mrsimple

This story was technically the second story I've ever written.  It followed after I started writing Union, which is sorta strange because Seed is supposed to be the final installment of The Span of Obscurity series. In other words, this is supposed to conclude all those confusing stories about mythology, demons, giants, otherwordly-realms, and bent genders. A little weird when considering I started writing Wish after this.  XD

 

As for this chapter, I went through it and corrected what I could before uploading it.  I will be doing the same with the second, which would've technically been the second part of the first chapter, but I saw how much was already written and thought the first chapter was a little long.  So I'll work on fixing up the second part and uploading it as a second chapter sometime later today.  :)

 

Enjoy!  :D

Seed

Chapter 01: Heating Up...

"Just lucky, I guess..." I sense it being said, than heard. I can't hear anything above the roar of our craft's engines.

The blinding darkness melts away in my view for an instant of flashing orange before going red for a few seconds more. Then the black returns shortly there after. The cycle repeats itself within our compartment.  It was illuminated again and again with that of the hot shades of color.

A burning light like bursts of flame that blew out into a cold and familiar blackness.

There. I saw the hatch to the cockpit when the flare of fiery light flashed to my left. I felt pulled towards it. This was like, I thought, “I have to get there and warn them about something,” but I didn't know what.

After a moment, I realised I wouldn't be capable anyways. I couldn't move my head very well. I wondered what was keeping me paralyzed. I tried to look...

They were white… Things? I didn’t know, but they did their job well keeping my head secured.

That was what tipped me off.  These white -- maybe yellow or grey if the flashing lights were flashing on them -- safety cushions pressed against my head and cheeks. This was to keep my head steady. As for why I couldn’t do more than twitch, I had more hard-gear compacting me into a safe steele-bubble. A heavy harness was crushing down on my shoulders. Constriction around my torso and abdomen was uncomfortable, but bearable.  It could’ve been an easy fix too because this was being caused by the harness. I didn’t tamper with it because it was meant to keep my body from flying around out of control.

Not a fun experience.

Both of my legs, up to the waist, have these cases just filled, absolutely Jell-O’ed up with a warm viscous fluid or gel. That liquid had a radioactive look to it. I remembered cartoons would make it out that radiation had a greenish glow, but that wasn’t accurate.  Magenta. And it added a more eerie atmosphere whenever the hot flashing lights faded down to nothing. That and added with the I.V. in my thigh, it was pumping me full of that magenta glowing Messi-hai. It made me feel like I'd peed my pants. Funny, but not really…

Around the case was a pair of mechanical contraptions that made up my lower exo-skeleton.  What I wore was support to this landing suit. I thought this one might be a steel-grey or sandy-beige to blend in with the urban landscape.

My arms were feeling very heavy without being activated. A shot of Messi-hai would fix me. Instead of being suped up, I had to settle with a series of cognitive joints which were pistoned out, relieving the pressure in the weights until whenever we arrived. When we dropped. They'll whir into motion all over -- not just my arms -- to complete the exo-suit. These arms, like my legs, will add to the edge of enhancements we have, being a soldier.

A Bourne Free Warrior.

Right now, I was more concerned by my rapid breathing and the increasing pain in my abdomen. I stared ahead at those hanging in rows before me.  Those of my attached-company I recognized. Not everyday I get to be dropped with familiar faces.

Except… All the focus was on me.  When their faces flashed hot, I saw everyone had this look on their faces.  They were expressed differently from one another, but I sensed in them pity. I wondered, “What the hell are they looking at?”

"Should we..?" Casey somehow bobbed his head in my direction, which is quite a feat on its own under the pressure of those cushions. He's a creative dude, kind of leveled with me at my productive times, but other areas of expertise can get me butting heads with him. Good example, he was a slob and I couldn't stand the messes he made. I'd rather have him clean it up himself, so he'd learn to do it all on his own like a big boy, but I felt compelled to help. I enabled him by doing it all myself...

Completing a task was in my nature.

