ABSOLUTION

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

EPHEMERAL

“What have you done to me?” Farrow’s shrieking echoes violently throughout the empty streets.

When I turn around, I find her totally freaking out, jumping from one leg to the other like some kind of crazed creature. She wipes and scratches at her skin, as if something is attacking her from the inside. When she turns toward me, all color has drained from her irises, her eyes soulless black orbs staring into nothingness. Farrow stumbles forward, shoving her arms at me so I can take a look. Her veins protrude black and blue like they are fixed to the outside of her skin.

I, too, look down at my arms and see the veins are inflamed, my skin almost transparent. It reminds me of all the clones buried inside those glowing blue tubes back at the fortress where I was created. My heart beats erratically inside my chest as the memories of the day I was ‘born’ come back.

I awoke chained to a wall. My creator, Enoch, was playing his damaging mind games with me. He tricked me into believing I was Ava. But I escaped him, took him out, and made a run for it. I remember all those creatures, and just like me they were locked up in long, glowing glass tubes, dozens of them filling up every room and corridor of the vast, stoned fortress on planet Poseidon’s hidden moon. Expressionless, huge, dark pitted holes for eyes; organs and veins pulsating for life beneath transparent skin. That was the Shadow army… and they awaited my call. His plan all along. I was the face of the Chosen one, and while he actually held her captive, I was gathering their secrets for him. I was Troy’s hunter, built to ruin him, test him and break him. I found ways to sway the prophecy in his favor. But what he never expected was that my purpose of creation would be the one thing that would lead to his ruin.

“Holy crap!” Farrow’s yelling snaps me out of my dark reverie.

I turn in surprise when Troy is suddenly standing before me, talking.

“Troy?” I call to him, unsure if he is still under my siren magic. He just holds his hand up for me to stay quiet.

 My eyes follow his gaze, and my feet are automatically drawn forward by the inconceivable sight before us. I see purple skies tainted by black bellowing smoke of ruin. Poseidon’s surface is uneven and my feet have trouble finding solid ground. My foot slips on a piece of rubble, but I keep my eyes affixed upon the devastation, feeling the weight of the secrets in my journal push me to ground. Fragments of buildings, jagged parts of broken furniture, and of dying plant life litter what remains of the streets. Farrow finds her place beside Troy, her eyes wide and back to their normal emerald green. There are no words to capture the magnitude of the disaster that has captured us in a state of horrifying shock.

 Even I have only been inside the walls of the city, Vista, once before. But the memories of my Prime, Ava, and her time at the school here on planet Poseidon are clear in my mind. I remember, as she once did, bright colors of wondrous gardens and immaculate spacious halls. High, glass towers glistening against purple skies at the break of dawn, and the ghostly glow of the three moons on a clear summer’s evening. Beautiful, cobbled stone paths just a vague silhouette as the fragile memories of the smoky ruins blanket the forgotten amethyst sky in utter darkness.

I release a crushing breath in utter disgust. Gray dust is picked up by a lonely breeze and brushes across the crumbled sidewalk beside me. Small stones, sand, and a fine layer of black soot shoot across our faces with the flip of a wild gust. We close our eyes and turn away from the wind to shield them from the assault. Imprinted on the inside of my eyelids are my last memories of this place: Running. Fire. Storm. Cyborgs. Death.

The air is foul and damp as it comes in from the direction of the silos across stripped fields. It smells of perished food and animal decay. I gag at my reflection in the blackened muddy pool before me. I am at a total loss, and the loss is real and suffocating me from the inside.