The Human Experience
Chapter 24

Five-Quarter P, day 15, 3397.

If i don’t rite feelings i wont get any snaks says mistress Huno. I feel bored hungry sleepy and i have a payne feeling in my finger because i cutted it there with paper. That’s not good enough says Mistress Huno i need too feel bad for biting Jeryn. Jeryn is gone tho too get stitches so i wont have to see his uglee stupid face that is good I don’t get why i shud feel bad. Gilt is feeling bad wen you make someone else feel bad. I have too feel it now if i want candy. I want candy so i feel it.

Half P, day 20, 3403.

People always tell me I have no conscience. Apparently it’s like a voice in your head that tells you what’s right and wrong. That’s stupid. I thought people who heard voices were called the Infected and everyone was afraid of them. I’m supposed to kill those people, but if everyone hears voices am I supposed to kill everyone? When I asked Orcadis that he laughed. He said a conscience has to do with imagining yourself in somebody else’s place and feeling what they feel. That’s empathy. I asked if he ever imagined himself in an Infected’s place. He said no. I guess he doesn’t have a conscience either. He seems to get along just fine without it.

I tried having a conscience today. Vara was my test subject. She was playing dolls with Orcadis when Kaed came and tried to get his father’s attention. When Orcadis ignored him he took the doll from Vara and ripped its head off, then threw the body at her feet and walked away. Vara started crying. Orcadis went to lecture Kaed and I sat in front of Vara squinting at her really hard until I imagined I was her. I pretended to be an annoying girl of three turns, but I still didn’t want to cry. If I was her I would’ve hit Kaed, but I’m me so I just laughed.

Orcadis told me to stop trying to get a conscience because if I had one the guilt would kill me. He said sometimes great leaders must dissociate themselves from their conscience or else they can’t compromise individuals for the common good. Maybe I can be a great leader, too.

Seven-Quarter P, day 8, 3414.

Getting used to emotions is hard. Sometimes I lie awake at night, struggling to keep my eyes open, because when I close them I see the people I’ve killed. I still don’t recognize their expressions, though. I can’t see their fear. That bothers me more.

Chirurgeon Padon’s words haunt me: With emotions comes a conscience. Yours will have a thousand deaths weighing on it. Weighing on it. What a good way to phrase it. Those words taught me to recognize guilt. It’s when my limbs feel like lead and there’s a brick in my chest that won’t let me breathe. It’s when every part of me feels heavy, when my skin crawls with filth and every breath I expel poisons the air.

But when I think back on the innocents I’ve killed, I still can’t help feeling detached. It’s like watching a shitty horror play. I feel badly for the victims and disgusted with the killer, but I’m outside of it all. I thought my sins would hit me all at once and I’d suffocate through the guilt. Why can’t I feel as guilty as I should? I feel dissociated. Am I a monster?

Del says I didn’t encode any emotional content with the memories, so I can’t expect to recall them with emotion. I can recall what Lykus felt, because he stored the memories. She says I shouldn’t expect to remember them from Hector’s point of view.

But somehow I can’t believe it’s that easy to escape my sins. It just can’t be that easy.

Quarter P, day 15, 3418.

There’s this really strong Akkútian rum. The locals call it “tuungal-ralik” – liquid fire. Its label warns that consumption in ‘high quantities’ will give me ulcers, but it’s alright. After the burning comes the numbing, and the numbing is always good.

We left the Akkh’s Temple two days ago, at dawn. Lykus had the sense to get rid of the girl’s clothes and bags, to make it believable that she’d left. He even forged a goodbye note that he slid under Zorion’s door. I don’t remember much of all that. Story goes Zorion found me nearly passed out drunk in my room. I kept raving about how we had to leave. He said he insisted we stay until I got better, but luckily Syfer convinced him that if we didn’t make haste we’d miss the Alignment. It’s only a quarter P away now.