"Don't. Keep your mouth shut," came out crystal clear from Robby mouth. I really didn't like how he took charge all of the time. His words of wisdom tended to be on the negative side, a pessimist, as in he never had any good thing to say. But at least he was willing to admit when he's wrong. I took pleasure whenever it was me pointing out the faults. That wasn’t often...

Most of the time, I remained silent and listened to what I was told.

"Hold on. Hold on. Hold on," Reynolds called out in a panic.

Or was it Reynold? I never really could tell without looking it up. We all called him that or the other. We discovered both versions and he never corrected the system or us. We did look up his name-tag in the system, which had to be correct for whenever the bucket kicked his ass. Unfortunately it comes up as Rey. Doesn't help much. Besides the lack of an assist with his name, he at least was a hands-on kind of guy. Not really good at saying anything worthwhile and yet really good getting his hands dirty to clean and clear the events we crossed. Probably was best to refer to him as Rey. Like a ray of sunshine, he made the worse of times brighter.  It was phenomenal how efficient he got the job done. We were competitive with him…

And after we saw what information the system provided, I was scared of his record.

"Where're 'most thar," Felix, making that all so totally fake country-drawl to state where we were heading.

This being obviously an orbital dropship, I was pretty sure we were expected a little later than sooner. Not that I was going to question him on it, though. This guy baited and ate arguments up like it nourished him. I didn't know why, he just loved a good dispute and would debate heatedly without end.

He was one reason why I remained quiet around everyone — a small excuse for silence.

"C'mon, get a little lick in before ya go down, boy," Owen shouted with glee.

He can really learn a thing or two from me on how to shut up. It wasn’t that I disliked his humorously stereotypical encouragement, but that he would go into a tantrum if he were on the receiving end. Whenever he had a problem, he expected everyone else to jump on the ‘Feel-for-Me’ wagon. Still, what he said there was an odd statement. Whatever…

It was better not to worry what one said or else I’d start to focus on the meat-grinder below us.

"Snrk, wha…? What happened?" Lee woke up with a snort.

Lee was short for Leroy, who even if he was present, most of the time he’d be absentminded. His head could be in the clouds thinking up all kinds of things to put into works of… Name it, and I could bet every type of canvas would become a work of art. I guessed he was as creative as a dude like Casey was, but rather than actual practice, this stuff came naturally to Lee.

Those two were really lucky to have a wholesome hobby to share between each other.

"...Snrk…” The guy snoring away right there was Rick.

Back on the Oak, I was the lucky one to call him my roommate. Normally, he was rather quiet — more so than me. Right now wasn't that far from how I, and everyone else, found him. I kind of worried about him, mostly.

Right now I was more concerned with what everyone kept looking at. Me.

"SHUT IT BACK THERE!" That was Robby again. A complete boss to our group of misfits, but no real leadership quality yet to be proven.  If he had shown it, then the Oak would’ve designated him as the leader. Which he wasn’t.

But I wondered, ‘Who's he yelling at? What is going on?’

Oh, the landing zone was coming up. I could somehow feel it. Don't know why, but it was a sense of proximity towards something with a foundation, I supposed.  Maybe I wasn’t fully aware, but I subconsciously noticed the dropship slowing over its target.

That was what this pain was in my gut, wasn't it? I've not eaten anything again and the acid was likely turning my stomach. That would happen whenever I spazzed out with anxiety, and that always happened when I fell asleep. Nightmares… With all of this stress, it was no wonder my body was trying to break down crap to get me ready for this big event. My body just wanted what was best for me, and truth be told, it kinda hurts. That's all.

Thinking about that rationally had calmed me down a little. It was the little boring stuff that Academics class would drone on and on about that could lull me into a dreamless sleep. When I blanked out into that state, I was in paradise. But if the nightmares came...

Then I'd be shaken fully out of my blissful comfort-zone. Just like my ignorant pasty butt right now did when a deafening ring of noise sounded off.

Shortly after it started, it became a sharp whistle in both my ears. In my right ear, I went practically deaf, but only after my head had snapped violently out of the cushions. The cinch to the harness had broken. Only a second of being aware of that had passed before I was thrown down a few feet to the compartment's floor. I had expected to hear a loud noise from the impact — like a clang or something. Instead, I was still being deafened by that piercing ring.

