A New Divide

“How long has it been?”

“Three weeks, Mr. King.”

“Impossible. You are a liar.”

It was the Light Therapy—meant to weaken an individual enough to begin the medicated brainwashing method used by the Kingdom of Salaras and their king’s manipulative society. It’s sensory torture; they break you to your template so they can re-create you in their vision.

They sit you in a pitch-black room and flash a light at you in very unsynchronized patterns. And they do it in a way that is purposely annoying. After only one hour it had me screaming at the top of my lungs. They restrained me when I tried to tear my eyeballs out, and instead, they pried my eyelids open for the remainder of my sentence.

They gave me just enough food to keep me alive. It was so disorienting, it felt like months, so when he told me it was only weeks, I felt another layer of hope peel away from myself.

But that was his goal, in the beginning, to destroy my hope.

“I see you’ve finally arrived.”

I again remained silent. I was more concerned about what was behind him. He had brought me to my childhood home, and he had set it on fire. I watched as the building that housed me for my whole life fell apart. I watched as it was swept away by the wind of a now barren wasteland.

I watched the only thing left that mattered to me burn to rubble, and there was nothing I could do but remain silent. It is a truly profound feeling to be speechless, and it broke something inside of me.

“Collin, my boy, you are almost free of your past.”

My lip quivered as I tried to hold back the anger I had felt. Then tears began to stream down my face as I picked up a charred teddy bear under the fields of ash.

I have never, ever, wanted to kill somebody until I met Arcoh the Eminent. My hate for him consumed me as we sat in that field. His eyes glimmered as he watched it with me. He loved the sight of it. Fire is passion, fire is desire, fire is will, and fire is hatred. To him, it was all beautiful.

“Why? Why have you done this to me? To us?”

“I’ve already told you. The only reason I let you live is that of what you are.”

“And just what the hell am I, asshole?”

“You are the next step in human evolution brought on by a collision with biotechnology. I just want you to know that everything I do to you, will only be to make you understand.”

“What more could you do? You have DESTROYED EVERYTHING!”

“No, you see—like you—I am also the last king in my bloodline, and when I die, my nation will die with me.”

“I will never help you.”

“But what choice will you have when I destroy all that you know? You will know nothing but me.”

I continued to stare at the ground, refusing to look into his eyes. He laughed and tried to look at my face, but I avoided him at every opportunity. I could not let him see my vulnerability; it meant my survival. “You still think there is hope for your old life?”

“There is always hope, Arcoh. You will not beat me. I will not lose to you.”

“You don’t get it, boy. I have slept for over one thousand years, and traversed an ocean of stars, to give the people of Eden what they deserve!”

“What could you ever bring to humanity other than agony and death?”

“Lives free from the burden of choice, and a king that will choose for them. People who believe in the lies of freedom are the most ungrateful of all.” Then, I laughed. I needed to do something to snap back at him. I wanted him to understand that it would take much more to break me.

“You can’t take free will away from humanity, you stupid asshole! People believe in freedom! We will ALWAYS fight for what we believe in!”

Arcoh chuckled and smacked me with the back of his hand, nearly breaking my jaw. “You’re right, they will believe in me, I will make them understand. And all you can do is watch.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Great Crusade—that begins the extermination of the rejects.”

I realized at this point that there was no reasoning with him. He was far too stubborn, possessed by an idea that died with our first motherworld long ago. So I cried as I started to think of all of the events that would follow after he slaughtered my people. I cried because my hope was dim and all I could do was pray for something to happen.

“What will it take for you to spare the people on Rayden?” I asked shattered and completely broken of hope. And when I did, he again began massaging his ring finger as he bent down and gazed into my eyes for the first time in three weeks.

“I want you to look up, beyond the smoke.”

Above us was a glorious sight: our motherworld, Rayden. It hung high, taking up nearly half the sky, and underneath the great planet, the light of the suns was sneaking through. Their light bathed my façade. I had finally understood why he brought me here.

“Please, Arcoh! I will do anything you ask!”

“Damn right you will.”

I then punched the ground and pulled my knee into my chest, attempting to stand.

