Entanglement
Part 1 - The Revelation
Chapter 1
Year 2050
It’s been a week now, tracking the woman through the woods, over streams, up gravelly trails and into the low mountains. But she ain’t no woman, ain’t no human either, the old hunter thinks. That word – what’d the scientist call em?
He can hear the boys up ahead. Wading through a patch of tall grass, the hunter curses, a clutch of woody thorns tearing the back of his hand. Mock! They’re called Mocks. Someone shouts, “Over here!”, and a thin grin spreads over his leathered face.
He makes it out of the forest and stops to catch his breath. The climb was hard. His pants are stiff and sticky. Georgia heat is one sonofabitch. He joins two young men waiting in the clearing. The big one looks up, a man with a shaggy beard and stained teeth. He picks at the gritty blood crusted on his hunting knife.
“Gimme some of that,” the old hunter says, motioning to the big guy’s rusty canteen. The hunter takes a swig, swishing water in his mouth then spits. He gives Big Guy a hard look over but before he can say anything, the dumbass opens his mouth.
“Freak’s down there, the greenhouse.”
“They’re called Mocks,” the hunter growls.
Big Guy laughs. “You’re gonna listen to that nut? That scientist was out of his goddamn mind!”
The hunter grips his assault rifle and spits again. The two young men start laughing and the skinnier one, a scrawny college dropout, swipes a finger over his throat with dramatic effect.
“Well, he ain’t around to call ‘em nuthin’ no more!”
The hunter glares at the kid who joined the fight a few days ago. He keeps laughing and it pisses him off. “Shut up!”
The two men go silent and look down at the dirt.
“God rest his soul,” the hunter says. “The Revelation’ll make a man tear the truth out of his own mother, if he has to.” And he meant it. Why, last night, the old hunter had somewhat of an epiphany. It was his first sacrifice of the Revelation. The great almighty purge. There he was, gripping the top of the scientist’s head, dunking his face into the river — it came so easy the guy was as limp as a fish — and he came to the realization as clear as crystal.
“They’re not clones!” the scientist said, sputtering between gulps of the cold Chattahoochee.
“Then what are they?” the hunter asked, hissing into the man’s ear. “We’re gonna kill all your science experiments, we’re gonna –”
“Mocks,” the scientist said, gasping for breath. “And they’re just people, like you and me.”
“Then where’d they come from, huh? You made these – these Mocks – you grew them –”
The man began to sob. “Please. I can’t tell you. Please!”
“I bet you can,” the hunter said, laying his knife against the man’s throat. “You’re gonna die anyway.”
Then the scientist stopped crying and looked up at the hunter, his eyes full of scorn. When he smirked, the hunter took a step back and almost let go. “Alien tech, you backwards hick. By the time your children’s children come around, there’ll be more Mocks than any of you. But you’ll be gone by then. They’re going to drain you, take all your energy, all your Aura.”
With a hefty yank, the hunter pulled the man's head back, almost snapping his neck. He was inches from his face now. “What do you mean our – Aura?”
“You dumb redneck, even if I drew it out with cartoons you wouldn’t understand. You’re all cattle, you hick. A warm body for their taking. We’re changing everything and there’s so much you don’t know cause you’re not the chosen ones, not like us, you dumb redneck, not like –”
The hunter’s eyes go hazy, remembering how the man’s throat sliced easy like wet tissue.
“Probably for his own good, anyway,” Big Guy says. “You put him outta his misery. Blaming this shit on aliens. Told you he was a lunatic.”
The old hunter mulls on this for a while — as if that fat dumbass even knows what he’s talking about. When the hunter was a kid, there was all this hysteria about UAPs and those triangle ships in the sky. Mindless, senseless fake news. But see, that was just a coverup. He’s always known that. Just distractions from the real threats. The cloning in China, the neural chips made by billionaires, the generative AI that’s gone sentient, the energy weapons that could melt satellites, and the mind rays that could intercept your thoughts.
“We have to take matters into our own hands,” the hunter finally says. “Find the traitors — human or not — and kill ‘em.”
He reaches into his pocket and keeps his hand there, palming the scientist’s small notebook. He looks over half expecting the two to be picking their noses, thumbs up their asses, but instead they’re quiet, waiting for him to speak. With a sigh, he swings his rifle over his shoulder and takes out the notebook. He holds it out for everyone to see.