I had to ride with Syfer that day, since I was too drunk to walk. At one point he said we’d lost one burden only to gain another. The reference to Avalyn made me fall off the camel and puke out my weight in rum. Travel has been slow because of me. I’m still sick, though I’m walking by myself now. Everyone thinks I’ve caught a bug. They don’t know I have liquid fire in two of my canteens. They don’t know this bug is in my soul, and it’ll never go away.

I don’t feel detached from this murder. Only now can I smell the blood in the air, hear it gurgling in her throat and see my hideous reflection in her eyes. The more I remember her pleas, the more certain I become of her innocence. She wasn’t the spy. That wasn’t an act. Of course, someone like Lykus wouldn’t know acting from real terror.

I think of Avalyn and remember Varali. Varali. Is it possible that I haven’t thought about her in weeks? That shames me. The pain of her loss is still there, but it’s a dull pain now, an emptiness. Avalyn is the sharp pain of agony. She was just a girl in many ways, too. Her eyes were as glassy as Vara’s had been. Her flesh was as cold and unyielding. Did she have a brother? Did she have someone whose life I have left empty?

Guilt can be as powerful as grief. It makes every step difficult. It makes me forget to breathe sometimes. I hate myself. No, I hate Lykus. I don’t care if being Lykus gives me peace. I just don’t want to hurt anyone anymore. I’d take the pain and grief and guilt, if only that could save those I’ve hurt. Everything I’ve done has been to get Lykus back, to spare myself suffering. It didn’t matter whom I hurt along the way. It matters now. Avalyn, Delia, the Infected friends I’m betraying – I’ve destroyed them all for my worthless self.

I don’t want Lykus anymore. Not if being him means killing other people’s Varalis and creating a thousand wretched Hectors in my wake. If Lykus comes back, he’ll go after the chirurgeon, and then Del. I wouldn’t even let him go after Orcadis, now that I think about it. Enough death.

I beat the tracker off my wrist with a stone. Solmay has been calling me non-stop, so I turned off my phone, too. Soon news will reach Orcadis, he’ll whip out the remote, and I’ll be tortured to insanity as he threatened. For some reason I’m not afraid. I’m more afraid of what awaits the world with someone like Lykus in it – someone he himself wouldn’t approve of, if only he was capable of it.

Hector could still smell her perfume. Sometimes he’d be walking along, sweating under the pulsing suns or gazing at the crumbling limestone buildings, and it would hit him – the sugary peachy scent. It smelled cold. It smelled like death.

He pulled his canteen from his cloak and took a swig. The firewater soothed the sickness in his stomach, stroking his insides with warm caressing fingers.

“You’ll want to save that water, Hector,” Zorion said. “We’ll need it if we’re going to cross the Golden Flat.”

“The what?” he croaked.

Zorion smiled, his chapped lips white with the effort. “Forgot to tell you, didn’t I? The missus says we’ll be continuing east into the desert. Called the Golden Flat. Swallows up the eastern part of the continent, it does. Don’t worry, though. Our Voices will help us navigate safely through it, and I’m sure the Infected have set up bases along the way with water stations and rations.”

“So that’s it, then? That’s where the Voices are leaving us for the Alignment? Stranded in the desert?”

“Not just any part of the desert,” Syfer said. “It’s the only spot on earth from where the Alignment can be seen in its entirety. Delmira will totally eclipse Amaris, Pyrrhus, and Tychon. Legend says she brings them all into her motherly embrace. Honestly, isn’t your Voice telling you anything?”

“The bond’s too recent, Syfer,” Zorion said. “Hector’s Voice doesn’t trust him enough yet. It can’t. Not until Hector learns to love it.”

So never, then, Hector’s Voice clarified. Hector was glad he didn’t have to remind the thing again – it seemed to be understanding the course of their relationship now. He took another pull of the firewater. It left the tips of his fingers cold even in the blazing heat.

Syfer continued, adjusting his head-wrappings. “Locals can’t come to see the Alignment from the Flat. They don’t know the safe routes through. The safe routes through the Basin are even harder to replace.”