Bright white lights had passed by my peripheral.

Curiously, and with an ounce of caution, I glanced that way to see the streams and sparks of light that had started to cut through the bottom of our landing craft. It sawed through the bottom to exit someplace above all our heads. I tried to lift my head and catch that exit point, but the cushions — now in back of my neck — restricted that kind of movement and prevented me.

This harness weighed me down to the ground and I couldn’t push myself up. Not until the cinch was properly unlatched from the harness. It was a safety feature to keep us from waving our arms around. As much as warming up with Jumping Jacks helped keep us awake, it was a big no-no on the dropship. There were chances that at any moment we’d be dropped before reaching the landing. No one wanted their arms being left behind while we flew down and off into an apparent Hot Zone. We might be needing those limbs to kick some butt and give high-fives.

Instead of lifting my head, I thought, ‘Maybe I can roll over?’

Shifting my weight and throwing myself side to side to get rolling, I managed. And I got my wish to see how badly we were hit. There were a number of punctures widening up across our roof. The air visibly flowed out through them, building multiple vortexes above us and followed with more being torn through by those streams of burning light. It was amazing to watch and horrifying if this continued. I realized that our boat was about to be split into two sections.

Our craft was being shot down, which meant hopping out of the pot early and dropping down into the fire.

As I processed our current situation and figured what was our future, I picked up a funny smell. And I saw the twisted shadowy forms curving and dancing in obscurity up from the floor towards those openings in the roof. It was faint, but enough of it to see now. I watched it lift up in a swirl towards the damaged roof.

Smoke.  It was filling the interior of our compartment a lot more than it should be capable of doing. I turned my attention away from the dark curtain rising and falling all around me towards my company. All had their mouths open in some form of rage or fright. I couldn’t hear them, and I never tried to listen because there were others who had their mouths gaped or were stricken with a serenely peaceful look with their death masks.

Awake or asleep, they were already dead. I assumed the hot beams shredding through the dropship must’ve been what cut their lives short.

An erratic motion caught my attention and I strained every muscle in my body to turn again. When I made another clunky attempt at a roll, I watched in disgust and terror at the new found flames being brought to life. The attack had caught something flammable and a fire belched up beneath a few men. With my hearing half gone, I couldn't hear anything other than that ringing whistle. But I could sense the angry ticking of fine lines being made up along their leg cases as they crackled with expanding bubbly pressure.

That gel, the Messi-hai, was boiling their legs. The ugly images I got popping in my head were revoltingly familiar. Raw flesh grafted over the skeletal frame to pool together under gravity or seep through the cracks of their cases.

Quickly, I scrambled and scraped across the floor to roll clumsily onto my side, but not in time for the wave of sickness to swell up my throat and out in an explosive burst. However I could, I tried to shake my head, but I thought I might’ve been shivering enough to have shaken off the vomit.

Unlike everyone else who was strapped in, I got surprised like Hell when the whole place lurched and I was flung towards the furthest corner. Crumpled up on the floor, the only thought I had at that moment was, ‘That hurt.’

When I regained my composure, I felt what wetly remained of my episode as it slid down the side of my face. I coughed and retched, mostly dry, but I was more concerned about being unable to see without wincing in irritable pain. Despite the dropship being gradually cracked open one pinning hole at a time, the smoke was getting to be too much and I was in agony whenever I heaved to breath or puke again.

As I blinked and cleared my vision, I saw then that gross puddle I threw up. A darker shade than it should be. Eerily darker. I was disturbingly aware...

Now that my head was thrown out of the cushions, I dreaded look over myself for injuries.  But if I wanted to get out of this alive, I needed a damage report. So I peeked down at the biggest target on my body, the torso. And as I did so, I saw a hole in me.

‘Oh, there’s a hole in me,’ was my simple thought. I didn’t know then if I was in shock or accepted what happened and moved on. What I did do was take into account all else that was damaged. Where there should’ve been a protective flat-pane of steel to shield my torso was instead a flaky circlet rimming a twisted open void in my chest.