“It’s always been the government, boys. Nothing else.”
He turns the blood-stained pages, some ripped and the ink smeared. They crowd around.
“Well, what’s it mean?” Big Guy asks, squinting and pointing at a blurry diagram.
A bunch of squares, neatly arranged. To the hunter it looks like a game of –
The kid snatches it out of his hands, laughing. “Let’s take a look, shall we?” He flips through the pages, strutting in the dirt like a goddamn rooster.
The hunter draws his rifle. “Give it back.” But the kid ignores him, his nose buried in the pages. He begins to read, slowly.
“Mock Sapiens look indistinguishable from people and are genetically, Homo Sapiens. Mocks can only be birthed from a Mock Farm and cannot reproduce on their own…”
The kid’s face blanches and he begins to lower his arms. The hunter grabs the notebook and slaps the kid on the head with it. He reads the rest.
“To prevent a null birth, Mock Sapiens require a complete quad of four powered stakes imbued with –” and for this, the hunter has to sound it out – “cal-icks-site,” he says. The rest of the words are smeared, but he tries to make them out. “A generative protein used to promote and control differentiable cell growth. Controlled by the algorithm.”
Everything else looks technical, jargon he can’t pronounce. But at the bottom of the page, words in sloppy cursive catch his eye. Big Guy seems to notice. “What is it?”
The hunter reads it again, completely aware of the chill in his bones. The words come out like a whisper, slow and dry. “Mocks collect Aura for the great shape shift. The Morfyk invasion.” He pauses. “Entanglement.”
Big Guy grabs the hunter’s forearm. “What’d you say?”
The hunter is frozen, unaware of the man’s grip. “What the hell is a Morfyk,” he mutters under his breath.
“That’s what I’m asking! What’s that mean, invasion? And tangled what?”
Big Guy snatches the notebook and this time, the hunter doesn’t resist. Maybe that scientist wasn’t a loon, after all.
“Hey what’s this mean?” Big Guy asks, showing him the back of the notebook. Tiny raised letters that spell ‘GLIACORP’. The same thing was on the scientist’s shirt.
The old hunter narrows his eyes. “I don’t know and I don’t fucking care. My whole goddamn family’s been in these parts since the Civil War, I’ll damn well die than let my country — no, my planet — be infested by these Mocks.”
Big Guy speaks up. “But the more-fik, thing, ain’t it –”
“It doesn’t matter, you idiot. Scientific jargon. Propaganda to keep us meek and blind.”
“You’re not the chosen ones, not like us, you dumb redneck.”
The hunter wraps his fingers around the cold steel of his Remington. Drawing the scope to his eye, he studies the greenhouse. “You said she’s down there?”
The college kid raises his rifle. “She ain’t alone.”
Big Guy lunges forward. “Then what the hell’re we waiting for?”
“Wait,” says the hunter. “Who’s with her?”
“Some man,” the kid says. “Real tall and fast.”
“He got any weapons on him?”
“I didn’t see any. But who cares?”
The hunter lowers his scope. Lost in thought, he takes the edge of his shirt and slowly wipes down the barrel. “Never thought I’d see the end of days in my lifetime.” With a heavy grunt, he loads a magazine into the stock. “No one’s gonna fight for us, boys. Gotta cleanse the Earth ourselves. Destroy every Mock before we die.”
Chapter 2
Yarek
Yarek reaches a clearing and spies a large greenhouse in the distance. For a moment, it looks beautiful. Rays from the orange setting sun shine through the glass walls like fire. Frantically, he runs towards it, carrying Harin in his arms. With each stride of his lanky legs, her arms flail against his chest. As he clenches her tighter, blood pours from the wounds of her stomach onto his hands. He wades through rows of plants, painting the leaves red.
The door is flimsy, an aluminum frame that rattles. Yarek flings it open with a blood-smeared hand, cradling Harin with one arm. It snaps shut behind him making the greenhouse walls shake. His jeans stick to his thighs in the sweltering Georgia heat, every step a walk in muddy papier-mache. He moves behind a row of shelves and sets Harin down onto a bed of gravel. Her glassy eyes stare into the sky as he pulls off his shirt, tearing it into pieces, stuffing fabric into the wound. Swiftly, he packs the gash and wraps her torso tightly with the sleeve of his ripped shirt.
