The Moon's Fangs | 1

Reks Arlen

After initiating a lockdown on his suspect’s room, he went back down the hallway towards his lab. With the restoration of his vision, the current state of his home was unavoidable. The layers of dust and grime overlaying everything in sight acted as an ominous prohibition to what he’d soon learn.

Leveling villages and tropical forests and converting all that life into uncharted deserts doesn’t happen overnight, let alone in a decade.

“This place is a damned mess. Begin a vacuum seal on all unoccupied rooms,” he instructed his Guide, walking through the lab and down the opposite hall. The quiet hum of the vacuum created white noise as it sucked the dust particles up through its cleaning system.

Once that was in motion, Luk pulled up a hologram projection of the interface a couple feet in front of his face, along with video footage of the suspect sitting with a blank expression on the bed.

Reks paused before reaching the master bedroom.

He narrowed his gaze on the live clip, studying her little hologram form. The girl could have been Ellison’s twin, if not for the absence of moonlight-white hair and glacial eyes, along with a couple minor details. He had been sure it was because she wore a glamour disguise, but those could only be activated with a Guide. And this girl was Guideless.

Impossible, or unheard of at the very least.

He stared harder, trying to pick out the differences between the two. This girl, Amelia, her skin tone looked a couple of shades darker and had a splash of little brown freckles across her nose. Most orleizens didn’t have freckles, only some seasoned off-planet soldiers and researchers whose prolonged missions kept them under specific suns came back with a handful of the little blemishes.

He was certain Ellison didn’t have freckles. However, the two shared the same upturned eyes, high cheekbones, small nose, cupid lips...

Reks ran a hand through his damp hair. He had planned to use the ovo during the interrogation, just like he had done countless times in his role as vitiate. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it this time. Not when she looked the way she did, not when she blubbered so sincerely.

Blazing stars… He pinched the bridge of his nose.

As the humming sound of the vacuum ended in the bedroom, he opened the door and made his way to the closet. Not a speck of dirt was left in the room. Good as new.

“Alright Luk. Pull up Ellison’s status and location.” Reks pulled his attention back to the interface, touching and dragging things on the holographic screens.

His Guide complied, searching the system. After a couple minutes went by, he wondered if Luk still suffered an aftershock from the paralysis. It normally didn’t take long to find her location, unless she was in the Void. He kept himself busy during the wait, finding his spare uniform shirt.

~I am experiencing… difficulty finding the empress.~

The way Luk phrased it, it was as if the synthetic snake was biting its tongue. “What do you mean by difficulty? Like she’s gone back to the Void?”

~It’s hard to say.~ Luk drew out.

At the same time, movement in the suspect’s room caught his attention. She was banging on the door now, calling out to him about thinking she had internal bleeding. Where had that accusation come from? He hardly laid a finger on the girl. Well, now that he thought about it, she did look pretty banged up once his vision resurfaced. And she did mention running into trouble with the crystalline monsters.

“Fates… Luk, run a scan on her, please.” He pulled the shirt over his head, then torso. The upside-down crescent moon gleamed a brilliant iridescent moonlight. The sigil marking him as Ellison’s vitiate.

Luk ran a body examination as she went on about possibly dying. ~Amelia has two broken ribs and three severely bruised. She will need medical attention, but I do not detect internal bleeding. As long as she stays calm and out of danger, Amelia should be fine for the time being.~

Not only were her clothes not of orleizen custom, but they were in tatters as well. Her long, almost dress-length shirt had rips and tears, and was even missing an entire sleeve. Shreds of the blood-stained cloth were tied around her palms. Even her shorts were frayed and ripped. What he could see of them, at least.

With all the scrapes and bruises covering her head to toe, there was a good chance she really did face a monster of the Adamant Horde. She looked the part. Though, many enemies he encountered always did look the part they wanted others to see.

He shook his head, catching himself getting distracted again.

“Duly noted. We’ll tend to her wounds after I get an idea of what the hell I’ve missed.” he said, pinching her little hologram with two fingers and sweeping it out of view. She was causing too much of a distraction. He needed to focus.

The video blinked away into tiny holographic nanos, leaving only the interface. While making his way back down the hallway towards his lab, he rolled his sleeves a quarter of the way - a common practice he had in order to keep his wrists free.

“Keep running the search on Ellison in the background,” he said, sliding the empress’s name up to the bottom left side of the screen before enlarging the projection in front of him. “Give me reports on Sorren, Yuri, and Cyra,” he listed his comrades, then added, “General Rhosyn too. In the center, I want a report on the ambush, along with general information and the present condition of the empire.”

