t believe it.

“Move it out! Move it out!”

They were running towards the airstrip, towards the troop-carrying VTOL. An alien scouting ship. They’d detected several, and it wasn’t unusual for him and his forces to be deployed - it had happened several times while the kids had been here, even. He always found corpses, mostly melted, and zones destroyed.

But the detection had finally picked up the aliens in flight and tracked the trajectory - and now they were going to intercept it and meet them on the ground. The enemy were too fast to realistically impact with a missile, and they had already been confirmed to have shielding technology. But on the ground, maybe they’d have a chance of intercepting the crew and thus, capturing a landed vessel.

Then, as the troopers raced up the ramp, he turned and saw more troopers rushing the airstrip as the VTOL was beginning to spin up and had a few more minutes to take off.

Short troopers.

And over his comms, he heard, “Oy! Sergeant! You forget Echo tapped all the Imperator alerts?”

***

Molly

The parents were beginning to arrive, and as she and Annette tuned their instruments - her violin, Annette’s viola - Molly watched her friend anxiously stare out at the gate. God, please, if you’re listening, do this for her. Let her parents get here on time. Inspire them to do this for her. She gripped her crucifix with one hand, and gripped Annette’s hand with the other.

“Come on, it’s going to be alright. My parents aren’t here yet either. There’s plenty of time. The woodwinds are going first, then the brass, then they’re doing us, then all the pianists, then drums, and then the full symphony, then the choir and chorale, and then the whole ensemble. We are in the strings, the symphony, and the chorale. We have time.”

“I guess.” Annette looked anxious, and blushed a bit when Molly squeezed her hand again, which made Molly suddenly let go. She loved Annette like a sister, but didn’t like her quite like…like that. “Hey, tune with me?”

They played a couple of quick scales. “Alright. Uh…Tighten up on third string? You’re a little flat.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Annette nodded. “Thanks, Mols. So uh…Oh, your parents got here.”

Molly grabbed Annette’s hand again and rushed over to her parents, hugged her dad, who picked her up and spun her. “Ah, there’s my little musician! Oh, and Annette, good to see you!” Molly saw her mom hug Annette and then grab her and squeeze her when her father let go.

Her little brother was kicking his feet, trying to pull out a phone, but realizing there was no service at Tanglewood, specifically to keep kids focused. “Annette wants you guys to take video if we need it?”

“Of course.” Molly’s mom looked like she wanted to say something, but didn’t. “No matter what, after the big performance, you two want some ice cream, to celebrate?”

Molly looked to Annette, who grinned. Their families might not have been able to afford the price of admission to Tanglewood, but an afternoon outing for ice cream wasn’t a problem.

“Thank you so much, Mr. and Mrs. Harper.” Annette looked a little more relaxed. “Did my parents mention anything to you about…”

“I don’t know, but we left hours ago. They might well be on their way, and we haven’t had a chance to check our phones. Service is a little weird up…”

Molly saw Annette’s face fall, and her friend hugged her. The woodwinds were already starting, and the gates kept admitting more and more parents, and soon, she and Annette found themselves filing up towards the stage.

***

Mark

“Yeah, I know, Curtis. I know we weren’t supposed to just jump into the first real battle. We talked it over. Look, we have a long term plan. The only way to make it work requires that we take part in this shit, from early on. Help people, from early on. You yourself said we’re pretty solid on combat training at this point, so we might as well see if we can handle actual combat.”

“Fine. I want you to let us go in first - and if you’re here, you’re on actual military discipline. There’s a lieutenant who was on leave but with Imperator who was very, very close to the area of operation who’s going to be intercepting us there. We’re going to be rendezvousing with the LT fast, just outside the AO - we will be rendevousing with him and then deploying - we should be there within minutes of the enemy. Once there, follow the lieutenant’s orders to the letter.”

“Understood.” Mark looked to his team. He flashed a handful of quick signs.

“Praetorians. We follow the troopers. Follow our own doctrine, but don’t disobey command unless I say. They do know more about live fire than we do.”