“Yarek…,” she says, reaching for the silver pendant hung around her neck. He thinks back to their last night together. Crouched in the ravaged dining room of an expensive mansion, he melted a heap of silverware in a steel pot. Mixing the molten metal, he fashioned the necklace. A large ring with a smaller one nested in the center.
Men shout in the distance. There’s three, he counts. Cradling the back of her head, he caresses Harin’s cheek then turns away, moving into the shadows.
A heavyset man is the first to enter.
Yarek watches, amused at the size of the man’s hunting knife. The man lumbers about, orienting himself in the fading daylight. It's a clumsy grip. His palm subtly shakes.
Silently, Yarek creeps up behind him. Before the man can turn, Yarek grabs the hunter's knife and slits his throat. The man lets out a gurgle as Yarek quietly settles his large body onto the ground.
The rickety door swings open, popping against the brick. Now it's a younger man. He enters, squaring up his shoulders, pressing his cheek into the stock of his rifle. Under the branches of an overgrown tree, Yarek wipes the dead man’s knife on his pants, watching.
“Come out, Mock! Your girlfriend’s good as dead,” the man says.
The door creaks open. The last man enters. He's older. Older and experienced. The way he walks, steady and soft gives it away. Yarek narrows his eyes, watching the grizzled hunter scan the room.
“Where is he?” the old man asks.
“Hiding,” the young man snickers.
“You know, Mock. I’ve been hunting your kind for a few weeks now.”
Yarek watches the old hunter following the scope, pointing his chin to the other man.
“Most of Earth can’t tell you fuckers apart from the Average Joe. But see, I’ve done killed almost a dozen of you freaks in just two days. I’m damn good, Mock. Them other a-holes can purge all they want, but me – I know one when I see one. So come on out here and let’s do this.”
The old hunter nods and they stride to the back of the greenhouse. In the dimming light, he clicks his tongue and motions towards the shelf where Harin lies. Both men reach the back of the room, their boots crunching gravel, and start laughing.
“Oh, buddy!” cries the young man, jabbing Harin’s head with the toe of his boot. “You’re too late, she’s —”
Yarek comes up from behind and grabs the man’s head with both hands. With a grinding snap, he cracks the vertebrae, dropping him to the floor. The old man gasps and steps back, nearly tripping over Harin, and fires. Yarek dodges, sending glass shattering from overhead. Panicking, the man resets the rifle and shoots again. He misses.
Yarek lunges forward, sending the both of them hurling onto the floor. The man scrambles for the rifle as Yarek grabs the back of the man’s neck. He loses his grip, slick with blood.
With a grunt, the hunter rams the butt of the rifle into Yarek’s head. Everything spins and Yarek falls to the ground. He opens his eyes and stares into the end of a dark barrel. The old man flashes a twisted grin, his eyes bloodshot and wild.
“Got you, fucker.”
He pulls the trigger. The deafening blast echoes in the greenhouse.
Yarek ricochets backward, his knees unhinging at the joints, staggering like a drunk. The old hunter fires again and again. It's paralyzing, a haze of heat and demolition. Everything seems to blur as the bullets rip through his skull. His muscles twitch and his limbs drop, thick like pudding. Searing heat shreds his nerves into raw fiber until all sensation is lost.
And then, all is silent. He stops to sniff the air — gritty and burnt, smokey and charred with the acrid scent of his own blackish blood.
As his sight returns, he senses a familiar pressure behind his eyes. With sinister delight, he welcomes the transmutation into the alien beast that the old hunter will regret ever seeing. Yarek’s pupils contract into viperous slits as his mouth fills with saliva. He runs his black tongue over incisors lengthening inside his jaws. For a moment, he indulges himself in the freedom of his hard exoskeleton, slithering his tail across the gravel.
He draws his long black fingers to his face. The reflection from his talons shines brilliantly against his black carapace. Knives, he thinks. They look like knives. Fresh and sharp. He catches his reflection and stares at it with some surprise — a half shot off face with only one bulbous red eye staring back.