“Don’t fret, my boy, they would have cast you out. They will not understand you.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Look for yourself.”

Arcoh took his sword and slit open one of the sleeves of my jumpsuit. The fabric tore away, and it revealed something that only brought me terror at first sight and great concern.

“What? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME? MY SKIN!” My skin was no longer the light tan color I had lived with my entire life. In fact, it was every color; my skin was alive—constantly changing and morphing in geometrical patterns. My forearm remained in form, but the skin was affected by every color in the spectrum; it was almost like an all-enveloping tattoo made of glyphs that moved with a pattern.

“Not me, my boy, you did this to yourself. A reaction to the genome you took three weeks ago.” I thought it was fatal at first glance, I thought that my life would be coming to an end, but then suddenly I remembered the crash. I had stopped, not the missile, but the explosion—I had contained it.

It is a truly profound feeling to be speechless.

“I didn’t purge the Raydenites to find you. You were the silver lining, the prize for all of our effort. The Raydenites left the Kingdom of Salaras long ago, and they had to be dealt with for their deception to the throne. During our ninety-minute war I found something remarkable—you, a boy, a lost boy, holding a genetic key to immortality.”

“This is—”

“We are leaving now. I’ve had a change of heart. It’s interesting how you say you would do anything for your people. They are not your people.”

“You’ll spare them?”

“There is no fun in hunting half-dead animals. If you take my hand, I will tell you everything, where you are from, who you were born from, and I will present all the opportunity that you will ever need in your life.”

No better way to recruit an enemy when you have all of the answers. I am nothing if not honest, and Arcoh had me there, he had convinced me. I never felt so lost in my entire life, everything told to me by my father and Virgil was a lie.

“You have no idea who you are, do you, Collin?”

I felt that my entire life came from false values, everything they told me, everything I did was for nothing. All the proof I would ever need, now imprinted on my skin, below my neck and from my waistline to the cuffs before my hands.

So at that moment, I knew I needed a guide to discovering the truth of who I was.

And as I reached for his hand, a miracle happened, although I would have hardly called it a miracle if I could’ve seen beyond the smoke.

There are parts of this story that go untold in my personal point of view. Th this story is not mine alone to tell. These are the records of those who were beside me all along. They fought with me and even learned with me, and their experiences were just as informative as mine.

They broadened my perspective on what had happened. I can’t deny you this chance to see the picture more clearly. So I will tell you everything that happened between our different worlds. Beyond my eyes and speculating the others—and once again, to better inform you so that you can inform yourself.

TEN MINUTES EARLIER

{Rayden: Western Hemisphere}

[-<Commander Mark Wyman>-]

-Outlander Citadel-

“Fix your stance, Silas!” Mark went to stab Silas, who ducked and fell over after nearly dodging the wooden sword.

“Sorry, sir!”

Mark darted towards Silas and kicked him in the face as he attempted to stand. He stumbled back and quickly reacted by swinging his wooden sword at Mark’s head.

“Predictable,” Mark said as he dodged Silas’s strike and struck him with a blow that swept him off his feet. Silas slammed into the floor of the white room, and Mark rushed over him. And after rubbing his back, he laughed at Mark, who dropped the wooden sword above his head and helped his young protégé to his feet.

“You are very fast, sir.”

“Old man’s reflexes is all that is. You’ll catch up to me one day, but fix that stance. We will work on it soon.”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”

“I told you the ‘sir’ thing annoys me, Silas. And what’s the other thing I told you? Remember?”

“With everything you do grow smarter. How could I ever forget?”

“That’s right. You’ll be a great admiral one day, Silas. I have all the faith in the world in you.” Mark sat down on the floor of the white sparing room and panted, out of breath like his subordinate.

“Sir! I mean Commander.”

“Silas, you are so cautious not to offend. I am only a man, just you as well.”

“I’ll watch it, Mark.”

“There we go.”

Just then, General Casey, Zachary Wright’s staff general, ran panicked and impatient into the sparing room. “There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

Mark laughed as he wiped the sweat off his face with a towel. “Ha! Never thought I’d be missed so much for an hour.”

