Crashing Tides

by Gwendolyn Marie

With no weapon except her own fortitude, she took advantage of the wound she had caused from the first assault. Striking hard and quick for the moment of redemption was fleeting, she rammed her hand inside the gaping hole of his abdomen. The hot juices of innards surrounded her fingers as she entwined them in his organs. The fair-haired porcelain pawn of Chaos turned to her—in pain, in surprise, in angered wrath. But too late, as she tore his insides out, pulling her hand away and bringing his intestines with it. ​He fell on her, desolate in his embrace. Eyes still open as if looking at her, in an everlasting accusation of what she had done.

You have my word I will not kill you. His previous words of valiance endured throughout her thoughts. She could only guess if they were still valid now that she had contagion upon her lips and scratched body. She knew what he would see—a threat. No longer a person, but a shell containing infection. And he would kill her. Or she would him if the chaos took her. ​So she ran through the darkened corridors, through the catacombs of the cave. ​Away from the Chaots. From the soldiers. ​From herself.

But the deeper she went, the darker it grew. The further she ran, the possibility dwindled of finding an exit. It felt as if she would be lost forever in the complexity of the cave and her mind.

Through the interlaced tunnels, the two ran from this hell. He cleared the way through the demons’ hole to freedom. Gun blasting, she heard nothing save for the deafening thunder of his weapon. She just saw. Carnage, death. The gunshots tore through the Chaots with ruthlessness, killing many to pave the way. The grim applause of death’s sirens finally sings to those who should have traveled across the River Styx long ago as the Chaots died.

“I am not infected,” she said. A lie. Though was it deception if the reality held true. She did not turn into a Chaot; the prion did not torment her as it did with the others. The contagion was inside her, but the symptoms had yet to ensue.

He was not like the others, no matter how he tried to hide beneath the soldier’s uniform. He fought not for values of government and justice, but for the intrinsic calling of the hunt and honor. An animal hid under the guise of warrior. A hero emulated only in situation. It was his honor alone that allowed him to walk among men. He clung to it, for otherwise he would be no different than those he destroyed.

Hector stood atop a rock pillar towering over the city of Kalambaka in Greece. He looked out over the mountains; the city nestled between the pillars granted a beauty that he had never seen before. Kicking a few pebbles off the side of the cliff, he watched their descent and, as the seconds passed, their disappearance from his gaze. In spite of its beauty, this land was also deadly. One wrong step would end in a crash three hundred meters below, following the pebbles’ path. He glanced upward, the sun warm on his face. The sky was clear and tranquil, such a stark contrast to how it will soon look, with flames and black smoke blotting out the sun.

The Bavarian Coalition considered the monastery a threat to the one world government, and it was his duty to eliminate this threat. A threat, maybe, but not in any militaristic nature. Its people had no governing body, no weapons. Its threat stemmed from its independence. It did not need to depend upon a paternalistic government to direct them, to tell them what to do or how to live, or tax them in order to do it. Anarchy some would say, others would say true individualism and self sufficiency. The results to Hector however, were of beauty and serenity. In the town itself, the people. And at its apex, in the monasteries atop the pillars. But it did not matter what he believed, for the threat of this town was these ideas, their teachings of independence from the ever encompassing world government. Their opposition to be under its rule. This is what damned them. ​And damned himself. Killing priests ...

“Have you ever read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Hector?” ​“Enlighten me, old man,” Hector said, hoping that the longer he delayed in his repel down that the more sense he could make of what the priest said. ​When Athanasios spoke, his whole manner changed into one who delights in storytelling. His voice grew deeper as if Plato himself rose from the grave to tell this age old story through the priest. “Imagine a group of humans inside a cave. They were bound tightly, unable to move and facing the stone walls their entire life. They could not look away. All they could see were the shadows on the cave walls that were cast by the fire behind them. This was their reality, this was what they knew. Imagine if one became free, how he would see the true world. There would not even be words or thoughts to explain it.” ​“This is how we are. We are in that cave still. Even science is restricted, for it is limited by humans themselves. Our senses. Our perception of time. Our ideas of reality itself. But what is really outside our own metaphorical cave walls?”