“You’re no Mock!” the hunter screams, cowering on the ground with his veiny hands shielding his face. “Oh God, you’re the Morf –”
Yarek steps forward, his tail flicking up dirt, his dark claws by his side. He looks down at the man, his body reeking of urine. And before savage fury can tempt him, he reconsiders killing the wretch.
From the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of Harin’s wispy frame. All the life gone, drained from her body. White fingertips and black hair. Then he hears the distant shouts, hollering and clamor in the field. More men.
He turns back to the hunter and raises a talon in the air. The tip is shiny, catching the last gleam of bloody sunlight. He aims his claw at the old man, swiftly pulling him up like a fish on a hook. The hunter wails, pedaling his feet in the air. With a single wave of his hand, Yarek thrusts him through the aluminum door. The frame bends and snaps shut. He can hear a mob of men on the other side.
"Not me! No! The alien! The Morfyk — it's in there! It’s –”
The door sputters as the angry men kick the hunter into submission.
Yarek sprints back to Harin and kneels to the ground. Head low, he sniffs her — still, the faint smell of roses. She feels tiny and fragile against his massive frame. He hangs his head, long talons resting on her stomach. For several seconds, he studies her face. He picks at the pendant around her neck, losing himself in the tap-tap of metal to metal. Unable to take it, he raises his head to the sky and bellows out a shriek so piercing and shrill, the men outside notice.
The door springs squeak and he can hear muffled whispers and the thunk of an engaged shotgun.
He never thought it would come to this. Harin is dead. What else is left? Yarek opens his gnarled palm, revealing a lustrous black cube. The Onnic. The top face glows, burnished in a fiery white ring. He tosses it to the ground. It rolls slowly like a die, each tilt unraveling the gossamer of spacetime.
The Onnic throws up a gleaming blue pyramid. With Harin in his arms, Yarek steps into the portal in a rain of gunfire.
Chapter 3
Yarek
Yarek carefully lowers Harin on the mountain’s cold floor. Blood pools on the dark granite like thick wine. It’s been centuries since he was last here. Scanning the cave, a long plane of polished obsidian towers over him. The unmistakable Auragin. A colossal black mirror of Morfyk scripture, with all the secrets it holds. In it, he catches his reflection, and for a moment he can't recognize himself. So gaunt and brittle, a Morfyk skull with a hooked chin and an uneven crown of black horns. And one, only one, slivered red eye.
A cool breeze makes him turn. From the shadows, a massive man with hands twice the size of Yarek’s own claws, slowly marches towards him. The man’s long black hair drapes over his broad shoulders, like the feathers of a slain crow.
Yarek considers kneeling to Lord Neveris but stops when he sees his expression. Neveris stares down at Harin’s corpse, a disgusted scowl etched on his jaw. Yarek studies the great Lord, only to realize this man is…different. Yes, Neveris has always shown himself as a synthetic avatar, but this form is new.
The avatar’s thick eyebrows knit together. His lips flatten into a tight line. And just as the Lord is about to speak, Yarek turns his head, thinking, I could go back, back to the greenhouse and ––
“Leave her,” Neveris says, his voice raspy. “Throw her into the pit when we’re done.”
Yarek’s single eye — the one saved from the fight — narrows into a viperous slit. Smooth bulbs encasing sharp teeth begin to protract under his gum line, saliva trickling from the corner of his lips. But Neveris glowers at him, warning him with a menacing scowl and Yarek resigns himself.
With a grunt, Neveris settles onto a wooden chair. It groans under his synthetic weight. “General, sit,” he says, gesturing to a stool in the center of the room. Yarek hesitates and looks down at Harin. Her skin is pale with death and against the black stone she looks ethereal, unreal. But Yarek walks over and takes a seat.
“So, you have returned,” Neveris says, batting a leviathan hand at Harin’s body. “After all this!” The man laughs, a caw haunting and uncanny, coming from his mouth like the squawk of a bird. “General, it seems your recreation has come to an end, hasn’t it? Did you enjoy your time delighting in the flesh of this Mock? Heresy, but forgivable, to fornicate with a simple tool like her.”
A jolt of rage sizzles up Yarek’s spine and he slurps back hot water again. With his palms firmly pressed on his thighs, Neveris leans forward with a raised eyebrow, a Goliath towering over the Morfyk. Yarek averts his gaze, his jaw trembling with hate.
