The Paragon of Eden
Chapter 2

The lights went off, and when they came on again, they were overcome with the red hues of alarm. People began to shout and beg, clawing at the bars to their cages. A guard ran past them, one who had presumably been positioned to keep an eye on their captured.

The man in Deelia’s cell, while holding her up, spat out a bloody tooth at such a speed that it pierced the guard’s ankle and left him falling to the ground. The keys on his belt slipped off and slid straight into the cell, where the strange man picked them up and almost instantly managed to open the door.

They were free, it seemed. Deelia wasn’t quite processing her predicament. Was this something to be happy about? Was she still able to be happy?

The man stood out, holding Deelia by the arm. He twirled the ring of keys on his other hand and then dropped them in the cell of the men who had been insulting them.He smiled at them, winked, and then ran off, Deelia in tow.

From behind them, through all the shouting and beeping and shaking booms, she could hear the shout of the other prisoner: “You’ll regret this kind of attitude, twink! You’ll die!” That was the last laugh she heard out of them.

As the distance grew, Deelia noticed that she didn’t get tired from running. She had been beaten and dragged through the dirt, malnourished, and treated like she didn’t matter. She should have been weak, but maybe the only things she had lost were the things that kept her from running free. Now, she had no regard for how much it hurt to endure this sprint.

“You’re not getting tired,” the man said.

Deelia didn’t respond.

They kept running through the corridors, making turns and going up and down slanted paths. A stairway marked the transition to a different section of the space base, one with less gunk and the same lack of hospitality. Deelia tripped on the stairs and fell. She wasn’t in the state of mind to process stairs. Her savior simply picked her up and carried her to the top. He was surprisingly strong for how muscular he appeared.

As they ran, they passed others who were in their own state of disarray. Uniformed barbarians barked at each other and dashed around to unknown tasks. They were distracted by the destruction they heard around them, so most of them didn’t notice the two naked prisoners streak past them. That would have been good, but Deelia didn’t replace it in herself to care anymore. Some of them did actually notice, stopping in their tracks to gawk. It was only for a moment, though. These pirates were probably not new to the concept of nakedness in their world of debauchery.

“They’re saying the deployable atmosphere generator is down. It’s safe to say it blew up. They won’t be long, now. You probably don’t understand what they’re saying, so here’s a sample: ‘A single Warback can make it look like we never existed without that!’ ‘What are we gonna do against that thing?’ ‘The White Star is acting on its own!’ Do you like the sound of that?”

Deelia had no idea…

“Do you like the sounds they’re making right now? I, for one, replace this ‘White Star’ thing a little funny.”

The man took Deelia up a few more flights of stairs, passing many more running pirates. It was beginning to seem like everybody was in their places, but they kept seeing people out and about, rushing to attend to different problems: The destroyed generators, the prisoner revolt, the idle Warbacks.

As they burst into a new room, it became clear that the idle Warback problem was probably not a problem anymore. A massive statue of metal armor and machinery slid across the floor, carrying with it the weapons that made it so deadly. Its hands were empty, and the artillery on its back proved to be light work to lift. It stood above them, towering to a huge degree. It saw them with its helmet, the robotic head between its massive shoulders. Then, it boosted its thrusters and flew out the opening at the end of the cavernous room. It could have killed them, but they somehow mattered so little that they were able to continue living.

Deelia’s savior did not look worried. He simply said: “Such a remarkable folly in the government organizations to let their prizes get into the hands of these people. Don’t you think? That was the latest design, if my memory serves me right. I really wonder how they did it.”

They ran along the next few flights of stairs, seeing nobody at all past the control rooms and craft bays. They entered a crudely decorated section of the pirate base, passing golden jewelry strung here and there. The floor was still as dirty as ever, but there was now a red carpet to walk and run upon. That being said, it was an atrociously messy carpet. You could hardly see that it was red anymore.

They came to a hallway that led towards a pair of decorated doors. After swinging them open, the strange savior revealed an old man trying to fit on some sort of lavish uniform. The room was large and contained many pieces of impressive yet unkept furniture. On the desk next to him, a captain’s hat sat, ready to fit awfully upon his large head.

He stumbled when he saw them, then fumbled for a gun. The savior darted towards him and smacked the small firearm away. In response, the captain swung a punch, and he was met with a swift dodge and a hit to the face. That left him unresponsive on the floor, out of the fight. The savior reached down and twisted his neck until it was impossible for the man to wake up anymore. After that, the air was quiet. There were still many explosions, many beeping alarms, and many burning thrusters. It seemed that the lack of a deployable atmosphere generator had caused a vacuum at some point in the ship, loudly draining all the air.

Baroque paintings sat on the walls, defaced with stains and graffiti. They contained some images of men and women, prancing in a field on some alien world, naked.

“Don’t you replace it funny?” asked the savior. “We don’t really feel too embarrassed right now. I think I could walk in broad daylight in the city like this. Isn’t it freeing?”

Deelia didn’t respond.