“Basin?” Hector repeated.

“Amaris’s Basin, more commonly known as Lady’s Fist. Surely you know it?”

Hector nodded. Even poor Ferralli villagers knew the legends. Lady’s Fist, tens of leagues wide and twice as deep, was a scar on the earth so deep that few believed it naturally formed. A bowl-shaped gouge, popularly thought to be the impact crater from the Amaris asteroid’s fateful crash at the last Alignment. It looked like the goddess really had driven her fist through the red bedrock of Akkút’s fringes.

“The missus told me yesterday,” Zorion said. He hoisted his pack farther up his shoulders, gripping the straps with fingers lightened from sand residue. “Apparently the Liberator is hiding out in the Basin. With all the caves and crevices, I’m not surprised. Could have a whole city hidden down there, far as I know. So that’s where we’re headed. Don’t know how I’m going to get down the walls with these blasted knees of mine, though.” He laughed his raspy laugh.

Syfer clicked his tongue. “And what am I supposed to do? Topple in headfirst? Be serious. They must have accommodations. My Voice says they have donkeys that take the Infected on safe routes down.”

“Do you think the Liberator plans to blow up the Amaris moon?” Hector said suddenly.

Smooth, his Voice sighed. Kaed stiffened beside him.

“Honestly, think a little bit, Hector,” Syfer said in his pompous, exasperated way. “Why would he make us travel the planet if he only wanted to kill us, anyway?”

“Maybe the Infected are the people he wants to save.” Maybe the chirurgeon is building two spacecrafts: one to blow up Amaris and another evacuation vessel for the Liberator’s people.

The lord groaned. “That’s all I ever hear from the ignorant public. ‘The Voices warn of apocalypse,’ or ‘they’ve come to fulfil the prophecy,’ or ‘they’re taking the Star-Gods’ chosen people to safety in a spaceship before apocalypse comes.’ Maybe they never asked to come here at all. Maybe they’re here by accident, just like us, and maybe the Liberator is trying to save us instead of exterminating us like the Helms want.”

They walked in silence, Hector trying not to stagger under the rum’s influence. A breath of dry desert wind skirted in from the east, spraying sand against his ankles. It smelled like peaches, too. It felt like the brush of Avalyn’s silk shawls as it fluttered about him.

A hand closed about his wrist.

Hector started, pulled back, but when he spun he saw it was only Kaed.

“We need to go,” the boy said softly. His pastel-green eyes flickered with urgency.

“What? Where?”

“A Swarm is coming.”

“So?” He struggled not to slur his words. “We’re Infected, anyways.” Hector brought his canteen to his lips again, but Kaed lowered his arm.

“You don’t understand. I can’t be caught in a Swarm. Father–”

Syfer and Zorion laughed over some shared joke, making Hector distractedly look to them. “Hector!” Kaed growled, shaking his arm.

Rum sloshed over the canteen’s lip with the motion. Hector looked down to see wet trails down his cotton tunic and a dark, flattened smear on the sand below. “Pyrrhus take you, Kaed!” he moaned, swishing the canteen’s contents to replace only drops remaining. “Now everyone’s going to smell it!”

Kaed was still talking, but Hector was too busy patting his tunic dry to listen. His head reeled from alcohol and his temples felt hot. When he closed his eyes he felt himself spinning away. Worse, everything still smelled like damned peaches.

“If you want to go somewhere, tell the others,” he grumbled, thrusting the empty canteen into Kaed’s arms, and went to join the rest of his party.

Only minutes later an alarm blared. The streets grew silent, everyone listening with teeth on edge.

“Says a Swarm’s coming in ten minutes, I think,” Zorion translated, squinting as he tried to decipher the Akkútian message echoing from the town’s speakers. “Well, it could be one minute. Ka-lin or na-lim – they sound so similar to my old ears. It’s been fifty turns since I studied Akkútian in school.”

Syfer leaned against the camel’s hump. He watched the merchants packing up their stands with lazy eyes. “Doesn’t matter. Let the frightened hens clear the road for us.”

