Emergence: Chapter 1

Please note: The situation portrayed in this piece is not the actual plot of the story. Rather, it's a flashback that will explain some events that happen in the future. Any plot points that aren't understood will (hopefully) be explained in the next few chapters, which I will upload when they are written.

Chapter 1

Two soldiers trudged through the forest, unfaltering in their step despite the achingly large weight of their heavy-duty combat gear, casually carrying primitive ballistic rifles in their hands. The sun shone through the cover of the leaves above, casting patchwork shadows on the grass-covered ground and revealing the floating dust particles in the air that swirled and danced inside miniature maelstroms whenever the breeze touched them, giving their surroundings a surreal quality.

The visibly younger soldier kept adjusting the straps of his backpack, stopping to re-tie his bootlaces, or shifting his metal gauntlets in a futile effort to scratch the constant itches developing on his forearms. Seriously, why do we even have to wear these things? It’s the twenty-second century. These are relics from the medieval ages, he remarked to himself, annoyed. A shrub snagged on his camouflage pants as he brushed past it, nearly tripping him; cursing softly, he stopped to work the twig out of the cloth. His similarly-colored jacket already had a couple of tears in the rough material from similar situations.

The older soldier stepped with conviction to a constant beat, never faltering despite the uneven terrain. He hefted the rifle in his hands, comparing the weight with that of his normal weapon of choice.

“I still can’t believe they forced us to take these – they should know that I’m used to good-old gauss-propelled. This barrel’s so short it looks like a sawn-off, and they even use actual gunpowder, if you can believe that!” he remarked with a sarcastic chuckle, his rough and gravelly voice reminding his companion of a drill instructor. Removing the clip, he stared intently at the one visible bullet on top. “Well, bullets made of tungsten ain’t exactly magnetic, so I guess gauss-propelled wouldn’t work anyway.”

The visibly younger one nodded and coughed to clear his throat. “Sergeant, I –“

“You know how gauss works, recruit?” the sergeant asked, not bothering to wait for a reply. The younger soldier realized that he wouldn’t be able to speak for a while yet, so he kept his mouth shut.

“You see, the barrel of a gauss rifle needs to be really long because they line it with electromagnets,” he explained painstakingly, using a hand gesture to depict about one-and-a-half times the length of the ballistic rifle barrel. “They use a computer chip sealed inside the handle to activate each of the individual magnets a small fraction of a second after the last one.” He then ‘cut’ his imaginary barrel into about ten different equally-sized sections using a chopping motion, each representing one of the electromagnets. “When the bullet’s loaded into in the chamber, the first magnet is activated to attract the bullet towards it. Once the bullet reaches the source of that attraction, the first magnet is switched off, but then the second magnet is switched on to attract the bullet, same as before. Once the bullet slides past the first magnet, they switch it on again, but this time it repels the bullet down the barrel, giving it even more speed.” He glanced at his younger companion. “Get the picture? When the bullet actually comes out the barrel, it’s way faster and more accurate – not to mention less noisy – than one of these things,” he said, gesturing to his rifle with disdain.

“Ahem… Can I, ah, talk now? Sir?” he asked, jerking his head over his shoulders nervously, as if he was afraid they were being followed. The sergeant nodded cheerfully. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

“Because you were... oh, forget it. So, we’re not going to see any of those things,” he began, a slight tremor shaking his voice; he cleared his throat self-consciously, “while we’re walking to the city, are we?” The older soldier’s expression shifted to become stoic and dead serious.

“Who knows?” he responded, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ve heard stories that they can appear pretty much anywhere, sometimes even reaching out of the ground and grabbing your ankle while you’re walking.” He glanced pointedly at his companion. “Of course, you know already that the second they touch you, you’re dead.” The younger one swallowed loudly. “And sometimes,” the veteran continued, “they’ll walk right into your room while you sleep. It doesn’t matter how many bolts you put on the door; they just sort of ooze through walls, you know. They’ll stand over your bed for hours on end, not making any sound, just watching you breathe. Eventually, you’ll wake up, and that’s when they’ll make the shriek, the one that forces you not to run.” The other soldier had visible sweat beading on his forehead; he swallowed again for good measure.