“Oh, of course, you’ve got your own view of this. Have you ever heard of the old stories pertaining to something called ‘Eden?’ Many people would be horrified at our state right now, but there must have been a place and time when this was the better alternative to clothing. So freeing and beautiful. It’s funny to deny it, and just as funny to romanticize it.”

He walked into a different room and came out with some clothing for both of them to put on. It fit loosely, but there was a part of Deelia that seemed to return with them. She felt she could be a person again. Was this her dignity? Given back like a toy to a child?

“I know it doesn’t fit, but it’s all we’re gonna get until we get to some cool city or something.”

Deelia still didn’t think she could respond. She didn’t know when she would be okay to do that again.

The two rushed down the stairs. It was strange to imagine it now, but the worst of her days might have been coming to a close. She was saved. If this man could successfully get the two of them out of there, she could live again and hope again and dream again. Maybe her smiles would bring joy to those around her again. She didn’t know exactly what it would look like from now on, but for the sake of all those who perished and met the fate she had just avoided, she promised herself that she would see it through.

They came down a few stairs onto another large floor, one with a wide roof and many technical panels on the walls. Fire had taken to everything, and bodies scattered everywhere, blood and guts all together. Explosions sounded distantly, gaining in intensity, becoming louder, like footsteps.

Through one of the walls, a Warback smashed into the room. It slid across the floor, its head nearly touching the high roof. It carried its massive gun, a weapon that could supposedly blow this place up in a single shot. Its robotic head swiveled wildly, looking for something. Did it even see them, in their baggy clothing, on the floor, in front of it?

No. It was looking for something, something that needed that gigantic cannon to be beaten. Was it that “White Star” that her savior had said they mentioned?

With a speed that was too great to predict, something huge appeared in the room. A shock wave descended on the place, sending Deelia off her feet. She stumbled back up, and she saw that her savior was unfazed.

She looked behind the Warback, which was now facing the other machine. Could it really be called a machine? It was a five-pointed star, made of white triangle plating. That plating, however, was not any kind of metal or resin. It was perfectly smooth, like glass, and it boar no dents despite the violent crash of its entrance. Its details said that it wasn’t a machine at all. It must have been some sort of monolith, alien and unknowable. The only human equivalent must have been a masterclass of jewelry, and this thing stood thirty stories tall. Just then, its triangle plating also shifted. The planes of white bent instantly, like a fractal image in a mirror. It looked unreal, shifting like a kaleidoscope. And yet, the form that it kept, its five points of a star shape, resembled a sort of man, his legs standing straight and powerful, his arms reaching out to the sky, his head, towering.

“Ah, there it is,” said the savior. “My Paragon.”

At that moment, the other Warback aimed and readied its weapon. It nearly had the chance to fire whatever was going to escape the massive barrel, but the Paragon accelerated in an explosive instant toward it. With one of its points, it aimed and pierced the Warback, dragging forward and heading straight toward the two in front of it.

This would have been it for Deelia, but the Paragon was strange. It was nothing like the average Warback. Its arm opened up, splitting into smaller and smaller triangles until a cavity showed itself. With the speed that it flew towards them, the Paragon accepted the two escapees. That speed, however, was mitigated on the inside of the construct. It compensated for the rough boarding by somehow altering space and gravity, forming a cocoon around them at the center. Some of the walls disappeared, or perhaps they had gone invisible so the pilot could see outside. Indeed, the view showed the brutal destruction of that other Warback.

The robot adversary slid off of the white arm of the Paragon, falling pathetically to the floor. The Paragon turned, hovering in the air. It aimed itself towards a corner in the walled-up room, and then it exploded in that direction. In the journey through the failing space base, the star-shaped machine transformed using its shifting triangle planes, turning into something more akin to a spaceship. It went even faster, crashing through every wall and causing damage with every touch.

Into space they went, floating in the cockpit of the Paragon. Deelia saw her savior, standing in the air and somehow in control of how he floated in this empty chamber. The pirate base flew away from them as they became faster and faster. The bubble around the place, the marking of where the deployable atmosphere would have been, began to shrink too, although much slower. As they flew, the Paragon began an orbiting arch around the burning machinery in the distance. It picked up speed, going faster than Deelia had ever seen something go.

The invisible walls suddenly gained a few floating triangles, surrounding certain points in the distance. The pilot of the Paragon smiled, and then the ship angled itself to fly directly into the pirate base. It accelerated again, like a bird finally going in for the killing blow. It zoomed, and all the sights of that horrible place flashed by as they pierced its metal and began a fatal explosion caused by the failure of the main generator.

Behind them again, the shrinking mothership flashed up in an instant, like a small supernova, until it calmed down and left nothing in its place.

Deelia looked at her savior again. She looked at herself, the miracle of the clothing she wore and the mystery of her current state. She looked back at the man in the air. He was magnificent, more impressive than anything she had ever seen before. She was saved, but perhaps she had been born again. Perhaps she was still in that process, and perhaps these were only the first few stages. Would they be hurdles? Would they be miracles? She didn’t know.

But if it meant being able to see where this monolith took her, she believed she could be ready to replace out.