~Changes have been made to the system since we last connected. Most of the requested information is locked behind a barrier enforced by Rank: Circle. Allow me a few moments to hack into it.~

An uneasy feeling crawled over him. He didn’t like the sound of that. Since when had information on vitiates been held solely by the orleizen council? Any kind of information regarding vitiates were held nearly exclusively by the royal class, with the exception of General Rhosyn, who trained them.

The blood in his veins heated.

He never particularly got along well with the orleizen council. They were always a group who wanted to stick their noses in everything, and quite enjoyed hounding vitiates with questions they didn’t have jurisdiction over. He didn’t care if they were, quote-unquote, The Circle. Someone who had their head screwed on correctly doesn’t simply corner a trained assassin with the assumption they can get away with it because they’re in the council.

Reks may have made that abundantly clear when a ruthless circle member attempted this on him. One thing led to another… and well, let’s just say the council never looked at him kindly after that.

The Circle’s encryption came into view on his projection. The circular barrier was made up of millions of tiny amber runes moving clockwise and counterclockwise.

He looked at it as if it were a joke. This was the best firewall they could encrypt? He held back a snort. Practically child’s-play.

~It is likely The Circle will be notified the moment we gain access to these files. However, with your vitiate rank, The Circle will not be able to identify who hacked in. Yet, with their access, they will be able to determine that a ranked vitiate was responsible.~

Reks thought about that for a second, considering the possible consequences. Last time he checked, there were over fifty vitiates working under the high emperor and high lady, nearly thirty under the next-in-line for the throne, Mylo Lucil. Then there were ten vitiates under the empress, Ellison. With some luck, they’d have to sift through quite a number of vitiates before reaching him. And even if they did come questioning him, it would only be their accusations against him. It wouldn’t stand.

Not that he cared whether he pissed off The Circle or not. The orleizen council never had any jurisdiction over vitiates in the first place, so he was curious to learn why files such as these were behind their flimsy barriers. It also helped that Luk would cover his tracks and make sure The Circle didn’t know what information he gathered from their files. With Luk masking the holo-trail, they’d have no way of narrowing the search.

Mind made, Reks spent a few minutes decoding the lock. After solving the puzzle, he pressed a hand against the runic circle, and twisted the runes until it unlocked. The runes scattered across the projection, materializing all the data he sought out.

The Circle’s Encrypted Files

The Fall | FILES WIPED/LOST

CURRENT STATUS: Orleizen Empire, population 29,709 | Year 10,999, the Age of Ruins | Alliances, Not Applicable | Orleizen Life Outside Barrier: 14% | Non-Orleizen Life Outside Barrier: Unrecorded

Report: Space underground grows limited. In order to preserve the oasis, a plan of harvest has been implemented on several compatible planets. By the next Onyx Moon, phase two will be initiated.

Horde Raids remain the biggest threat to Orlaith. Scouts’ reports claim the Raids are taking a more aggressive turn since last month. If a solution is not identified for how to access the Key, drastic measures will need to be pursued.

Sorren Vasco | Presumed Dead | Reason: Unknown, during the Fall | Ring Collected

Yuri Vasco | Presumed Dead | Reason: Unknown, during the Fall | Ring Collected

Cyra Aizling | Killed in Action | Reason: Adamant Horde, Type: Obsidian | Ring Lost

General Nasalas Rhosyn | Passed Away, Age 303

Ellison Lucil | Presumed Dead | Reason: Unknown, Never Found | Key: DATA WIPED/LOST

The information felt like poison being shoved down his throat. He couldn’t breathe.

At first, no words came. Then a sudden fury shot through him. Monstrous emotions surged out of him all at once.

“Lies!” He roared. His vision went a violent red, and the next thing he knew, he was hurling his rolling table against the wall. Glass vials shattered, spraying the wall in colored serums. Various tools ricochet off, skidding off in different directions across the floor.

His entire body trembled with a swell of uncharted emotions. His heart found its way up into his throat, and his breathing turned swollen and harsh.

His best friends who were like his own flesh and blood, the General who was like a father figure, the empress who he…

Dead.

They were all dead.

“It’s not… not true.” He seethed, red-tinted vision turning wet.

It couldn’t be true, yet here it was written. He furiously searched for other names but each ended the same way. He tried over and over again to connect with them via commlinks, and failed every time. He couldn't reach them.