“With the distraction removed, you can start Entanglement. There is no excuse now. You have no more options,” Neveris says, then leans back, waiting.
Yarek stares at his claws. The invasion had been far more complex than prior incursions, at least from what he can remember. The damn Mantishek ruined it all. That insectoid reptilian creature he now resembles –– the noble species he and his brethren shapeshifted into. An Entanglement that seemingly went as planned, until it didn’t. Their Aura was simple. Pheromones, uncomplicated. But they were clever natives. As the Morfyks silently invaded their gene pool, they began to devolve. And by the time Yarek and his forces realized what was happening, it was too late. Now Earth is his last chance.
“The purge is killing everyone, my Lord. We are losing bodies. We are losing human energy.”
“The Aura? Is that your concern, General? Simple Aura?” Neveris laughs again and this time the chuckle is measured and even. “There will be enough. Only thousands have died. Hardly anything to fret about. And the Mocks, they matter not.”
‘'They matter not’, words from a ruler who has little understanding of the mechanics of Entanglement. “They do matter,” Yarek says, grinding his Morfyk jaws. He keeps his head down, but says, “We cannot begin Entanglement without the Mocks. For they are the tools, as you put it, that harvest human Aura. Even if Wilhelmina’s algorithm is complete, still, there is not enough room inside the great mountains of Earth to produce more Mocks. And with the humans dying, we are at a great disadvantage.”
Neveris explodes from his chair, making the frame fall to the floor and crack. Yarek flinches, but stays firm and looks down at his trembling talons. When Neveris speaks, Yarek expects to be admonished by the avatar’s patronizing tone. Yet, a bizarre, dialect sputters from his lips, hissing like a snake.
“Condescending, nasty creature.”
Startled, Yarek looks up. But before he can question it, Neveris’ eyes glitch into hard, black ellipses. The Lord glares at Yarek, his head a boulder of synthetic bone and skin. He turns, beginning to pace the cave. But just as he does, Yarek catches a glimpse of something odd in those soulless orbs, the silhouette of a claw, a crab-like claw.
“Yes, of course, General,” Neveris says, settling in his pompous way, “We need the Mocks, certainly, and the Mocks we shall make. Pushing the limits of the great algorithm, I can promise you that.”
Neveris’ heavy feet smack against the granite. The meaty slaps sound vulgar and it seems like he notices Yarek’s disgust. Neveris turns and begins to walk towards Harin. He might crush her, just to make me pay.
Yarek rises to his feet. He is eight feet of Morfyk, black armor and blade. But as Neveris gets closer, he realizes that he is nothing but what he appears –– an insect, feeble and weak. Still, he stays firm and moves next to Harin’s corpse.
“I have plans for you,” Neveris says, smiling with his bare toe inches from her skull. Yarek recalls how he broke the neck of the hunter who dared to strike her head with the tip of his boot. Oh, how he wish he could do the same to Neveris now. This strange, dark rendering of his Lord. But it’s an avatar, a synthetic shell, he reminds himself.
“Plans designed to explore alternative pathways, General.” Now Neveris squats, bending like a parent scolding a child. “Since everything you tried has truly failed. Your past, a study in defeat. A theater of errors. Come now, remember all the years you wasted, walking the Earth as one of them.”
Chapter 4
Yarek
Year 1867
Yarek shuffles into the cave with bare, human feet, dazed. He grimaces, taking one step at a time, as the sharp cold pierces through the flat bands of muscle wrapping his soles. These are not calloused Morfyk footpads. Not the keratinized treads of connective tissue that protect his feet. His shoulders ache, his ribs are sore, his back is brittle. The human form does not allow for the natural, forward Morfyk bend. Instead, he stands so upright that he feels his spine might snap. His vertebrae tremble and crack as if strung together like plastic bricks. The weight of gravity bears upon him like the knuckles of a giant.
When he looks up, he sees Lord Neveris sitting at the large malachite table. The plane of obsidian, the black Auragin, towers behind him. Neveris motions to him.
“Steady, General. It will take time, but you are already mastering it.”