A moment too long passed assessing that spot. I needed to move on or else I’d be stunned in shock. Idleness would get me killed.

Funny… I should already be dead. I was shaking my head repeatedly in despair, thinking, ‘I'm dead.’ I could sense it, but here I was with a care to stay alive.

The assessment was prematurely over. I had to move. No idea where I should go from here, but I couldn’t be here. Not here. Not yet.

That was it. I wasn’t ready to die yet. I had to go.

My pathetic attempts at any motion luckily allowed me to get a point of view of something fately important. I couldn’t feel its importance, just a notion of urgency ran through me without being provoked as to why.

Once again, I rolled to get a better vantage point of what I should be seeing. I felt what myself being drawn to observe an event.

Over on the other side of the flames was a vulnerable case. It flashed a radiant yellow and blue, alerting and alarming everyone that there had been a problem. We all knew the dropship was a goner, and I supposed that was what agitated the alarm to trigger. It was an emergency button for the floor to drop away. Not open downwards and out away for us to jump through, but literally break and drop away. It was primarly in the event that if we all fail to fall — or if we do, without the floor opening up --  one of the crew or us would get their butt up, walk over to the flashy case, kick that button in, and it will doubly-activate all releases the cinches and hatches above and blow the floor below us open.

Emergencies only, like right freaking now.

Again, I rolled over. The solid clunking and metallic scraping are thankfully none of my cringeworthy concern — I supposed this ear-splitting ring had one positive.

Anyways the imperfect rounding of my suit had made this a difficult journey, and what was worse was that my initial adrenaline had been overwhelmed by the chilly loss of blood. A gap where my heart should’ve been still didn’t seem possible, but fighting all of that morbidly cold concern, I thought I'd go and warm myself up in the fire. I had no choice if I wanted to reach that emergency button.

In a few short seconds, my boxy-suit was rolled across the burning floor. Unfortunately, the suit wasn’t designed to halt the aggravation of being burnt, let alone made to prevent this last minute barbecue from cooking me up.

It wasn't the burning that had renewed my panicking, but the fact that I now could not breathe in this inferno. I didn’t care how badly I was maimed, I was dead. My life had already been sentenced whenever I had gained a chest cavity. Every moment could’ve been my last, so I had to do everything while I still could. And all I needed to do was roll a bit further and hit the button.

...But I couldn't. The suit’s constriction around me, the flames about, my arms being useless for their safety, same for those legs of mine — but they were already tingling with the gelatin at a boil. It was my lungs that topped it all. They felt like they were bursting with fluid.

By the time I reconciled that breathing could wait, I had sensed a new horror. My face was sloughing off all semblance of humanity and represented a monstrosity that was breathlessly screaming a silent scream for death. It was too much to bear.

A simple task to complete; pushing a button. The last thought to go through my head was how I failed...

My eyes shot right open, and before I was aware of my surroundings, I fought against the strongest urge to scream. The STIM earbud was scratched at for purchase and pried hastily out of my ear by something. I still heard that awful, deafening ringing. While I, in a frantic flail, struggled successfully out from under something heavy, I inadvertently went rolling out of bed and haphazardly headbutting into the neighboring bedpost.

That bump didn’t bother me in the slightest. Instead of inspecting my new lump, I was scrambling on all fours in a fright. My bare feet, slick with a cold sweat — that covered me from head to toe — had me slipping across the squeaky clean tiles to get away.

Clammy palms had searched for a purchase somewhere to thrust my body forward and away from danger. I’d been reaching to pull across the small space of our room for my place of solace. I had burst through the bathroom door, roughly without heed of being hurt, and dove dangerously straight, shoulder first, with my head thankfully tucked in, perfectly into the shower's wall with a dull slam. I heard the thud my body-and-tub contact made. I blindly reached for the shower-head and hiked it up into high gear from my upside-down position.