He wept. He couldn’t control the anger, the tears, nothing. Everything collapsed on top of him, attempting to bury him right here and now. Luk trembled in a way it never had within him.

“I should have been there for them. I should have been with them.” Reks clenched the counter, not daring to look back up at the projection. He couldn’t bare seeing those claims by their names. Couldn’t bare imagining them suffering a fate similar to what he saw had happened to the high emperor. “Why… Why wasn’t I there? I could have saved them!” A guttural yell erupted from his lungs. Luk pressed against his flesh in disorganized tendrils.

They were counting on him. They trusted him.

He snarled at the projection. Files were deleted as if to cover tracks. Information on the ambush and on Ellison were scrubbed as if someone didn’t want those pieces of history to be known.

Even his own memory felt clouded from during his fight with the Full Spectrum. Memories he knew belonged to him felt out of reach.

His knuckles went white. He reeled a fist back and slammed it against the marble, cursing in his orleizen tongue. Any pain but this. Anything but this.

They never found the empress. What if she was merely hidden within the Void?

A demoralizing silence reigned over him. His dark eyes hovered over the year. He stared at it like a sunstar setting the words ablaze.

Over eight hundred years.

“Nearly a fucking millennia.” the words tasted vile.

The life expectancy of an orleizen was only three hundred fifty, at best.

Icy shock paralyzed every cell in his rigid body. Everyone he knew… everyone he cared about… were all dead. Not a single orleizen he ever knew, ever met, was alive anymore.

Gone.

A distorted vision flashed across his mind. Moonlight hair pooling over Ellison’s shoulder as she stared down at him - cold, glacial eyes full of both love and animosity. Her lips moved as she spoke, but the sound of her voice couldn’t reach him.

He didn’t want to believe it, but deep down, he knew. She had done this to him. She stole any chance he had at saving those he loved. She… Ellison took everything from him.

Something hollowed inside his chest.

~Reks, emergency in lockdown!~ Luk hissed. ~Experiment NOX is pursuing the girl!~

He cursed, eyes flashing towards a broken orb at the far end of the lab. With everything going on, he never noticed.

The blood drained from his face.

There wasn’t time to question how the little devil broke free or how it was still functioning after all this time - he needed to move now, needed to catch it. Shayd damn it!

Reks burst into gear, taking a sharp turn down the hallway. His shoulder smacked into the wall, but he kept running. His Guide unlocked and opened the sliding door before reaching it, and he surged through to only find he was mere seconds too late.

The tail of the serpent disappeared under her bloodied shirt just as her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Reks dropped to his knees beside her, despite the pool of blood. The girl was out cold, and he knew why once pulling her shirt up past her ribs.

A jagged piece of bone had punctured through her side. As Luk scanned her body, the Guide revealed another rib pressing dangerously against her lungs. In order to relieve the pressure, Reks slowly and carefully moved her off the wounded side and had her lay flat on her back.

“Give me a report on the Guide,” he rasped, voice still hoarse, repositioning her body until the shallow hitches of breaths stabilized.

He went from a blaze of irrepressible emotions to channeling all his energy on this girl’s life with rigid focus. For all he knew, this girl could be the only connection he had to the past. Her strikingly similar features were enough to believe she had a part to play.

He couldn’t lose this girl - not when so much could potentially rely on her. Not after learning everyone he ever loved and ever knew was gone. Fuck. He'd lose it if he thought of his friends right now.

~Experiment NOX is attempting to merge with her. Though it seems Amelia’s body is rejecting it. NOX is struggling against abnegation.~

Reks pressed his lips together in a tight line. Shame smashed into him. This was his fault. If he’d noticed the experiment broke free sooner, he could have stopped this from happening.

But at this point, with how severe her injuries are now, he needed this Guide to merge with her, despite whatever new problems it may lead to.

He willed tendrils to slither from his wrist, using his hands to staunch the bleeding as much as possible, while Luk attempted a kickstart in her natural healing.

Amelia’s breath hitched, eyes remaining closed.

He had never heard of someone’s body rejecting a Guide before. It could have to do with this Guide, in particular, being an experiment he’d been working on before all hell broke loose. He wasn’t finished with it. The Guide was incomplete.

But now that this much damage has been done to her body, Reks needed her to accept the Guide. He needed her to live.

“Come on, Outlander. Don’t fight it.” he urged.

Her breathing went suddenly still.

~NOX is losing strength — her heart rate is slowing!~

Afterimages of reading KILLED and PRESUMED DEAD on the hologram haunted his mind. And he reacted.