Stoic and elegant, the Lord wears his hair in long dark braids. Each weave wrapped in metal clasps that chime like crystals. The Lord has always been amiable to him, kind and fatherly. “Come, Yarek. You withstand the pain of transformation in noble ways. Let me see you.”
Yarek swallows hard and hobbles forward, glancing at the Auragin and back at Neveris. He wonders when he might be allowed to sit there one day at the head of the table. The Lord notices and says in his bassy, warm voice, “Yes, General. One day. One day you shall sit here and inherit it all.”
Yarek starts kneeling. But before he reaches the ground, he catches sight of his reflection in the polished obsidian. Several days have passed since he absorbed the form of a person called a cattle rustler. He is a tall man with shadowy, hard features, long and gruff, with black hair and well-worn hands. His heart sinks. He wants to spit. He is human.
“Live among them. Blend and learn. After all, these are the bodies you will absorb,” Neveris says.
Yarek wonders if he is being banished. Worse, he wonders if this human body is permanent. “When do I return, my Lord?”
He can't help it and shifts forward, planting his palms on the stone, like an animal on all fours. It relaxes his joints and he withholds a sigh of relief. When he looks up, he’s flooded with shame. Neveris says nothing, his dark, wise eyes upon him.
“When Wilhelmina completes the great algorithm. Only then may you throw a portal. For now, she will track you.”
The High AI, the one called the Sentient manifests. She is a a small woman in a silvery, white suit. Her hair as lightless as the Auragin, her demeanor just as cold.
“For now, General, all you have are your wits,” says Wilhelmina. She points to the black cube in her hand. “And me, of course. I will be listening.”
Yarek wakes inside an old shed. It smells like manure and mud. The ground is covered with dry, yellow-colored reeds. A small animal with soft white fur and hooves saunters over and nudges him on the shoulder. He has no means to assimilate and act like them, talk like them, walk and dress like them. He does not even have money.
But time passes and Yarek, the loyal soldier, does as he is told. He finds a way. He always does. He ends up working for an old Vaquero who pays him one dollar a day. More than he knows what to do with.
“You speak English?” the rancher asks, chewing tobacco with an upturned lip, eyeing him under his brown Stetson.
And without even realizing what ‘English’ is, Yarek nods, the programming of the human language kicking in as if it was always there.
But after a year, the Vaquero dies of a disease gone rampant. Consumption kills everyone and soon, Yarek is the rancher.
On spring nights, he sits on the front stoop, gazing up at the cloak of stars, wondering if it’s time to go home. How can he save his Morfyk brethren entangled in the mess of the dying Mantishek, if he’s here, at a cattle ranch?
“Can you hear me?” he asks the Onnic, and he feels himself going mad. Sometimes he clutches the black cube in his hands and stares at it, as if trying to commune with it through spacetime. At night, he sets it on his chest, hands folded over the box, staring up at the ceiling. “Tell me I can leave. Tell me the algorithm is ready.”
One night when it doesn’t answer –– it never does –– he throws it in a fit of rage. “Damn you, Wilhelmina! You cursed witch! Damn you!” He hurls it at a brick wall and it makes sharp dents into the cinder. A few days later he pitches it in the fire, drunk and despondent, only to feverishly pick it out. But it never breaks. Always pristine, perfect, and silent.
Twenty years later, Yarek leaves the ranch, hopefully with enough money to last him. But the funds wear out, the Onnic never replies, and decades stack into a century. Nothing is ever as good as the ranch. For every shoe he shines, floor he scrubs, and bag of trash he carries on his back, he wonders — he aches — for Wilhelmina to call him home.
Chapter 5
Yarek
Year 2050
The Atlanta skyline is stiff and gray. Yarek’s hair is stuck on his head, wet with rain, and he’s decided to call it a night. He crosses the street, making his way out of the busy intersection where every day for the past month he’s panhandled for scraps. The cardboard sign he made with a permanent marker is bled-through and crumpled. “Will work 4 food.” No sense in asking for change.
He heads back to an old blue tent he found in a dumpster and stares at it. The plastic boning is broken, and he never bothered to fix it. Old masking tape seals a corner joint and it lays under the trees rickety like a teepee.