The sergeant’s voice grew lower. “They’ll reach towards you slowly; slowly enough for you to scream, but not slowly enough for anything else. They’ll get closer, and closer, and closer, and – There’s one right there!” he shouted, sighting his weapon like he was going to shoot. The other soldier let out an involuntary cry and sprinted back the way they had come before accidentally tripping over a bulging tree root, collapsing on the soft grass with a muffled thud. He shifted to a prone position, resting his rifle on top of the root and swiveling from side to side, straining his eyes to catch a glimpse of his target. He stayed there for a few seconds before part of his mind realized that the veteran soldier was doubled over laughing so hard. At first, he remained still, wondering why his partner wasn’t even bothering to hide. “What?” he yelled, utterly bewildered, cautiously peering over the root and scanning the mesh of leaves and branches. “Where’s the-“

“Oh, rookies. That trick never gets old!” he exclaimed, still chuckling as he spoke. He trudged over and offered his hand to the recruit, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a smile. “It’s still daytime, Hawken,” he explained. “Remember? They don’t come out when the sun’s shining.” Hawken opened his mouth to give an angry retort and snapped it shut again when he realized his mistake. “Oh… I mean, I knew that,” he said belatedly. He grasped the veteran’s arm and was pulled to his feet. The officer slapped Hawken’ shoulder none too lightly. “Congratulations, greenhorn. You’ve passed initiation.” As they began to walk away, the sun started to dip toward the horizon. The two voices faded as they grew more distant. “Besides, we’re far enough outside the Emergence Zone that they won’t reach us by the time we get to the city. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

The sun descended below the skyline, plunging the forest into shadow. The moon was new, the darkness was as black as ink, and the trees stood like silent sentinels, though what they were guarding is unknown. However, something stirred. A shadow, darker than the night and more silent than the trees, stole through the wooden maze as easily as a thief through a web of streets, until it came to a slight depression in the ground next to a protruding root. It stopped dead in its tracks. Reaching out with an appendage – an arm of sorts? – it stroked the flattened grass, even though its shadowy form moved straight through the living blades without managing to disturb a single one. It gave a low hum that was eerily inhuman. The sound grew in pitch and volume until it became an ear-splitting, piercing screech that rattled the branches above it, forcing the slumbering birds to take flight with angry chirps and squawks.

“Sergeant?” Hawken whispered. Both of the soldiers had been awakened by the unearthly shriek, and the veteran had already begun fervently rolling up his sleeping bag. “Damn! They’re closer than I’d thought,” he muttered urgently. He picked up his rifle and rammed a clip that read ‘Tungsten Carbide Shot’ into the holder, cocking the weapon with a satisfying chuck-chick. “Better lock and load, recruit.” He turned to the forest, eyeing it with an ominous sense of impending danger, the blood draining from his face.

“It knows we’re here.”

The sergeant sprinted through the forest, Hawken in close pursuit. “Weren’t tungsten bullets… banned after the war because… they caused too much… environmental damage?” he huffed, struggling to keep pace.

“Yeah! That is until some lab nerd found out that it’s toxic to more than just the environment!” came the reply. “How under-informed are you, anyway? Didn’t they tell you tungsten’s the only thing we’ve found that actually hits them? That’s why they give you those ridiculous gauntlets, so you can deck 'em in the face if you have to!”

Hawken gasped for air. “Yeah… I’ve fought… against them before, but… what’s the point, anyway…? It’s not like… we’re able to… actually kill them with it!”

“How the hell do you know that? The government would never tell any private-ranked soldier! If the civilian populations knew that we didn’t have a way of stopping them, they’d go into anarchy!”

“Let’s… just say… I’ve had a few… previous encounters that… went south… real quick!”

“That explain your phobia?”

