Well, Dryadri's didn't really count 'cus it was really about the chapter before last, and I'm very disappointed that Nexy didn't post...
But four is four. And I don't want to risk leaving you hanging for two weeks!
Tick tock; time's up, Anni.
Chapter 45
Stivik had an internal clock that he could set with a will. Long years of training meant that just by wanting to wake early when he went to sleep, he could guarantee that he would be up before anyone else.
He opened his eyes and examined the four other occupied beds in the slig bunks. Razor, Groll, Sev, and Boogie. Seven and that moron, Arthur, would be on night shift, but he had done night shift with Seven before and knew that they always ended with an hour drinking coffee in the cafeteria.
He slipped out of bed and wriggled himself into his pants, and left the bunks without waking any of the others.
He knocked gently on the lab door, just in case, but Dek wasn’t in there; he was still asleep too, doped out on chill pills and sleeping pills. Stivik chuckled softly to himself and headed to the door to the store room with the cages. It was locked but the key was in the pocket of a lab-coat hung on the door. Sometimes vykkers were too clever for their own good.
He opened the door, leaving the key in the lock. He quickly noted that the scrab was gone, but Anni was curled up in her cage. She stirred as he closed the door behind him.
“Morning, princess,” He sneered.
She squirmed, then sat up quickly and looked at him furtively, switching on the lamp Dek had left her. “What do you want?” She growled.
“Just came for a little chat!” He said, raising his hands mock-defensively. “Just wanted to talk things over, like sensible people! Like, how did you make that fire last night?” He smirked.
She glared at him.
“Come on, mud. No one else is gonna be awake for another hour at least, especially that vykker. We’ve got plenty of time to fill, so we might as well talk. How did you make that fire?”
“I don’t know!” She growled. “I don’t know how I did it; I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Oh really? Never, in secret, hiding it from everybody?”
“Oh, don’t be an idiot,” She grunted. “I don’t know how I did it. I’m not the one you should be asking.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” He sneered.
She glared at him. “I used to work at a lab; can’t you guess the rest? Vykkers do experiments on mudokons, don’t they? And sometimes they don’t think about what they’re doing,” -
Vykkers were crowding around her; she couldn’t make out their faces. It was all a blur until Nova stopped screaming, and then Anni cried out her name.
Nova was begging, “Not Anni, please, not Anni! Hurt me! Do anything to me but leave Anni alone!”
Anni felt a pain on the right of her forehead, like a bee-sting, and then another on the left side, and then Nova started screaming again. “Nova-AARGH!” Pain suddenly gushed through Anni like a flood. She tossed and she shrieked until her throat felt raw. The pain stopped and Anni stopped screaming. She realised that Nova had gone silent as well. “Nova?” No answer. “NOVA?”
- “They don’t
care what they’re doing.”
“Oh, so you’re one of the vykkers’ freaks?” Stivik laughed, “I might’ve guessed. Well guess what, mud; vykkers don’t give people voodoo powers. It’s not possible. It doesn’t happen. How did you do it?”
“I don’t know!” Anni yelled, more and more frustrated, “How many times!” Then she added more quietly, “I don’t even think it was me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Stivik scoffed, “You think Dek has powers and burnt you free? Oh, or you think it was me? Yeah, that makes sense!”
“Oh, don‘t be stupid,” She muttered unhappily.
“Anni,” Stivik said, grinning and shaking his head, “You are either the worst liar in the world, or you’re completely and utterly insane."
She glared at him, “Oh, you wouldn’t understand. You never could, because you don’t listen and you don’t care about anyone else but you.”
“Wouldn’t understand what?” He asked, still grinning, “Some experiment the vykkers did to you to give you magical powers?”
She looked at him nastily. “You don’t even care, do you? You’re just asking me to try and upset me. You don’t know anything.”
“Come on, try me,” He smirked. “I’m interested, really.”
Some mad instinct made her think that maybe he would listen, that he might even understand. Odd knew that she wished that
she could. She lowered her eyes, “Well… Like I said, the vykkers don’t care about anything, do they? I had a friend, called Nova, and she was hurt, so the vykkers tried to help her.” She breathed deep, raising her eyes and meeting his gaze, “They said they’d help. They took us down and put us on tables and… there was a machine…” She swallowed hard. “And they stuck something to my head. It was supposed to help, to make her better, but it hurt… It hurt so much.” She turned away, staring into the dark corners, her eyes prickling. “And Nova… She… she was gone…”
She was silent for a long time and Stivik, strangely, didn’t interrupt. She finally took a deep breath, “But it’s like she wasn’t gone, because since then she’s been in my head. I hear her sometimes. She talks to me, like last night. And… And she made the fire. She said there’s more…”
She trailed off.
