from
Genesis Dawn
chapter 4
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The woman kneed Glicht’s gut, winding him. He fell a step back and doubled over, saw a green hand out of the corner of his eye snatch something from the ground.
Glicht grabbed her and pulled her down, toppling both of them to the floor of the livery even as he tried to catch his breath. On his back, he saw the brown-draped shell standing over them, looking a bit shocked—although all shells looked shocked to some degree, with eyes as wide as those—holding the gun in one of his hands.
“Go, you delled idiot!”
The shell’s hairlike antennae stood up a little farther then, their feathered tips spreading out almost like little trees. Then, finally, he turned and ran. Glicht could only hope the man knew how to use a gun—from what he’d seen, it didn’t seem likely.
With little more than a scuffle against the wooden floor, the woman straddled Glicht and pressed her hands into his throat. He found his vision filled by her messy bun and haggard eyes, the dirt smeared along the sides of her face. It struck him in that small, startled moment, that he must not look much better, caked in dirt and dried blood.
Pain erupted white-hot from his neck.
She had her knees on his hips, so he couldn’t get his legs between them. He tried instead to wind his arms between hers and twist her off of him—grasping at her wrists, her forearms, while she glared at him and pressed her fingers down farther. She was far stronger than he’d have expected, built more of rock than of muscle.
It was only after a few short moments of panicked wrestling, his fingers digging into her arms, that he realized he wasn’t growing lightheaded. He hesitated, loosing his grip a little, looking up at her, feeling her fingers crush his throat with a near-unparalleled ferocity of pain, his lungs unable to suck any air down—but his head and his muscles felt fine.
He saw her mirror his confusion and relax her grip slightly in kind. Glicht didn’t take the time to dwell on it. He shoved her hands aside and twisted out from under her, pushed her so severely off-balance that her head struck the sharp corner of the wooden stall.
Glicht scrambled to his feet and backed away, watching her. She didn’t move. He saw a thick pool of red blood spread out around her head.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. His lungs couldn’t move, caught against the inside of his throat. He reached one hand up and gingerly felt his neck, still inflamed in incredible pain. It felt smaller than it should be. His windpipe had been crushed.
His heartbeat picked up, thudding against his ears, against the agony in his neck. He reached out with his other hand to steady himself against the stall. He couldn’t breathe. How was he still standing? How long did he have?
I’ve temporarily redirected some of my nanites to distribute oxygen into your bloodstream directly from the surface of your skin.
The voice was startling in the new silence of the livery. Glicht tried to turn his head, which introduced a whole new world of pain.
It will take me a while to mend the damage to your muscles and windpipe; until then, you’ll suffer some discomfort. I can stop the pain in a moment, but you must promise to be careful. Do not try to speak and do not try to breathe until I tell you to.
Gene… the spirit had saved him. Somehow it was helping him breathe through his skin. Incredible. Glicht stood staring at the dead woman, one hand on his crushed neck. He knew that the spirit had brought him back from the dead, but he himself didn’t remember being dead. He couldn’t even remember the moments leading up to it. But this was a power displayed right before his eyes, something undeniable.
Do you agree? asked the voice.
Glicht nodded, the movement itself hell to make. Then—almost immediately—the pain vanished, the fire doused all at once. It took all of his willpower not to try to sigh in relief. His neck felt oddly numb, but that was far more preferable.
Later, you’ll tell me why you killed that woman. I’m a doctor. I understand our agreement, but I cannot abide violence. You also need to tell me what that thing was you gave the gun to.
‘That thing’? The shell? How could a powerful spirit like Gene not even know what a shell was?
“Nara’s eyes,” swore a voice from the other end of the room. A man had entered; the one who ran the inn, if Glicht placed his voice correctly. When Glicht locked eyes with the burly fellow, the man took a step back, running his heel sharply into the desk behind him. “Nara’s eyes!” he exclaimed again.
A woman with long, matted hair burst around the corner, her gaze sharp and urgent. She seemed to almost throw herself in front of the innkeeper to protect him, although he looked out of the two of them like he’d come out best in a fight. Glicht heard others gathering on the other side of the doorway to the inn. The way they’d all been talking, he knew he’d be far from welcome in their company.
He touched two fingers to the brim of his hat, then turned and ran out through the back door.
The only way keep from trying to breathe was to consciously hold his breath, and holding his breath while running felt plain wrong. So, for that matter, did holding his breath for such an obscene length of time. But whatever the spirit named Gene had done to him was clearly working; he felt fine. A little tired, but fine enough to run when he needed to, picking his way through the white moonlit night down the side of Salvation’s great mountain.
The first thing he did was wind around a few boulders and slide down a steep slope, then pause and listen there where he couldn’t be seen. He stared out at the bland, white desert, the ubiquitous moonlight making the shrubs and small trees look to be made of the same stuff as the rocks and dirt floor.
The back door of the stable opened above him. Without needing to breathe, he made no sound at all as he leaned against the side of the slope. In the perfect silence of the night, all of the insects and animals having fled from the day's disaster, even the soft huff of his own breath would have given him away.
“Burning father,” said the woman. Glicht recognized her voice as having been the angry one in the inn, the one who’d blamed him for the flood. “He’s gone. You saw him, didn’t you?”
“Wish I hadn’t,” said the innkeeper’s voice.
“I’d seen him before. That’s Glicht Aarvam.”
“Aarvam died in the flood, didn’t he?”
“You saw the same thing I saw. When a creature has a face like that, how could you think it’s alive?”
A pause. “Are you saying what we saw in there was a spirit?”
“I’m saying he couldn’t have survived the flood, and when I saw him yesterday, his face weren’t half caved in. I’m saying he just de-shelled disappeared on us under the full light of all Nara’s daughters, and unless I’m mistaken, that woman he killed in there looks to have worked for Kors Slonden. The very man who Aarvam destroyed this town in order to find.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been the superstitious type, but…”
“Let’s get back inside. Bar the doors. That man’s done enough to this town, I ain’t letting him do more, alive or dead.”
Glicht heard the door close almost on the last word spoken, and he heard more muffled speaking inside. He stood blinking in the light, knowing he should take the opportunity to run.
Instead, he reached one hand hesitantly up to his face. He touched his fingertips gently to his cheek, then a little firmer, then he brushed his hand across all of his features as though scrubbing it clean of dirt and grime.
His bones felt wrong. Like they’d been misplaced. One of his cheekbones was lower than before, the other felt like it had been broken in half and put back together askance. His nose sat tilted at some extreme angle, the bones of his jaw felt broken, disjointed, maligned, and on his forehead…
On his forehead, he felt the tough, numb skin of scar tissue, months or years old, and a field of fragmented bone around it. It felt, rightly enough, like a bullet had torn through him and shattered his skull.
I was focused on getting you functional and keeping you alive, said Gene. Making sure your skeletal structure healed aesthetically was not high in my priorities.
Glicht couldn’t answer, still holding his breath. He wasn’t sure what he would want to answer if he could. He vaguely understood the spirit’s excuse, insofar as he understood anything the spirit said or did. How frightening did he look, if the people here would assume he’s some vengeful ghost? Would Haavra recognize him?
Haavra. He needed to get to the bottom of the mountain, look through the bodies. He needed to know if she was down there, get his bearings, decide what to do next.
He needed to see if Slonden was down there, too.
The voices had vanished farther into the inn and weren’t showing any signs of reemerging. He forced himself to start again down the slope, away from Salvation and toward the worst of the destruction.
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