Pure

When Dealing With Monsters

Sneaking around could get me in severe trouble, killed even. But my training as a guard for the Highers had taught me how to recognise suspicious behaviour, and nothing screamed suspicion like two trained officers sneaking into the weapon room hours past their shifts. Carefully, so as not to be heard, I back myself into the crevice between the lockers across from them, praying not to be found.

"How can we do this to our own people?" Officer Wilson, a fellow comrad of mine stammered to Commander Brians.

I furrowed my brow in confusion.

"The Lessers don't deserve this." He continued. "It's not right. The Highers are wrong to do this and you know it."  

I stifled a gasp; if a someone passing by had heard even a fraction of that sentence both of them could be sentenced to purgatory. Was he a traitor to the Highers? Had he been corrupted? I shivered in disgust. As children we were warned of diseases of the mind, that turned Lessers into inhumane vermin.  Death followed their wickedness, the introduction of weekly tests to ensure your souls purity the only preventative for the mass chaos they brought.

I unclasped my gun from my waistband and slid it into my hand, gripping it so I had a direct shot at Wilson's head if need be.   

Commander Brians shifted uncomfortably. "The path to righteousness is a hard one, Wilson, yet it is a path that must be followed all the same."

"But they are innocents!"

My suspicion of Wilson grew. Everything we did to the lesser humans such as ourselves was for the protection of our race. The commands the Highers gave us were always just; always aimed at preserving the goodness of our kind. They had the ability to eradicate us after they adapted powers of the mind and the ability to control the environment around them, yet they spared us. We owed them our lives.

"No lesser is innocent, Wilson, remember that. There was a reason only a fraction of humanity adapted. There is a reason we are in power, whilst they cower as our slaves and protect us from their own foolish kind." I wince at the harshness in his voice.

"We were once one of their kind." I felt apprehension settle in. They spoke as though Highers themselves, yet jobs such as guards required fighting- the tainting of innocence. If being tainted was a crime, why would a higher take such a job?

 "I expect you to follow protocol, Wilson." Brians barked, a spray of spit soaring through the air to land on Wilsons reddening cheek. "At midnight the Lessers are sacrifice, understood?"

"Yes, Sir. "

I waited until they exited before slumping to the floor. For sacrifice? The Lessers were to be sacrificed? It was too much to take in and I found my breath coming out in short pants. Up until now, I had never doubted the regime of our Highers, but a whole subspecies to be killed - how did this contribute to the greater good. What had we done wrong?

When the Highers slaughtered the rest of our race, they took us captive. They called us pure, the lineages worthy of redemption.

We called them monsters. Then, eventually, we learnt to call them friends. Leaders.

As our population slowly grew, their rule grew stricter. A single mistake landed you in purgatory, where you were trialled before the court and either worthy of saving, or condemned to death. 

Upon birth you were injected with a serum, which sought out the impurities in your soul like hound dogs sniffing out their prey. Babies were pried from screaming parents arms for reasons unknown. Within the next week, said parents would vanish without a trace as though they had never existed. If you were lucky enough to make it past the ritual unscathed, you counted down the days till your next weekly injection, praying that you were untainted. They claimed corruption spread through our minds like a virus, and like the deadliest epidemics, we were almost wiped out due to its claim on our lives.

So our population once again dwindled, till there were only a few hundred pure souls. Souls that were easily bended and swayed. The broken, doomed to die before 30 for the flaws of our human nature.

And now for our innocence.

It was in this instance that I realised, purgatory was no longer for the guilty.

It was in this instance that a pair polished boots came into my vision, and my head was slammed into a wall. Everything went black....

*****

We woke in a cloud of confusion, none of us sure about our destination. We were lost. Scared. Abandoned.

A howl in the distance set off a few startled babies, their breathless cries ricocheting through the night like gun shots. A few were guarded by dishevelled parents. The lucky ones. Most however lay wrapped in flimsy shawls, with nothing but the surrounding desperation of the gradually waking crowd to comfort them. Children wandered on unfamiliar terrain like loyal dogs calling for their masters, hopelessly whispering the names of friends and enemies alike.  Mothers cried for their missing young. Fathers mourned for lost family. And me, I sat with unfurling fear which threatened to flood my senses. Because, in my mind, I knew it was too late to save us.

Crimson red sea the colour of newly spilt blood clawed at the blackened sands, which housed hundreds of lost souls.  Hundreds of my people. Innocents captured like prey for slaughter at their discretion.

Tonight, we were not being trialled or judged...but sacrificed.  A thousand pure souls in trade for the liberation of a million sullied ones.

A fair trade.

The ground hummed in approval at its newest meal, the grains of sand scuttling past us in a frenzy like a million starved beetles rushing for food. Fog seeped from the ground, and a gradual haze overwhelmed me.

Death wrestled the last breath from my body.