Casey nodded, and for the first time, she actually had a shotgun fully loaded up with both normal buckshot and a handful of the brutal “fireball” loads that Curtis had recommended for her. Whatever they were up against, they would be wrecking today.

***

Molly

The music crescendoed, louder and louder, the bows racing across the strings, and the entire audience stood up and screamed, her parents’ applause thundering, and her little brother screaming for them.

Annette was simply looking out, wondering where her parents were - but then she seemed to see Molly’s parents, and managed to smile.

“Ladies and gentlemen, next up, we have the Tanglewood pianists and percussionists.”

The strings filed offstage, and took their seats, Annette sighing. “Yeah. They’re not coming.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nah. I kinda knew they wouldn’t. They never do. I’m glad your parents always manage. Thanks for always being there.”

“Hey, since we’re going home tonight, want to sleep over?”

“Yeah. I feel at home with you guys.”

The percussionists were always spectacular - and Molly couldn’t deny, their outfits were probably the best of the uniforms Tanglewood offered.

It wasn’t long before they began lining up for the symphony performance, but…a strange sound was ringing.

Something strange.

Then there was a buzz. A crackle. A scent, like…ozone. And then from the audience, screams. She looked out and - what was that? Her vision swam. How could…there was a small fire, some people were burned, and someone was gone, blood and gore splattered, charred meat - and that ozone scent, that buzzing…

Her parents were screaming, trying to grab her and Annette, and a person was already writhing on the ground, burned by something, even with a blast of something, what was that shit?

Someone got hit, and this time she saw what was happening, not only did the person die - James’s dad, she thought? - he exploded, blood turning to vapor and parts flying everywhere, covering her and everyone around him, and she felt heat slap her hard like a physical force, like she’d been sunburned just by being too close. She tried to keep moving, even if…

Then she saw what was shooting and she screamed even more loudly. It was a squat creature with strangely jointed knees, and a face that looked like it could have been a gecko or a toad, but with spindly limbs and a texture that looked slimy. It chittered and fired something it held with both three fingered hands. Something washed past them and struck someone else, even as everyone around them kept screaming, panicking, and more and more of the strange, horrible blasts kept firing. She saw several of the woodwinds kids race into one of the rehearsal rooms, and then another wash of heat hit her and the pressure on her arm lessened as she was thrown to the dirt, searing pain on the side of her face.

She glanced over and found that her father was no longer holding her right hand - or more accurately, she was holding his hand, but he was no longer attached to it. She screamed, but something was moving, and she saw something taller, something with backward knees and spiky, whiplash form walk into the rehearsal room and heard screaming coming even as her mother wrenched her and Annette to their feet.

Molly kept running, and wondered if any help was coming. There were wounded, screaming on the ground, people burned, horribly, by the backwash of those strange blasts. No one hit directly survived.

Her mother was sprinting towards the car, dragging her brother.

Then she felt Annette grab her wrist as from the corner of her eye another of those taller monsters aimed a strange weapon and a blast turned her mother into fine pink mist with a wash of that hateful, actinic blue-white light, with her screaming, burned, wounded brother following into heaven and into dust only a moment later.

She and Annette pulled each other along, hiding, running, and shoving each other behind the stage before it caught fire. A dozen wounded people were suddenly blasted, as a few of the toad-things noticed they were still alive and started shooting.

Then she heard something that an American schoolgirl never prayed to hear but was at that moment very much the answer to her prayers.

Normal gunfire.

The monsters - aliens, whatever they were - were being shot at. She and Annette crawled for safety into a storage room when they saw a group of soldiers, and Molly almost started crying with relief.

She started hugging Annette and they both sobbed, breathing hard, heaving, crying.

Then she saw something strange, misshapen, crawling into the storage shed, and pointed to it as she and Annette lunged behind the huge, old school piano. “Okay. There’s two doors here, not counting the one it’s covering. We hide behind here, then we both make a break for different doors. Maybe it’ll get confused, won’t take a shot at either, and we can both dip.” Annette spoke fast. Maybe she was remembering live shooter drills from school.

Molly nodded, and Annette suddenly lunged forward and hugged her. “We’re getting out of this. Come on.”