In the poorly lit room, Stivik stared at her for a long time. “Odd,” He said at last, and she started, turning to face him as if she had forgotten that he was there, “Those vykkers really messed with your head, didn’t they?” He chuckled, “You really are totally insane. You totally believe every word of what you just said, don’t you? Voices in your head?” He laughed aloud.
She glared at him, pulling her knees up to her chest, “I said you don’t care. Just go away; leave me alone.”
“No-can-do, kid,” He smirked, “Three times you’ve attacked a slig, and the last time you tried to kill me; I’m not leaving you unguarded after that!”
“Well maybe if you weren’t so horrible and you didn’t make me hate you, I wouldn’t’ve done anything!” She snarled, anger building in her belly.
“Well maybe if you did you job and didn’t spend all your time trying to cause trouble, I wouldn’t have to bother you!” He smirked.
She glared at him with loathing, and then remembered Nick’s suspicions about him. She decided to try and make him give it away, so that if he did take her to Arnie she would have something to use against him, “Me, a trouble-maker? At least I don’t go out of my way to hurt people!”
“Uh, you’ve lost me,” He said mildly.
“Don’t pretend,” She snarled, “Nick worked out what you are.”
“Did he? You sure this was Nick, and not one of your voices?” He said, beginning to laugh.
Anni’s conviction was slipping away but she said as forcefully as she could, “You’re just here to make trouble for Arnie, to tell the Magog Cartel how bad he is!”
“Me?” He laughed, “I don’t need to make trouble;
you make enough trouble for
everyone in this factory! Odd, I hope the Cartel does send someone to snitch on Arnie! I’d love to see him get what’s coming to him!”
“What’s he doing that’s so wrong?”
“Ooh, that’s a hard one; you’ll have to let me get back to you on that.” He smirked, “He’s giving muds grand ideas about freedom!” He said with conviction, “Letting muds like you think they can just stroll right out of here!”
“So what?!” She demanded, “What do you care if I leave? Why does it even matter?!”
Stivik stared at her like she really was mad, “Oh come on, Anni. Even you’re not so naïve as to not know what happened last time a mud in this very factory got some funny ideas and decided to leave here! The worst rebellion we’ve ever faced and that mud murdering everyone in reach!” He glowered at her. She was silent, “Oh sure, what does it matter if a hundred sligs or glukkons get slaughtered if a few muds run free?” The humour was completely gone from his voice now, “For every mud Abe ‘saves’ there are a dozen corpses, and does he care? I’d bet everything I own that your precious saviour’s killed more sligs than any slig has killed muds!”
“Maybe,” Anni said with hate, “But sligs as a whole have killed more mudokons than mudokons have killed sligs! You know that that’s true! And you know why mudokons like Abe think we’re better than sligs; it’s because every slig thinks sligs are better than muds! You just hate to think anyone’s better than you, don’t you! Sligs get money, they get power; what do we get? Nothing, we get ignored, we get beaten, we-”
“You get food, a bed, and you get protection! Odd, you could all get private palaces with acres of land and you wouldn’t care would you? No, you’re always the suppressed, pathetic people aren’t you? Oh, don’t we feel sorry for you?!
Gtrz! You never think about all we give you. You get food and shelter; you should be grateful! But no, all you muds can do is pine away for the ‘good life’! Hah! I lived out there half my life and I
know how hard it is to find food and stay alive!”
“I DON’T
CARE HOW HARD IT IS OUT THERE!” Anni shrieked, tears of frustration on her cheeks, “I don’t care if it’s dangerous! I don’t care if it’s cold and if it’s harder to find food; I don’t care if I’d have to work ten times harder every day for the rest of my life! I don’t want to spend the rest of my life behind bars! I just want to see some beauty in the world! I’m sick of grey walls and blood and boredom! I’ll take the bad if it means I get a taste of the good!” She stopped, breathing hard, “You keep saying that you’ve been out there, but then you must know what it’s like!” She pleaded, “There
must be good things out there! Something must be worth it! Nick said you worked out there for seven years and only stopped because you were hurt! I bet you’d still be out there if it wasn’t for that! There must be good things out there! It has to be worth it or why would you bother to try?!”