“Commander Wyman, with all due respect for you Remorans and your armada, we have to move now!”

“Whoa, all right. Take it easy. Silas, on your feet.”

General Casey quickly led Commander Mark Wyman and his subordinate into the clustered hallways of the Citadel. It had been only three weeks, and Arcoh had exterminated over thirteen billion Raydenites. Only 10 percent of my people had survived, and all of them had fled to the citadel within the mountain for asylum.

“General Casey, what seems to be the problem?”

“The EMP storm has passed. An entire crusader regiment sits on the verge of the horizon just waiting for those particles to clear. We need you to act immediately! We need your weapon; we need the might of your fleet!”

Mark did not seem offended that General Casey blatantly insulted his competence as a leader. In fact, he went further to kindly re-inform him of the situation.

“You underestimate me, General. My people are in place, and that weapon has already begun to take effect on the regiment Arcoh deemed ‘enough’ to complete his objective here.”

Casey smiled brightly as if completely relieved by the Good Commander’s remark. “Ah, I apologize, sir. I know you didn’t have to help us, but these are dire times. We just don’t have the ability to fight them anymore.”

“Arch’s old-world reason will doom us all. This is not just on your people but ours, the GDR, and all of Eden as well.”

“I now see why they call you the Good Commander.”

“I always treat the man before me better than I treat myself, General, and I treat myself pretty well. Now, General, if you will excuse me, I have this battle to win.”

General Casey left the commissary hastily as Mark looked to his holoband; there was a much more pressing matter to him. ”Virgil? This is Mark. What is your status on locating our target?”

[<-Captain Virgil->]

-Minerva, Ash Fields-

It would take several minutes for Mark’s message to reach Captain Virgil, stationed as a recon commander on the surface of the once populated Minerva, now all but desolate. He and four other men were lying in a field of ashes that surrounded that single standing house several hundred meters off in the distance.

“Hey, Cap? You got a call.”

Virgil listened to the message and relayed his own as he stared down the scope of his 20mm rifle pointed at the lonely home and the group of soldiers who were gathering around it.

“Good copy, partna. The message took eight minutes to get here. It’s less than we’d thought. I got eyes on the kid. They got some kinda bag over his head.”

Through his scope Virgil gazed at a sight, I don’t think he quite believed at first. It was Arcoh, who had stepped out of an airship, and he was now out in the open.

“My god, man, I was thrown way off when they told me that he had the kid, but this is something else. That son of a bitch!”

One of Virgil’s men nudged him and whispered into his ear.

“Captain, we can end this war today.”

“You got a lot to learn, sport. Look at his chest plate—that there is a light-shield generator. Arcoh may be arrogant, but he ain’t no idiot.”

“What’s the call, Cap?”

Virgil sighed, and he handed the rifle off to the man on his right.

“We’re going to need to get a helluva a lot closer. Too many secondaries for a firefight. Gotta be three dozen of ’em.”

The soldier took the rifle and smiled. “Just say the word, and they’ll never know what hit ’em.”

“They will when I get close. I’m going to need a gravity tug to avoid them spotting me; when I land, cover me. Use the 20 mike rounds, in short bursts. That suppressing fire should give us a wide enough window for an extraction. And whatever you do don’t hit the kid, or I will kill you myself.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sending the transmission now.”

I was finally able to stand, barely—I toppled and stumbled with every step, and I fell over catching myself with my knee. And Arcoh then presented his hand to me once again.

“Let me be your voice of reason, Collin.”

I gave him my answer in the form of pulling his hand in and head butting him. There was a struggle, Arcoh fell back laughing, covering his blood-stained jaw and I swiftly received a bash on the back of my head from his legate’s sword.

“I have had enough watching you disrespect our king, you worm! Sire? Should I teach him some manners?”

“No need, Ivan, let him speak. It will be the last time he will do so freely.”

I spoke out against him as Legate Ivan Lennin pressed my face against the ground.

