Young Writers Society

It appeared that everyone was ready.

Everyone except him, that was.

Giving the briefest of nervous glances in Nadira's direction, Codix joined Kartiel by his side and held out his hand. "Give me the device to unlock the handcuffs," he said.

The god hesitated. Codix gave him a look that clearly said he wanted it now. Quite reluctantly, Kartiel handed it over to him. Codix held the device in his hand and studied it. It looked like it would be easy to understand. It was just a single button on the entire thing.

But that still left a question.

He took a deep breath. "So," Codix started, "what exactly do I need to look like?"

Kartiel wasted no time in whipping out a tablet that he must have snagged at some point while they were in the room, though he had absolutely no idea when that would be. It was as futuristic as he had expected it to be; a small slab on the left, with light functioning as the screen. After finding what he was looking for, he held it up.



Codix frowned. "That looks nothing like you."

"It was never supposed to," Kartiel said, placing the tablet down on the bed. "Wraiths have a hierarchy. Each Wraith ship has a queen, and everyone below her has a decreasing importance in rank. I happen to be one of the higher up wraiths, one who would be assigned the position of a commander or a hunter. You, on the other hand, are going to be playing the part of a Wraith warrior."

"A grunt," he guessed.

"Exactly," Kartiel confirmed. "The warriors, for reasons I still haven't figured out, never speak. Out of the two of us, I'm the more knowledgeable one. You would be unable to deflect any questions they ask you, which is why I'll be doing all the talking. ."

Codix sighed and gave the picture one last look before taking on the form. Unfortunately, Kartiel had a point. He knew close to nothing about how Wraiths worked, while Kartiel seemed like he knew almost everything. Once the transformation had been fully completed, he turned to Nadira.

"How do I look?" he asked.

"Horrible," she said without a single moment of hesitation.

"I'm going to take that as a good sign," Codix replied. "So now that we're all ready, it's time to face the Wraiths - right?"

Kartiel nodded. "Bo, Nadira, you know what you need to do. Everyone else, come with us. I just need to grab one last thing from a weapons room we'll pass on the way, and we should be all set for the confrontation."

Bo turned to Nadira from the doorway, his gun ready in hand.

"Ready?"

She looked back in Codix's direction. He waved at her, and she was sure he was giving her a not-so confident smile underneath that mask he was wearing. She returned the wave and gave a not-so confident smile of her own before joining Bo by the door.

"I'm ready," she said.

I hoped to heaven the goodbyes wouldn't go on overly long. I just wanted to get this all over and done with. That said, I did say a farewell to Bo on my way out the door.

''If we do not see each other again,'' I told him cheerfully, ''Let it be known that you have the most glorious beard to grace the face of a gentleman. I shall tell my bedfellows in Hell about you.''

Aegeas wasn't in the mood for goodbyes, not least because they reminded him of his situation. Still, as he followed Boris out the door, he nodded to the others. "Most of you have been respectable people," he said, emphasizing most while glaring at Kartiel. "If I die, at least I won't have died alone."

Bo found himself grinning down at Boris, and he gave the fellow a thankful nod. "Many thanks, Sir Boris. You're quite the fine gentleman yourself," he said, a little rushed as he put a hand on Nadira's shoulder, and then gave a sharp nod to the others.

"See you soon," he said, still with a hint of a grin. Then he looked down to Nadira. "I'll lead the way. You just point me in the right direction."

Raiden gave a nod, while a small grin was still on his face.
"See ya later, Best Beard and computer lady." He moved toward where Codix and Kartiel were.

"Let's go."

Nadira glanced over her shoulder for a final time before beginning to head down the hallway, recalling the map she had seen several times already with ease. She had been tracing their location on her mental version of it ever since they left the control room. Now it was only a matter of finding the right place.


They quickly navigated their way through the many halls of Atlantis. As promised, they made a brief stop at the weapons room to grab appropriate weaponry - at least, that was what Kartiel said. Codix was far more busy with checking to make sure everyone's weapons were hidden.

Then they were off again, hurrying towards a fight that Codix knew likely wasn't going to end well. There was only so much they could do to prepare for it. What was even more terrifying was that he hadn't even met a proper Wraith. Kartiel was a poor excuse for one at best, and the most he did was provide a good example of what they looked like.

No one talked much. They were all counting down the time until their fateful confrontation, all worried that a Wraith scout might overhear and report back to the main group, thereby ruining their plans. Codix fingered the unlocking device that he had slipped into his pockets.