“If we had any sense, we’d clear the roads with them,” Zorion muttered as the last echoes of the message died away. “I can’t imagine a surer way to arouse suspicion than not seeking shelter when a Swarm hits. Everyone, act panicked. We’ll get trampled if we don’t.”

Vendors scooped merchandise and fled, piles of coloured satin or heaps of fruit in their arms. Little boys in ragged slacks rushed to raid the abandoned stands, picking up the fruits that others dropped. Dust and sand blew up, stirred by the stamping feet of man and beast.

Soon the narrow streets were clogged with a retreating crowd. People elbowed and shouldered past Hector. They pounded on the doors of the mud-brick buildings lining the streets, and like in Vangarde, owners let them in.

“Fuut ghlar sa-bahk!” screamed a gnarled, moustached elder at Hector, his sinewy hands clasped together in plea. “Sa-bahk! Bahk!”

Hector shook his head. “Uhh, no speak the Akkútian. Vangardian. Speak Vangardian.”

The elder dissolved into tears, clinging to Hector’s tunic. Syfer had his glass dagger out and was using it to threaten the two thieves who were trying to knock him from his camel.

“Run!” Zorion cried. “We can’t just sit here!”

Hector pried the old man off and reached into one of the saddlebags. His arm came out gripping one of the New Wolves’ broadswords. With one swing he knocked the curved scythes from the thieves’ hands, then drove the butt into one’s chin. The other scurried away before his friend had even hit the ground.

The broadsword had cleared a decent perimeter around them, giving Hector time to lift the old man from where he’d fallen, praying, to his knees. “Syfer, take him!” he yelled, struggling to plant the flailing elder on the camel’s back.

“He smells like piss!”

“Take him or I’ll drag your skinny ass off the camel myself!”

Syfer grabbed the man’s rags and hauled him up behind him. Hector slapped the camel’s behind to make it jolt forward. The camel cleaved a path through the streets, Zorion and Hector running behind it. Every crevice and hiding place seemed full. Terrified faces looked out at them between the shutters of every building. Hector tried the door of a parked caravan only to be met with blade-wielding teens at the windows. Finally they found a hovel of clay with a straw roof. The woman at its door was still ushering people inside.

“Oh, it seems such a shame to waste shelter on us when others really need it!” Zorion said, helping the old man from the camel. Syfer undid the straps around his legs, hollering for Hector to fetch him his crutches. They seemed to have been stolen from the saddlebags in the chaos.

“You are not to help me,” he said imperially when Hector came forward, and with powerful arms swung himself off the camel, landing in a heap on the ground. He dragged himself into the hovel with only his arms, tripping anyone who tried to cut him off.

Hector reached behind to grab Kaed. His hand caught air.

He turned. Cloaked bodies ran every which way. He squinted into the crowd, but no Kaed. The cold in his fingers returned.

“Come on!” Zorion yelled from the doorway. “The place is filling up!”

Without thinking Hector plunged into the streets. He pushed against the current, shouldering back the way he’d come. Fear parted the haze of alcohol for rational thought. He said he couldn’t be caught in a Swarm. What did he mean? Did he run away?

Hector’s heart pounded. “Kaed!” he yelled, looking over the identical shawled heads. “Kaed!”

Turn right, his Voice said through the panic. I called to his Voice. Go right.

Hector did. He jogged faster and faster, cursing himself, until a flash of colour caught his eye between the bundled bodies.

A form lay on the ground in the distance. The bright blue of Kaed’s pants stood out against the sandy terrain.

Hector bowled through the crowd to get to him. Angry tears stung his eyes to see people trampling the boy, kicking his skinny body as they fled. It made him shove them more violently, but in the next moment the bodies had swallowed him from view. By the time Hector emerged from the crowd, panting, Kaed was gone.

He stood in the square, a lone static figure, screaming the boy’s name until everyone had fled and the Swarm’s whispers rushed in to drown him out.