Reks willed tendrils past the broken rib to find Experiment NOX. His heart pounded against his chest while fear clawed its way up his throat. She is not going to die. He wouldn’t allow it. “No, she’s not, damnit!”

Luk, equally determined as himself, linked with the other Guide, providing the little experiment additional strength. He’d never tried something like this before, but there weren’t any other options left. He felt energy being instantly drained from Luk as Experiment NOX absorbed it, using the borrowed energy to merge with Amelia. He expected to feel physical pain, however, it was an abundance of mental pressure collapsing down on top of him.

Reks gasped as the equivalent of mental explosions boomed behind his eyes. “Fates—” he gritted his teeth. Tendrils in his arms bulged a wicked cyan, and he could feel the intense pulsing branching up his strained neck. It was the experiment. It was sucking their energy, taking faster than he could give.

Just when he couldn’t take any more pressure, the open wound in her side began to heal at an accelerated rate. Reks eased the tendrils out before it was too late, and he was left gasping for air as the pain in his head receded.

“What… in blazes...” he gasped between words. He hadn’t been winded like this since the Vitiate Trials.

~I… I need some time, please.~ Luk whispered, breathless.

Strange. He’d never heard Luk out of breath before.

“When you’re ready,” he panted. “I need another vitals scan—”

He stopped speaking, suddenly transfixed. Wherewith a normal Guide, a wound this large would take up to three hours to heal completely. However, this one accelerated in about a third of that time, which could have to do with Experiment NOX siphoning energy from him and Luk, but he couldn’t know for certain.

He made a mental note of that while keeping an eye on Amelia’s breathing stabilizing.

Another wave of pain hit her when the Guide pulled the broken rib back into place. She tensed, trembling until the skin completely stitched back together on her side.

He waited a few more moments before gently lifting her in the crooks of his arms. The Guide had even already started working on the multiple omnipresent cuts and scrapes on her legs, arms, and hands.

~Vitals are stabilizing, and her ribs should be mended before she wakes.~

He set her down on the bed. A number of things raced across his mind that needed testing. He needed to figure out what kind of personality the Guide developed, if any at all. He needed to see if it could perform basic tasks, test its obedience and reliability, linking, and so on. His biggest fear was if it developed an overbearing loneliness which could potentially result in it being possessive over its host.

He rubbed methodically at the back of his neck. It was one of the reasons why he worked on this experiment in the first place…

He crossed his arms over his chest, trying to wrap his head around who this Outlander was supposed to be. A distant relative of the Lucils? An enemy equipped with a new type of glamour technology he hadn’t yet been exposed to? An outright anomaly?

He still wasn’t ruling this girl out of suspicion completely yet. But now he could see there was more to this than what he initially believed.

A new approach would be needed. A softer one, perhaps. A way to test the waters and see how she reacts when the metaphorical chains are loosened.

“Luk,” he glanced around the room. “Add a closet and some basic furniture in here, then lower her bed halfway.” Reks didn’t need her falling off and causing another scene. “Check and make sure all exterior exits are on lockdown, including the armory. We’ll keep her door unlocked.”

As he listed the requests, parts of the room began to bend and mold into what he asked for. The far end of the wall pushed outward as if being stretched as the closet was constructed. It only took a few minutes for an armchair and a desk to materialize and take shape as well.

~I have included some basic necessities inside the desk drawers.~ his Guide mentioned. ~However, I cannot purchase new clothing without connecting to the system. After what we've learned, it would be unwise to make any traceable purchases.~

He sighed through his nose. “Scratch that. Transfer some outfits Ellison rarely wears—” he grimaced, pushing away the rise of emotions. “Preferably things she’s never worn.”

He couldn’t allow himself to mourn or rage right now. He needed to figure out what happened. He needed answers. He shoved the hollow feeling down, burying it deep under the growing stack of questions he had. Nothing was for certain until he had the chance to personally verify it.

Reks took a seat in the armchair, studying the girl. First thing on his agenda was to learn everything he could about Amelia. He wanted criminal records, personal information, and anything else his Guide could dig up.

“Luk, can you access her profile without connecting to the main interface?”

Now that he was aware of new circumstances, he needed to stay cautious and keep a low profile for as long as possible. He didn’t need whoever now made up The Circle to be chasing him down if there was a possibility of him being the last vitiate alive.

~All intel on Amelia is solely from planet Earth. I do not need to connect to Orlaith’s interface in order to retain this information.~

Reks gave the Guide a mental nod of approval. “Let’s see what we can dig up on her.”