A jet roared above the pillars of sandstone and the positioning told him one thing. The Bavarian Coalition must have deemed his squadron useless against the remote monasteries, opting for the air force’s more direct and absolute attack. And considering the natural beauty of the rock pillars, skillfully carved over millions of years, Hector knew they would choose biological warfare over nuclear or conventional weapons.

He looked over the vertical drop. It truly was a sight worthy of the gods. The rock pillars rose in an unearthly splendor, as if Titans breaking away from the earth and reaching to the skies to pull Zeus from his throne and back to Tartaros.

Flames did not come. Smog did. An expansive cloud of white flooded over the buildings of Kalambaka. It settled over the valley like a milky ocean with the rock pillars as islands above the sea, though soon even those islands would face the flood. He did not retreat back up the cliffs; he continued down. Loyalty to his squadron now served as his only authority.

Fog drifted in and out, causing moments of total blindness. Hector held his rifle ready, looking through the sight, using its thermal vision to track the surroundings. Below the rock pillar, he ventured forth into the biological mist and to the edge of the city where his unit’s base camp was established. ​He saw no one. No bodies. No survivors. Hector continued to his squad’s encampment, counting on the chance that somehow they were prepared and had also seen the aircraft. Hector knew the reality of that happening was slim, despite his far-fetched hope.

Hector looked through the thermal vision module; a portrait of hues wept together in a multicolor rainbow. The threat revealed itself in the throbbing mass of heat, a threat of many, of at least twenty humans in front of him. ​But he saw more than that. These people were not civilians confused by the bio-agent that entrenched their city. He saw the multicolored human forms swarm upon a smaller figure. Spine chilling screams of pain and rage coalescing into one unnatural, eternal cry from the mob as Hector watched it being torn apart; though whether it was a dog or a child, he could not tell.

Hector took aim again, firing into his heart. To go from instructing safety to killing a civilian was an inescapable drop, and one he handled with composed control. With the vagrant neutralized, Hector immediately turned his attention to the entry, knowing that the gunfire would lead the enemy to his position. ​And it had. Except it was not a foreign rival that he saw. It was one of his comrades. ​Relief came. Followed by alarm. ​A ribbon of scarlet dripped from his comrade’s nose. An unfamiliar depth laid behind his eyes of one driven beyond madness. Even though the soldier’s movements were unprecedented for humankind, Hector could read them anywhere: they were of attack, not kinship. Its aim was to kill him. ​To rip him apart. ​He fired.

He mentally separated himself from the slaughter he sowed, and from the carnage he now reaped. Die or kill, there was no other way. ​No longer could he consider them brothers—or even human. Humanity did not animate their forms; no rhyme or reason arose, or rationale. Chaos had taken them; Chaos was all that existed now. All that moved, all that they were, were Chaots.

“Examples are Kuru among the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea and mad cow disease which caused Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans, though thus far, prion diseases have been limited due to their long incubation periods. Due to this reason, they have never been used in warfare situations. Supposedly the pandemic was caused by a new, previously undiscovered type of prion, one whose infectivity decreased the time between exposure and onset of symptoms to null, creating a devastating weapon.”

“Humans were not meant to live in the fringes of life,” he answered, “not meant to revert to cannibalistic animals without reason, without society. We need to eliminate the disease for with the end of the prion, comes our ability to rise from the ashes and to begin our civilization anew. They are a threat, you should know that Nyx. They almost killed you.”

Would he believe her as human if her life was ruled not by reason but by whim; would he seek to eradicate her? Lawless, winged and unconfined. She epitomized the poetry written long before her time. Unwilling to cave under the pressures of an unknown civilization, unwilling to conform, she could not accept his view.

What was she now? A creature of the wild and not the wise, she understood more her connection with Chaots than with humans. It became clear in Leander’s wish of an ideal society and her need for none. He could not see that she was not one of them, and never could be confined to his civilization.

humor being one human trait that often outlasted the strongest adversary to atrocity.

“Nyx, you need no warrior nor savior. From what I have witnessed you endure fearlessly all that you come across. You run alone. And I thank the gods that the blood on you truly was your own and not Chaot, for I had thought—and feared—otherwise.” ​He had believed the blood was hers. She wanted to tell him otherwise, but was worried what that would incite, and if it would lead to her becoming a lab rat. ​“Yet, you still helped me escape from the cave?” ​“I would have helped you escape even from the depths of the Underworld.”