How far he’s fallen from leading invasions, the General of the Morfyks. And think of the thousands of miles away he is from the ancient cave that Neveris hollowed out in the mountains of Ethiopia. “I could go there,” he once reasoned. “Buy a plane ticket and find it.” But what a stupid idea, he later decided. The cave is hidden so deeply, not even a Morfyk like him could find it. And, now, how much of a Morfyk is he anyway?
Standing here in the Atlanta rain, all his memories feel distant and disturbingly sparse. As if they never happened. As if his entire existence is a farce.
He tears down the tent. Where to go is a mystery, but something tells him to go north. With that, Yarek walks up the empty access road along the Atlanta interstate.
He passes tobacco shops, brightly lit liquor stores, and a massage parlor with a neon ‘open’ sign. He’s about to keep going, then stops. There’s an empty showroom like an old furniture store and the windows are busted out.
This will have to do for the night.
Yarek walks over and takes a fist to the shattered glass. With a large enough opening that he can pass through, he steps into the abandoned warehouse. No one is here, although it smells faintly like urine. There’s rolled up plastic wrap and a heap of moving blankets. Wires, metal brackets, holes in the wall. He spots a thick gray sofa and an entire dining room set staged in the back corner. The place is empty. There’s nothing left to do but sleep.
He makes his way to the sofa, grateful that it isn’t stained with urine or blood, and lays down. The rain starts again and in the distance thunder rolls. Holding the Onnic to his chest, he whispers, “Is it time?” His lids grow heavy and sleep takes him. But before his eyes shut, he could have sworn that he felt the box shudder.
In his dreams, the blue girl visits.
He walks the old ranch, the high grasses crinkling against his jeans in the twilight. The moon is blue and silvery, and in the distance where the low foothills should crest against the purple horizon, are spiky, black cliffs. Like his own talons, they claw to the heavens. Always this place. This strange, other world where the air smells like salt and the thunder of heavy waves shakes the ground.
The girl smiles. “Yarek? Can you hear me?”
He can never exactly see her face, but somehow he knows her. Her lips are light blue and strands of metallic hair flickers against her chin.
“You,” he says. “What do you want?”
She speaks, but no sound comes out. When she turns her head, he follows her gaze. The grasses are gone and below his feet is packed sand. Her silhouette is shadowy and slim. A light breeze folds blue hair over her cheeks, obscuring her face.
“Tell me. What do you want?”
The blue girl steps to the side and vanishes in a mist of pixelation. Behind her, downshore, is a beast. A thing that yaws, seesawing back and forth on legs that resemble stilts. But it’s the shine that Yarek can’t stop looking at.
The flickers, like white fire, from hundreds of beads that catch the moonlight. Like a thousand eyes.
A bright flash of light wakes him up.
Yarek stirs on the sofa and tries to go back to sleep. But the hard slam of a car door makes him turn to his side and grumble. There’s shouting. A woman and a man. It’s brief then sodium white headlights slalom across the walls and everything goes quiet. Yarek sighs and closes his eyes.
Minutes later, the lights are back. This time, he’s caught in the hard white beam and cursing, he turns over. But the shouting continues. Finally, he gets up and walks to the main door. Through the beveled glass is a broad chested man with spiky red hair, a shade that looks fake and pasty. He leans on the hood of a shiny white pickup truck. His face is stained in the red neon of the sign next door that says “massage.”
The man stares straight ahead, his face round and swollen like a pig. “Get in,” he says and slaps the hood.
An eely, cold buzz ripples up Yarek’s spine. The prelude to transformation. He cranes his head to get a better look. There is a young woman with black hair that falls over her shoulders. Her eyes are dark like pitch and she looks waifish in what she wears. It's an oversized black t-shirt, and he can’t stop looking at it. A rainbow, a prism, and the words, Dark side of the …
There’s someone else. An older woman. Baggy jeans and sandals. Her accent is foreign. “Harin, come. Come now!” she yells.
“Harin,” Yarek whispers under his breath, rolling it over his tongue. Her name is Harin. It sounds surreal.
“Harin,” he says again, entranced. With every second that passes, watching her through the thick glass, her supple lips and the elegant curve of her jaw, he can feel himself unrolling. The tight wires programmed for allegiance to the Morfyk cause, to Entanglement, to duty, unweave and flutter, frayed and feathery, like a cool breeze extinguishing the heat of war.