Another earsplitting shriek rent the air, this one sounding like a spoken word with an alien lilt to it. Hawken faltered, his leg muscles going limp, and he fell awkwardly to the ground with an agonized grunt. “THAT does!” he cried in frustration. His superior slid to a halt, backtracked to the recruit, and hastily dragged him to his feet. He reached into the side pocket of his backpack and seized a pair of earplugs. “Take these!” he shouted over the noise. “They’ll stop you from hearing the calls!” Hawken quickly inserted the foam seals and felt relieved to feel his motor functions returning; he could still hear the scream, but it was muffled enough to prevent it from affecting him. The sergeant gestured for him to follow, breaking into a run again. “Only a few miles left! Get moving!”

The trees abruptly stopped about thirty meters before the wall. Hawken almost stopped sprinting to marvel at the size of the tungsten-carbide monolith before feeling his right leg twitch due to the virtually nonstop cries made by the creature, nearly knocking him off his feet. In spite of his exhausted wheezing, he grimaced and pressed the left earplug more firmly inside, shivering inwardly at the very thought of a creature that could control your movements with only sound.

The veteran ran up to the wall’s surface and began running his hands along the silvery-gray material, searching desperately for something. Hawken fell to his knees, coughing and hacking due to the overexertion of running the rest of the distance to the city.

“Aha!” The soldier yanked outward on a small hitch, revealing a circular device embedded in the wall. He pressed a switch on the side and held his eye up to the scanner; a grid of green lines covered his retina for a few seconds before he heard a short chirp. The same shriek began again, this time closer than ever. Hawken groaned as he forced his limbs to stop shuddering. The sergeant had been looking expectantly at the wall, but the look of triumph on his face quickly evaporated. He pressed the switch again, and the scanner read his eye successfully, but nothing was happening. Hawken looked up, his breaths haggard.

“What… What’s wrong, why isn’t it-“

The other soldier grabbed him by his pack straps, hauled him to his feet, and none too gently forced his eye up against the scanner. Two short chirps sounded from the device, the hitch flipped back into the wall, and two tungsten carbide plates shifted with painstaking slowness to reveal an entryway.

Veniir...!

The shriek was actually intelligible this time; Hawken could see its shadowy form dashing across the field toward them, not hovering above the ground, but not exactly running on it, either. He was so confused by its foreign movement patterns that the veteran had to take hold of him and practically throw him through the gap to get him to move. Once they were both inside, he pressed a switch on an identical device built into the wall and the plates slid back into place not a moment too soon. An audible thud could be heard from the other side, and a scream the likes of which neither had ever heard caused them both to cover their ears, regardless of their ear protection.

They fell to the ground against the wall, too exhausted to move further into the city. Eventually, after a few minutes, the shriek began to decrease in volume until it faded away completely.

The sergeant held his breath for a moment, cocking his head and removing his left earplug to hear. “I think it’s gone,” he said, letting his tensed muscles relax for the first time in hours. Rising with a sort of majestic yet painstakingly sluggish speed, the sun started to peek over the far side of the wall; the two companions shielded their eyes simultaneously.

Hawken grunted, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “It’s about time. We could’ve used that hours ago.”

They both sat there for a long while, basking in the safety of the light and the surrounding wall. They could see a light strike vehicle roaring toward them across the open farmland of the outskirts, no doubt alerted that the door had been opened and making sure there wasn’t a breach.

Hawken looked over his shoulder to the veteran. “I owe you one, sergeant.” The officer waved away his formality with a tired but firm gesture. “You and I almost died together. I think it’s all right to call me Rodger, Hawken. Still, I’d say you owe me at least two,” he said, a ghost of a smile crossing his normally grim features. They shared a look. “Full name’s Rodger Sullivan. Look me up sometime – I’d introduce you to the rest of my normal crew, but they’re all over in Ancile. You know, one of the other Sanctuary Project cities, like this one.” He removed his tungsten-carbide gauntlet, threw it off to the side, and offered Hawken his hand; the private removed his own glove and took the handshake in a firm grip without hesitation.

“I’d like to say I remember your family name from the squad assignment, but I might have just skimmed through it like everyone else does. What was it again?”

“It’s Wester. Hawken Wester.”