He was staring at her. “You don’t… You think you’re clever! You think you know all there is to know, don’t you!” His voice began to rise, “You don’t know
anything! You don’t know anything about what it’s like out there,” He was shaking so hard she could see it clearly, even in the fading light of the tired battery lamp. His breathing was heavy and ragged as he bit, “You are
nothing to this world! I could kill you right now and no one would even care! You don’t matter a bit to anyone!”
“Oh,” She said, gritting her teeth, tears still on her face, now shaking with anger, too, “And you do?”
“NO ONE DOES!” He roared, looking down on her with as much hatred as she held for him, “No one matters! But
grhzz, yes! Yes, I am worth more than a stupid, scarred, childish, head-case freak of a mud!”
She was shaking with hate, nearly speechless with rage, “Oh, you think you’re so great, don’t you, slurg! You think you’re so brilliant!” Furious tears were dripping from her chin as shadows gathered around her, “Well if I’m nothing then you’re less! I can do things you can’t imagine! The only thing keeping you safe from me is these bars!”
“Oh, really?” He cried, “Really? Well then, let’s take care of that!” He raised his gun and shot the lock on her cage. It shattered and the door swung open. “Come on then, mud! You want trouble? I’m right here! Come on! Let’s see how long you’d last in the real world!” He raised his gun, opened it and let the bullets trickle out onto the floor. Then he snapped it closed, slid it down through his hands and wielded it like a club. “Come on!”
Anger was burning her insides and her eyes flashed in the grey light. “At last,” Nova whispered as she spread her claws and bared her teeth. Letting out a sudden screech of rage she charged out of the cage towards the leering slig.
Odd, her nails were sharp! She’d been far quicker, far more ready to attack him than he’d expected and he’d had time only to leap out of her path as she came at him; her nails had raked his arm and left three ragged tears in his skin. Twisting back to face her, he snarled, “Come on bitch!” She shrieked again and ran at him but – Ha! – this time he was ready for her. He brought up the end of his gun and swung at her. Her own momentum drove the blow home and the butt of the rifle crunched into her face.
The blow should have caved in her muzzle and left her crippled with pain but, snuffling and snorting blood, she came at him again, immediately; leaping into the air she latched onto the front of him, her arms wrapping around his neck and her teeth sinking into his shoulder. He staggered back but, using the momentum, he turned it into a spin and then a charge; twisting round, he ploughed her into the wall, jolting the air out of her lungs. Gasping, she loosened her grip and he jerked free of her and brought his gun up, hitting her hard on the side of the head. She fell and he took a step back. There was a rack of syringes on the desk beside him; he grabbed one almost without thought. “Is that all you’ve got?” He taunted her. “Come on mud, you promised me things I can’t imagine.”
Nova howled with fury and leapt at him.
Blood was streaming down her face; she shouldn’t be this quick! She caught all her weight below his ribs, lifting him off of his feet; if not for the desk at his back he would have toppled and then she could have got on top of him and made use of her weight and strength, but she’d picked her moment badly. Still, his legs weren’t made for kicking and the awkward position robbed him of his reason; instead of plunging the needle into her, he punched her instead. He barely felt the syringe shatter in his fist. Letting go of the handful of bloody, broken glass, he threw his weight forward, over her back. Her stance was nonexistent and she toppled helplessly backwards; he made a clumsy attempt at wrapping his legs around her neck and succeeded in driving his metal knees into her chest as he fell on top of her.
She made a grab for his legs but the bang on her head as she’d fallen had finally succeeded in stunning her; he delivered a good kick to her ear as he scrambled away and then jumped to his feet. She was twisting round onto her belly and he backed away as she raised her head; he was startled by the way her eyes flashed red in the dim light, and he didn’t notice the shadows pooling into claws around her hands. She let out a deep, low scream from the back of her throat and lunged at him.