“Come over here!” the woman in sandals says. Her hair slips over her face, faint streaks of gray catching the light and turning silver. She curses and reaches for Harin’s forearm.
“Uh-huh. Bad idea, Harin,” the man says. “Don’t ghost me like that. Now get in.”
The man reaches for something on his waist and all at once, the older woman steps back. Yarek can’t see her anymore, but Harin’s face says everything. Her lips tremble and she goes ramrod straight.
Yarek feels himself rearing up, the hot water frothing from his lips, the ricochet of bone that clicks up his spine to the back of his skull, and the molt that begins tearing at his flesh. But before his thick tail drops to the ground and talons rips his fingers apart, he takes a deep breath. Clutching the door’s metal handle, he leans against the heavy glass and steps out into the humid night air.
The wet asphalt casts the world in a nightmarish, funhouse sheen. The red massage sign sweats and the headlights seem to pant with a white fog.
Yarek looks at the older woman, pointing a gun at the man. It’s a tiny pistol and it wobbles in her hands. But before he can say anything, Pig Face grabs Harin and clutches her in his arms. “Now what?” he asks, kissing her cheek and pinching the muzzle of his own gun against her head.
Yarek looks down at his hands. They do not shake. They are meant for this kind of thing. His fingers curl and he can feel blood pulsing in his arms. But he resists the temptation to morph. This will have to be enough.
He marches forward, each step infallible. Pig Face turns and Yarek locks eyes with the coward. In that flash of an instant, Yarek sees what he wants to — fear.
And then a voice. A voice in his head. Wilhelmina’s voice.
“Leave them, Yarek.”
The Onnic pulses in his pocket, a slow warmth that builds until it's hot to the touch, bleeding through his jeans and against his hip. He reaches in to feel it until a pop of gunfire stops him.
A scream and the sound of something tinny and metal skidding on the asphalt.
Yarek runs to the truck and finds the man on his knees, gripping the side of his head. Harin staggers back, her hands over her mouth. The man holds his hands out and stares at the red on his palms.
“My ear, you bitch!”
When he rises to his feet, the older woman squares up, aiming her little pistol, her lips pulled back in a snarl.
“Stop!” Yarek shouts and everyone looks up.
Harin drops her hands and the older woman lowers the gun. But it doesn’t take long for the man to scramble for his weapon. Yarek watches the worm snatch it off the ground. The gun bobbles in his hands but he manages to steady his aim on Yarek.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asks, blood streaming down the side of his neck like a slaughtered hog.
“I said — who are you?!”
Harin comes up from behind the man, but it’s too late. He smacks her with the butt of his pistol and she drops to the ground, clutching her cheek.
Now, instinct takes over. Explosive heat bursts up Yarek’s spine and the night shrinks as his eyes begin to squeeze into diamonds. But then Harin’s eyes meet his, watery and dark like pools of ink. The Morfyk transformation pauses and time stands still, hanging, sparkling like a veil.
All these things, Yarek thinks, as the visions ripple in his mind like prismatic puddles of light. Beautiful, terrible, things...
Her fingers wrapped through his hand, under warm, soapy water…
Smooth skin, the curve of her back, bent under his palm…
Heavy air, moist breath from her mouth, close to his…
Metal, a silvery, shining pendant…
Gunfire, black smoke, blood on his hands…
Neveris.
Yarek pounces and grabs the man’s wrist.
He twists it and bends him to the ground. The man drops the gun and it spins like a toy. Twisting and twisting, Yarek keeps going, warping the man’s arm until he hears a sickly pop. But the pig gropes desperately with his other arm, clawing in the air. Yarek grabs that arm, too. The man spits and whelps.
For all his bluster, the man is frail. Now, submission. It comes with a sob and a curse.
“Leave or I’ll break this one,” Yarek says, still gripping the wrist.
“Okay, okay!”
The man’s face is macerated and a thin flap of skin hangs on his cheek. He scrambles up on one knee, clutching the side of his face, and hobbles to his truck. It lurches in reverse and screeches out of the parking lot.
When Yarek turns around, Harin is standing next to him. Her face is purple and bleeding. Her face is beautiful. Without a word, he smiles and walks away, all the beautiful, terrible things in his mind.