She thought he still stood behind an unbreakable barrier, but he did not. So many of those she had met had wished her to be confined in some way, even if they believed it was for her own good. But Hector was different, he saw not a fawn whose girth could not withstand life, but rather he saw her, as she had seen him.

A chance remained that immunity protected her. However, Megaira had said that no one could be resistant. Either death or transformation followed the initial exposure she had said. The chance that Nyx alone was impervious to the disease seemed unlikely. Yet she still indulged the thought as her body sank deeper into the water’s permeable cold. Maybe she was too different from the other humans, therefore, the prion could not infect her. She lived without barriers preventing her actions, and so the disease could not manifest itself, for she was already wild. ​Or maybe her past sealed away the answers. She had never even asked herself why she could not remember it.

A hypothesis formed: maybe it was possible that she had been a Chaot. That was why she had no memories before the beach. It was why she often acted solely off impulse—a remnant of what she had been.

see the distant silhouettes of Hector and Megaira that were partially hidden by the trees. They were preoccupied with each other, pleasantly so. Hector had brushed the blonde hair of Megaira aside, letting his hand linger by her chin. She returned the gesture, warmth melting her cold persona.

“I’m the same as you.” ​“I know,” he said, smiling at her sincerity as he lessened the distance between them, “that you are not. You survived surface side when no one else did. You look upon the Chaots like no other. You desire freedom more than anything else, yet you restrict yourself in order to protect it.” ​“Let me in,” he continued. “Let me understand you.”

Uncontrollable chaos leads only to death and anarchy. However, flip the coin over and life becomes another way. Life is the moment rather than the sum of all of life’s possible tangents, it is when all those tangents of the future and past coalign into one. The present, the moment you live in, chaos itself.

“If you never search for trouble, life would be repetitive.”

“If I grow old as you wish, laden with cobwebs and the tedious, please dust me off,” she said, as the eclipse of trees grew darker now that the sun dropped below the tree line. “For you should never run in fear of the reaper, for you then allow death to dictate your life even before your time.”

“At least I live. And I live more than you,” he spoke, direct in his sentiment. Direct in his affection. “Because I do not fear how I feel for you.”

Screams of peril filled the air, as beacons through the forest. Scenes played out in her mind of bloodied massacres as she followed. Though even her imagination could not brush upon the brutal realism as they approached the camp.

She saw Dio hidden by the tall grasses. He lay covered with blood. No wonder the aggression which poured from the others—seeing one of their brothers now succumb to death. Death, or something else, which now crept upon the once lively man.

“He would have wanted me to end it before it begun.” ​Said out loud, but Nyx knew it was said for his own ears as Hector aimed the weapon to his downed comrade. ​“I will not let you!” Her arm reached for the gun, trying to tear it away from the warrior. She knew that if the Chaot’s blood did not affect her then Dio still had a chance that he would not turn. Fervent were her efforts to stop Hector, however there remained no question that his strength dwarfed her own. ​Again he brought his arm to her, almost as if to push her away so he could clearly see his target. He needed to bring peace to his brother. ​“It did not turn me! It may not turn him!” she said, wishing to save Dio even if it meant admitting she had not told him everything.

“Take this for protection,” he said, as he took her hand into his. “I found it back in the city after I first met you.” ​She looked down at what he had placed in her hand. The Fisherman’s knife. Did he know what it meant to her, she wondered. Leander then took off his knife holster from around his leg and gave it to her to use with the Fisherman’s knife.

“When I first saw the land after more than a year at sea I was hopeful. But then after seeing the destruction and the decay of the cities, seeing the dead piled in the streets, forgotten, and seeing the Chaots, we almost gave up. But then you appeared and gave us hope that we could survive on this land.”