“We’ll see about that, you bastard! You expect me to forgive and forget what you have done? Your sins here will be remembered forever, Arcoh! So you’ll tell me everything I want to know as I steal that last breath from your throat! I SWEAR IT! Even if it is the last thing, I can do with my life.”

Arcoh’s patience had finally broken for me; he was no longer smiling when he stood up and wiped the blood from his nose. He loomed over me and showed me why the people called him the Snake of Eden.

“I have done all I can to be civilized with you.”

“You have certainly done a wonderful job at that.” I quickly regretted my comment when the legate then broke my leg. Even the excruciating pain barely broke my focus from Arcoh.

“Do not be a smartass with me! You are going to bend to my will, boy! So now we do things the only way they have worked in the past. Ivan?”

“Yes, my liege?”

“Bring him to The Hammer! Have him medicated! We need to adjust his attitude before we can move forward. But first I want him to watch as I destroy the citadel. I want him to watch the end of this inferior race!”

I tried desperately to escape the grip of that 300-pound giant, but with a broken leg it was hopeless, but it still didn’t stop me from gazing up at the sky, and the mountain country of Rayden far above us. Champions hate to lose.

“Excuse me, my liege!” A messenger bolted out of one of the gunships and sprinted towards Arcoh.

“What is it? You are disturbing my thinking space!”

“Apologies, sir! There has been a disturbance detected in the stratosphere.”

“What kind of disturbance?”

“We’re not sure, sir, but it’s disabling all communication capabilities here on Minerva.”

I began to see what the crusader messenger was talking about, Above us, the sky was turning black and view of our motherworld was ceasing. It wasn’t a typical storm; it had covered the area far too quickly. It was almost like an explosion, expanding at an incredible rate, stretching to the ends of the earth.

Then came the sound and the shockwave from a single person dropping in from above us. Everything stood still in those few seconds—an interruption like none other. We waited for the ash cloud to settle and when it did, I saw a tall, lanky man in a long trench coat. He landed directly between Arcoh and me.

He arose from the ground, and even the behemoth on my back didn’t move. I don’t think they could believe what they were seeing. I had no idea, but I began to feel something churn in my stomach, like butterflies. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew that presence, I knew that dogged, unkempt beard he wore, I needed to hear his voice to know he was there to save me, like he had so many times before, long ago.

“Why don’t you fight someone your size, partna?”

Within a fraction of a second Virgil took his sword and cut off Ivan’s arm. He fell over backward clutching his new stump in agony. Then Arcoh reacted appropriately but not quickly enough.

“Kill that—”

Virgil jumped on top of me pushing us to the ground, then came the rain of bullets from the field across the way—it felt like a swarm of freight trains were flying above our heads. Those 20 mike rounds were a force to be reckoned with; they took out half the soldiers that surrounded us.

I looked back and struggled to free myself from Virgil, looking directly at Arcoh, who was being pushed back into his dropship by his soldiers. I’m sure his words were not too different from my own, as I began shouting at Virgil.

“Wait! Take me back! I need him! You cannot let him leave here alive!”

Virgil heard me, but he had his orders. I would have done it myself, but I could not move on my own. He took a cylinder out of his pocket and planted it on the ground in front of us while I attempted to crawl back over to the fire zone.

“I need him, Virgil! I need to know!”

Virgil grasped my shoulders and shook me furiously. “You have this one chance to make a difference in your life! This is it, kid! I am giving you one chance! One chance to change your fate! Are you gonna take it, or let it fly? What’s it gonna be, kid!”

I gave a very broad grin and grasped his forearm. Arcoh and the others rushed towards us as this beam of benevolent light surrounded us. It took us up, a gravity tug, and within seconds we soared through the sky, passing by the surface of Minerva and its smoke-infesting skies in seconds.

So I had made my choice. Arcoh had nearly convinced me at my highest point of despair, but what tore me asunder was the fact that he said, “You have no idea who you are,” and he was right. Suddenly I felt all of my priorities shiftessence created a tempest of rampant emotion in my mind. The Remorans would feed the hunger, and they did everything they could to try and divert the desire I had to seek retribution for all that would happen.