Suddenly, Codix began to see someone appearing at the end of the hallway. The Wraith were turning around the corner. There were at least eight of them, six of the type that Kartiel was and four like the Wraith he had taken on the appearance of.

Codix came to a sudden halt, staring at them with wide eyes behind his mask. His gaze lingered on their feeding organs. They had looked so harmless on Kartiel, but seeing them and knowing they would be used was absolutely terrifying. Then he felt someone tugging on his sleeve - Kartiel, doing it as discreetly as possible - and he followed the god as they continued to head towards them.

Aegeas had counted down the seconds to this moment. As soon as Kartiel had jumped into the weapons room to find something, Aegeas had started going down from 100. Since it'd let him focus on something other than his horrible death, it had been relaxing. Since it'd distantly reminded him of his horrible death, it had been terrifying. At this moment, staring straight at a whole group of Wraiths, he vaguely realized he hadn't quite finished that countdown. Like anything could calm him down now.

His eyes fixated on the feeding organs of each of the Wraiths. He hoped they wouldn't be used. He hoped they wouldn't be used on him. As Codix and Kartiel approached them, guiding the others with them, Aegeas began pulling apart his handcuffs. They were too strong. There was a solution to that, and it showed up in a red mist swirling around his eyes, but it wasn't an option he could take. Fortunately, the red mist vanished when Kartiel glanced back. Aegeas forced a smile, then closed his eyes. He couldn't look at the Wraiths any longer.

Fine, fine. It was all fine.
The wraiths that stood ahead, tall and strong, voracious and insatiable, they were fine. Their hands that could drain a lifetime from a body in seconds, they were fine. Their sharp, shining eyes, eager to scrutinize, to seize upon the smallest of suspicious glances or holes in this desperate facade, they were fine too.
And the god I put my trust in, who had been brought down by only myself and a makeshift band of makeshift friends, half of which were children, he was especially fine.

Kartiel knew what we were dealing with, he had surely used his thousands of years of research to learn the intricacies of their social behaviour. He would play his part impeccably, and by the time our wraiths figured out that something was off, it would be too late by then, because by then... By then... well, Kartiel had surely figured out that part.

I made the mistake of eye contact, for a brief few seconds, with one of the wraith soldiers. I had to turn away.

Across the span of my career, I had learned to recognize the looks of several different classes of murderer.
There was the feverishly excited look of the man who kills for sport, the quiet sobriety of the man who kills out of impersonal necessity, the desperation of the frightened thief gone too far, and finally, there was the face of a man who has become so elemental, so primal, that he does not emote at all, for he is no longer human.

Those eyes refused to fit neatly into any of those categories.
These were the eyes of one detached, who could, upon the order of their superior, abstain or indulge thier fearful hunger with equal contentment. It was impersonal, and it was impassionate. But there was still that elemental gleam, waiting for the call.

Fine. All fine.

It was not difficult to look the part of the prisoner waiting for the gallows.
It was etched upon my face the moment I had left Bo's sight.

In a moment of god-sent distraction, I wondered if he was fine, too.

Bo was fine.

Of course, fine was relative to many things, but as far as their mission was going, it was going just fine, and they hadn't run into any wraiths yet, despite how ready he was to shoot them to bits. He let Nadira point the way, off and on going ahead of her, then behind her, trying to watch her from all sides so that in the event a wraith did pop up, he would be ready to defend her.

He eagerly awaited the moment they would reach their destination though, and the anticipation and anxiety gathered up in his throat and coerced him to make small talk to fill the tense silence. With a soft clearing of his throat, he spoke in hushed tones.

"So you and Codix uh... how long have you been best mates? Friends? Whatever lingo, ya get me."

She had been accustomed to the silence that accompanied them as they headed to their destiny, and was admittedly more than a little startled when she heard Bo's voice. But she quickly recovered, turning to him as she thought of an answer. "We've been friends for as long as I can remember. He was the one who actually made me. He didn't make the plans for me, but he did put me together and figure out all the little bugs. We just kind of clicked right after I first came to. Back then I was just a talking voice on a monitor, but it became easier for us to get even closer after he made my first body."

“Oh wow, that’s really cool. I guess that means both of you’ve gotta be geniuses with technology and stuff.”

She gave a slightly embarrassed smile. "I guess you could say that," she said. "It's hard not to be when that's what you're made of. But Codix is the real genius between the two of us. Not only did he make my first body on his own, he made this one - the original of this one, anyways - without knowing all that much about human biology."

"Wow," Bo said, checking around a corner before giving Nadira the motion to go. "That's really impressive. You guys are so cool."