The Chaots were mindless, or so the Thalassicians supposed, but her conviction that they followed the soldiers, directed by a reason, contradicted any prior beliefs. The Chaots were led. They withheld the attack until the opportune moment, and Nyx believed that the strike coming when she was absent from the group was not a fluke. Then they withdrew after Dio was infected: this did not sound like an unrestrained frenzy, leaving her to wonder if the Pathfinder was behind it, wondering if his pack of Chaots was still near. Also if the soldiers were wrong about this aspect of Chaot behavior, what else could they be wrong about.

Them? The accusation itself was not extraordinary, for even she felt the insurmountable distance between herself and the other humans. And she could not forget the kinship she felt in the ways of the Chaots, the feeling she was home among those without restraint. But was it the Chaots Megaira spoke of?

Too many comrades he had lost, too many hardships he had faced, to allow for an emotional attack to faze him. Wrath and woe strung together in Megaira, as she turned from the two. Her weapon clenched, she went to the rear to watch for Chaots,

“Megaira is right, Hector,” she spoke as Megaira disappeared from sight. Her voice did not contain sorrow but rather confirmation of what Megaira had accused her of. “If not for me, all would be saved. Dio would still be here.” ​Words held more truth than she knew how to convey. ​“If not for you, we may be okay. Or we may all be dead. One can never predict what could have happened,” Hector said.

“Whatever it may be, I cannot grant that much of an advancement. I can station you aboard the Thalassic, you have done your time fighting. Plus, I owe much to your grandfather. However, you will keep your current rank.” ​“I am capable of running the colony, Hyperion. Furthermore, I believe it is in your best interests that I be promoted,” she said. “I know of the Bavarian Coalition, I know a select group runs the Coalition, and the one world government was formed in their best interests and not that of the people. Has it always been the Bavarian Coalition’s objective to rule the world? Establishing a totalitarian world government, the New World Order, in order to dominate it.” ​“You are paranoid, Telphousian. The times of secret societies and conspiracy theories are over with.” ​“That is because they are now a reality. And you realize, given my namesake and grandfather, I am privy to documents to prove the world government’s creation was not to establish a worldwide peace, but rather to serve its own self-motivating purposes. I understand this would not serve to destroy the world government, but I am sure you don’t want more uprisings on your hands.”

Out of all of Thalassic, it was Leander she wanted. Perhaps because she followed the old saying of wanting what you cannot have. Unlike the other Thalassicians, he would not cave under her desires and power. And that, in and of itself, not only caused her to want him and hate him in the same breath.

“This is not about who has the highest rank, it is about what is happening surface side, as well as the future of those onboard the Thalassic. How long do you think we can hide down here?” he asked, persistent as always. He continued, knowing the truth behind her ‘rank’. “But if you want to try pulling rank, Admiral, first ask yourself how you earned that rank.”

“What matters is that I am your commander,” Telphousian said to Leander, turning into her quarters to dismiss his ambitious ideas. But before she slammed the door in his face, she left him with one piece of parting advice. “You are a soldier, you will obey.”

As the sleeping giant of a man was pulled pass her, she looked down at him. She had never seen the disease of Chaos before now. Dio was no longer the man she remembered. Sleep did not bring a sweet meandering of sugar plums and dreamscapes but rather the sleep covered a beast. The slumber threatened to break, the monster would be awoken. She shivered at the sight of him, wondering if she had made the correct choice.

The research station stood before the triad, hidden in the tangles of the forest foliage and the dark of night. It retained the aura of being untouched by the outside. Vines had grown wild over its walls, encasing it. A disturbing sense of dread filled their senses, though the soldiers were too steeped in courage to allow the foreboding omens to stop their course. And so into the doors they plunged.

The soldiers hoped the key to the disease existed beneath the shadows. Did she want the same? ​To save Dio, yes. But to save society? No.

the diseased dominated this world. But societal constraints dominated the previous one.

Perhaps it was what humans needed and why the Thalassicians persisted. A shred of hope dangled before them that light would breach the abyss fallen on society. It was what Pandora had safeguarded despite her wrongs; it was the crutch humanity fell on in the face of horrors beyond their comprehension. And now it fueled the quest of the soldiers.

Laboratory upon laboratory, room upon room, all were unearthed. The research led to no triumphs; all experiments had failed. Despite this, their search continued. What else could they do other than go home. It was not an option; the soldiers could not return empty handed and Nyx had no home to go to.