***

Vergil

The rest of the team was already moving in. He raised the rifle to his shoulder and began sighting, hands shaking with nerves, but forced himself to steady. Deep breaths. In, two, three, four…

Hold. Two, three…

Crack.

One of the aliens dropped. He let out the breath and started aiming again. His siblings were already running in.

The troopers were racing in, but Mark was already swearing over the comms and Vergil could see why.

“Motherfucker. This is going to get everyone killed. Cover doesn’t matter against things that can just fucking burn through it in seconds. No, okay, fuck this. Casey, tamp down the fire, and move the heat, sweep it left, then Xavier, blast a grenade up, flush that pod out of cover.”

Vergil sighted and saw a blast light up a window from a storage room, and sighted, seeing another alien silhouetted in there - then pulled the trigger on that one as long as he was there. If there was still a person in there, maybe he’d just saved them.

Jonathan laid down a hail of fire as a bunch of toad-looking things tried to move up, and then abruptly Casey and Xavier stopped fucking around and a grenade and a blast of flame turned them all to ash.

Another one of the spiky things was still moving around and trying to aim, but Mark, almost without particularly thinking about it, dropped to one knee and before anyone else could even aim, drilled it - even as it fired helplessly into the air, its weapon shoved skyward.

The marines were going building to building, kicking in doors, and searching for survivors. They were often firing simple bursts, and the team was following, usually with Shiloh - who at one point, upon finding themself grabbed by one of the toad things, kicked it with a combat boot and practically emptied their carbine into it.

“There don’t seem to be any - hang on. Movement in this…”

“Shiloh. We have a live one.”

Molly

She was shaking. Something had taken out the alien, maybe a sniper.

But she’d seen her best friend…it had gotten one shot off. She…her friend…Annette had been so confident when they’d let go, rushing towards the…

Now Annette was all over the wall, and Molly wondered if it was actually that dark in the storage shed or if the flash that had killed her friend had damaged her eyes. Her skin was burned, she knew that, and she could smell burning hair, even over all the blood. She was crawling towards what was left of her friend, wanted to say sorry, cry for her, and gripped her crucifix and started praying even as she saw the alien take aim at her, wounded.

Then something had blasted through the window and blasted the ugly thing’s brains out through the side of its skull.

And she’d been left praying to God to take and hold Annette, her mother, her father, her brother, and let nothing else find her.

Then someone kicked open the door and someone, a girl, looked like, with short hair, not that old, was looking at her.

Several troopers talked. “Yeah, let the magic medic try.”

The girl put hands on her and Molly squirmed, almost screamed, as her injuries slowly healed, though she felt like she could scratch her own skin off.

“What…what happened here?”

One of the soldiers looked at her. “You survived contact with hostile aliens. And what’s worse, we’re gonna have to see if you can survive more.”

The healer whipped around, clearly shocked, but before anything could be said, someone stepped forward and jabbed Molly in the arm.

“New toy from Koleth. If it comes up blue…she’s viable.”

A few other people - young, Molly thought, but that didn’t make any sense, even as she was trying to make sense of anything that had happened that day…

“You can’t fucking do this! We’re not…”

“This place was just taken off the map by the aliens. We’re going to go sweep the ship and capture it. If she can help, she can help avenge her family. Now, get to the transport, find where that ship put down, and see if we can’t handle whatever skeleton crew was left on it, if any. If nothing, we have an alien craft.”

“Fuck, viable.”

Molly didn’t know what was happening, but she found herself panicking again, and before she understood what was happening she was on a helicopter, not knowing what would happen to Annette, to her mom, to her dad, to her brother.

This was a nightmare, right? The hard-eyed kids, kids her age with huge guns, dressed like soldiers who ran off in a Hummer to “finish the fight” that wasn’t real. This was a nightmare. She’d wake up and Annette would be alive, and the concert would be back on and they’d be pissed at Annette’s parents and go get ice cream with hers this wasn’t real…

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #Project Praetorian #The Project #Original fiction #original science fiction #traumatized characters #found family #tw: guns #tw: violence #tw: blood #humans are space orcs #tw: kidnapping #original story

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