The high pressured streams of water hit me, and, Joyful Days, was that an ice-cold wake up call. Aside from finally coming to my senses, I was sliding down to my side and curling up in a ball. I could feel the air returning to my lungs and the burnt reminder of my enforced dreaming simulation settling into some remote corner of my memory.

Slowly, very tenderly, I began to get a grasp on who and where I was.

To myself, and in an uncontrollable sob, I said, “I'm Sidney. My name is Sidney.” I got who I was.  Now the where, and getting a better hold of myself, I tried more quietly to speak. “I am in my dorm room's shower. What I am feeling is a cold shower…”

"Hey,” shouted Rick. He called out to me, saying more softly, "Hey." I heard him as he stepped into the bathroom. The light clicked on before I saw his tall framed shadow cover me and the tub. I watched his shadow as he apparently knelt and propped his arms across the outer-lip of the tub. "Nightcap get ya?"

I silently nodded. After I heard how I sounded, I didn't trust my voice. I didn’t want to sound as useless and pathetic like I had in the STIM’s dream.

STIM, that stood for Simulated Temporal Interactive Map. What it did was make us a dream that anything inputted in the ear bud calculated would terrorize us. Those nightmare programs were intentional. My worst nightmares were shared, like everyone else here had experienced nightly, to be included in a cloud of information.  They’d be broken down and examined. Then we’d be conditioned to face those fears.

I hated it. This enforced program was mandatory ever since we turned five. We'd been dreaming normally, then whenever we’d have night terrors, the program picked it up and repeated it for us until we’d gradually feel nothing. No more fear… At least, until the system added artificial ones to test us.

“I hate it,” I said.  And, yes, my voice cracked and I shuddered another sob.

"Same dream you have every night or did it have a new attraction for you?" Despite how he worded that, it didn't sound like he was mocking my experience.

Whatever he meant by that, I silently shook my head in response. After a few seconds thinking about it, he probably was making an attempt to sound funny— make light of the matter.

Taking a deep breath, holding it in, and then slowly letting it escape, I eventually managed to calmly speak. "Ringing."

To indicate what I meant, I lifted my finger up to the side of my cradled head and tapped lightly against my ear. He didn't say anything for a moment. All I heard in this time was the shower running and its streaming hitting me or the surface of the tub.

Rick finally asked, "Could you describe it?"

"Not really. I think the nightcap broke," I said.  And as for the term ‘nightcap’, that was our inside term for the STIM. I continued to say, "I could only hear ringing after—”

"An explosion?" Rick filled in what I had thought set off the ringing. I nodded and he continued, "It's not broken. It knows you are more uncomfortable being left in the dark."

That really sucked. It was one thing to take away my voice in this dream, but another to remove my hearing. It made my senses all that more heightened — that was, the ones that still worked. Like how the pain felt...

"It will get easier," I heard Rick telling me in a softer, but confidently sure voice. He had said so before I watched the shadow of him reaching out a hand above me. Then the shower was shut off. "Don't worry, you're not on fire."

He knew what I dreamt. It was fair because I knew his nightmare, even though the two of us are not allowed to speak of it. No permissions.  We were simply not ever allowed to speak of it. Apparently talking about our fears defeated the purpose of the STIM.

That thought brought me back to Rick’s statement. I croaked, "Easier... how?"

"Wellll," he started.  He had this suggestive tone in his voice, elongating the suffix of his word out long enough to delay his next choice of words in a careful manner. "...I suppose, at first, I was afraid."

His hand — that had reached out to cut the water — had slowly dropped and laid softly down. I felt the gentle pressure and reassuring warmth seep onto my bare shoulder. I lifted my face up from the bottom of the tub to cautiously twist and turn up at a level for me to see him. I was feeling better, but more grateful that he was actually talking more than usual to help me out of this funk.

"I think that is normal. No surprise," I replied and cracked a smile at my own little wit on this subject.

Once I smiled at him, I noted he looked directly at me with a silence that stretched on long enough to become unsettling. I was not all too comfortable with that, which had put my smile back down.

He had shut his eyes for an instant and sighed before beginning to say, "You know," then brings up, "I am sorry that it is only a dream."