Sligs, by nature, were scavengers, not predators. Native to swamps where they were far from the top of the food chain, without pants and guns their only natural defence against predators was to flee, to race to the water and hope they could out-swim whatever chased them. There was something in the roar the mudokon let out, the fierce look in her eyes and the way her muscles coiled to spring that called out to the deep-buried prey-instincts in Stivik’s mind and brought them screaming to the surface; he had been planning to strike at her again as she prepared to leap at him, fetch her another hideous blow with the butt of his gun, but at the last moment his body rebelled against his brain and he dived aside; he could have sworn he felt a fiery heat wash over him as she passed within inches of him and she let out a howl of rage as her prey slipped from her grasp. A moment later he was on his feet, running on animal panic and adrenaline more than on his experience and training. She landed gracefully, cat-like, but before she could turn on him again he came up behind her and hit her hard on the back of her head. Her arms slipped from beneath her and her forehead bounced on the floor. Still running on fear, he hit her twice more and then twisted round to grab another syringe from the desk.
Her vision was fuzzy from the blows to the head and she could barely breathe through the blood and pain clogging her airways. Anni tried to push herself up off of the floor when she felt the sharp sting of the needle digging deep between the ribs of her back. Stivik pressed his head close to her ear and hissed, “Here you go, an eye for an eye. Perhaps if you’re lucky this’ll be less deadly than whatever you put into me last night.” He pushed down on the plunger on the syringe and she felt its contents flowing into her. “Do you think you’re a lucky girl, Anni?” He taunted her and then straightened up.
She called out in a frail voice and made a grab for him but he danced easily beyond her reach. She was struggling to push herself to her knees as, laughing, he ran to the door and let himself out of the storeroom.
He slammed the door behind him and leant back on it, breathing hard but grinning, and then spun around and turned the key in the lock. Then he tossed the key into the bin where it dropped out of sight.
He found himself chuckling softly. His right hand was bloody and he had other bites, scratches and some flourishing bruises. He grabbed a roll of bandages as he left the lab and was wrapping up his hand as he hurried towards the lift, still laughing to himself. Let her cook for a while, let her burn. He would get cleaned up, get more bullets for his gun, go down to the cafeteria for some food and then maybe – maybe – he would come back and see how she was. Odd, he felt so alive! What a brilliant morning!
* * *
Anni lay on the concrete floor of the storeroom. Numbness and pain had consumed her right arm, aching agony eating her muscles, and the sensation was spreading, to her other arm, down her back, encroaching up her neck…
She felt so horribly alone – the anger and power that had filled her had vanished completely and she felt so abandoned, so horribly helpless. A pain like a red-hot wire was coming from deep in her right shoulder and she realised the syringe Stivik had jammed into her was still there; whimpering, she reached up with her violently trembling left arm and pulled it free. Propping herself on her elbow she lowered the syringe round to her face as the spreading numbness made her jaw wrench with pain and her head swoon. Her eyes were blurry and she couldn’t read the label.
And then she felt one sudden, shocking heartbeat that sent lightning pain to every reach of her body. She swooned and her head fell with a thud to the concrete floor. Her arm dropped; the syringe slipped from her limp fingers and rolled quickly across the floor of the room until it came to rest against the bars of one of the cages, its label pointed up towards the ceiling.
It read,
HN-Pentobarbital concentrate
For the controlled killing of large game animals
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Thus endeth Part 6.
And now you know!
“And Nova… She… she was gone…”
She was silent for a long time and Stivik, strangely, didn’t interrupt. She finally took a deep breath, “But it’s like she wasn’t gone, because since then she’s been in my head. I hear her sometimes. She talks to me, like last night. And… And she made the fire. She said there’s more…”
Which puts a whole new light on that bit at the end of Part 3 that some of you thought was so
sweet 
:
It took some weeks for Anni to explain bits of her story to the two mudokons, though she didn’t explain to them how or why Nova had actually died, just that they had had an accident and the vykkers hadn’t been able to save her.
Dean asked her, many months later, “But you were so scared before! I mean the second time I took you down you even fainted! How did you get out there?”
Anni shrugged and said with faraway smile on her face, “It was Nova. I knew I could do it, because of Nova. It was like I heard her voice in my head, telling me I could be free.”
|
*Diabolical Laughter!!!!*
Right, this'll be the last chapter for a while, so I want some good replies! Remember that I only get a few moments of pleasure from reading your replies while you get loads of enjoyment from reading the chapters!
I will discuss the future of the story at a later date cus we're pretty busy right now.
REPLY!
not just great, it was amazing.
As a fellow writer I must say:
They make great, creepy'ish melodies that I like listening to. 