That had taken me off guard. I wondered, ‘Why would he want what I dreamed about to be real?’

So I asked, "Why? I mean... what you said, that I didn't expect to come from you or... or anyone, really." I honestly didn't expect him to have a morbid wish like that.

"Wellll," he had that tone again, stretching out the word so he could contemplate his next line more carefully. "Look, I’d smother you with a pillow long ago, just to stop having to put up with your showering wake-up rituals any longer. And if the dreams were real, I’d settle with the frier cooking you up like a sweet-honeyed fried chicken." He gave me a stern look then, but stated, “I am sorry, but I have to face reality, and I think this version is prettier than a crispy chicken leg.”

“Ugh,” I cringed at that lame joke. I mean, and wondered, he was trying to make a joke, right? Was that a compliment he threw in there too? Relating me with how horrible a breaded drumstick would look after being dunked into a boiling grease pit is nasty, but why add in the 'pretty' remark? I shook my head while rolling my eyes up and away from him. I decided to voice my opinion of him and stated, "You're messed up."

He smiled a little bit at me, but lost it in a short moment after. I could tell by the look on his face that the cogs were turning in his head. He had something else to say, but I believed he mulled over whether or not it was wise to speak his mind.

"Back to how I was, yeah, at first I was afraid. Then I got upset about it," he said.

After he mentioned that, I felt his hand rub over my still wet and slippery shoulder, gave it a slick pat, and retrieved his hand back to roost on the tub's side. I suspected he didn’t get to say what he really wanted to, and I wasn’t about to press him into spilling it.

Right now, I was seriously not in a good way or place. One thing at a time, and I much rather get over my own problem before tackling another. So I continued our initial topic.

"Is that what I'm going through? Getting angry about it?" I asked.

While he was busy thinking about my questions, I rolled off of my side to get myself sitting up in the tub. My legs were stretched out to the far end and for my toes to be tickled under the faucet as it slowly dripped out what remaining water was in the line. I leaned my back against the other end and straightened up until I could comfortably face Rick.

He shook his head at me and stated, "No."

I watch him as he stood back up and turned away from me. Then he began to walk out. That was it? I felt cheated with that simple last answer. I was not going to leave that as the endnote for this conversation.

"Wait," I called out to him. I was a little louder than I had intended and that had stalled him to a mid-stepped standstill. He dropped the foot and turned back to face me.

"You're still afraid," he stated. "To correct you, I'm not upset anymore either. Hell, I'm not even angry anymore." There was a smile stretching across his facial features, but I was not liking it with his vacant look. "I understand its purpose and don't care anymore. That's all."

"Rick," there was almost a stutter from me when calling out his name. I paused before any further words left my mouth, to control my voice. When I thought I had it back in control, I then said, "You don't mean that. You know what they will do—"

"I don't care," was all he said to me before turning and walking out. Outside the bathroom, he announced, "I'm going back to bed. Don't scream again or I'm going to shove a sock in it.

...I screamed?

My eyes closed. Then I let my head fall forward. I thought about what I did for awhile. And then my thoughts drifted back over Rick’s final comments.

The simulation was to test our reactions to a greater fear than the last. The STIM determined if the fear had an effect on our performance, then after assessing its own disassociated simulation away from us, it would set an initial dreamscape for trials on how to correct our behaviors. This one about the dropship fire was receiving a particular worst result when combining it with my complete failure to save everyone. And it would repeat the scenario until I accomplished my objectives without hesitation.

"Either I save as many that I can or I give up," I whispered through tightly pursed lips.

The STIM wanted to level with me. To receive an idea on how well I could perform and how much I wanted to live through this horror of war. Would I be willing to suffer a terrible fate or would I want it all to peacefully end?

Live or die, I was still looking forward to being thrown into one or another Hell…

mrsimple

Thank you for reading the first chapter of Seed and I hope to see some feedback on it, good or bad, and to learn from those reviews. :D

Like I mentioned at the top, I'll be coming out with the second chapter sometime today. :)