Nightlife: Orion

         Night raised a finely crafted black eyebrow, “This is what you’ve gotten for me? This is all that Delta Genome could afford to part with?”

         The man before Night’s desk nodded, “Alpha is indeed all they could part with, since Ivory has gone missing.”

         ”Missing?”

         Pulling at a strand of hair Night assumed was the color ultramarine, the man nodded again, seductively pursing not-quite-too-full lips together. “Yes, missing. When Ebon broke free Ivory followed him out, they think. Though several saw him faint in the hallway,”

         ”Doran, I don’t care about Ivory, what about this thing.” Night pointed at a tank sitting in the corner of her office. Within the long glass womb a deformed young woman floated in sea green water.

         ”Oh, yes, well,” Doran pursed those lips again and Night couldn’t help but shiver, “Alpha is part, or was part, of the Orion Project. She’s only half developed, but she’ll serve you well.”

         ”Orion Project?”

         ”Alpha, Centari, Borealis and Sirius: Four major projects done in succession by Delta. In any case, Alpha was the only one that the doctor felt was safe to unleash on the world.”

         ”That’s reassuring,” Night scoffed, “You say she is only half developed. Is that in body, power, or both, hm?”

         ”Body only rest assured.” Pulling his hair back, Doran wrapped a thick strand of rawhide around it, binding it to his head, “You need only to –“Doran knelt before the glass womb and held a hand over the command console, “- press this button here.”

         Night held up her hand, trying to stop Doran from pressing the button, but it was too late. The gate on the tank opened and the liquid went spilling around the room, covering the small office in an inch of blue-green water. The woman within – held aloft by cords and pipes – stirred. With a steamy hiss the mechanics released her and she stepped from the tube.

         Unfurling great prismatic, feathered, rainbow hued wings she shook her soaked maroon hair from her face. She turned lustrous golden eyes onto Night and parted ruby red lips, “Siren Alpha at your service.”

         ”Good, Ebon should have a surprise tomorrow.”

.::.::.::.

         ”Dammit!” Ebon stepped on another of the little spider-like machines that had started to invade his home since the incident at Delta Genome. The little press bots were property of various media boards and everything the little things saw was transmitted to their respective newsgroups. Sela, Laelin, Tor, and Ebon had been chasing the things down in a comical fashion. The day had proceeded interestingly and a bit annoyingly as far as Ebon was concerned.

         The first one had crawled over Ebon’s polished black boot, “What’s this?” he pinched the bug between two fingers.

         ”Let me see!” Tor flopped down onto the floor, grabbed Ebon harshly by the hair and pulled him off the couch and onto the floor with him, “Oh, a media bot.”

         ”I know what the hell it is! Don’t touch my hair.”

         Tor made a mock salute, “Yes, mister vain, sir!”

         ”Shut up.” He smacked Tor on the back of the head and squashed the media bot, “There are going to be hundreds more of these things, find and squash all of them.”

         ”Aye, aye!” Tor hopped to his feet and rushed from the room. Instantly there was the sound of stomping in the other room.

         Laelin rolled her eyes, “What’s his problem?”

         Ebon let his shoulders sag, “I have no idea.” He squashed another media bot beneath his palm.

.::.::.::.

         Dragonmaw watched the procession through the windows, suspended by his claw and a thin suspension wire, “The media. This might be harder than I thought.” He cut the wire and landed gently among the spikes on the window ledge. Resting a gloved finger above the red lens on his goggles, Dragonmaw zoomed in on the room behind the curtain.

         A woman with pale red hair and an arm cradled gingerly in a sling waved her arm franticly as the man named Ebon pulled a little media bot out of her hair. A young man with oil slick black hair stomped on another and glanced at a clock. Another woman with curly brown hair spoke with the scientist Dragonmaw recognized as Sela and pointed up the stairs. A blonde acolyte simply ran over the bots as she peered beneath various bits of furniture.

         Putting a suction cup from his head gear onto the window, Dragonmaw listened in through the thick glass.

.::.::.::.

         ”Laelin, calm down, it isn’t really a bug.” Ebon growled as a wrested an air borne bot from Laelin’s hair.

         ”Ew, I don’t care, it looks like one, get it out, get it out!”

         There was the pitched twinge of failing electronics as Ebon squashed the bot, “There, it’s gone. Can we get on with this now?” he turned and waved his hand, “Sol, go out there and tell the reporters to shove off.”

         Sol shook her head, “Tried that!” Sol was Ebon’s personal accountant and chauffeur. Her normally curled brown hair was lank about her face, and Ebon preferred it that way, but Sol wasn’t apt to listening to him. “Should I let loose your dogs?”

         ”No, no, no. Those things are reserved for only the most grievous of intruders,” he looked at Sela who was picking a bot off of her high heel, “Maybe you should meet them some time, Sela.” He said with a wry grin.

         Sela paled and scurried out of the room. “I don’t trust him yet, not yet.” She murmured to herself. Though she truly wanted to trust him, she couldn’t. Or, she couldn’t make herself open to him at the least, she had destroyed his childhood after all. If he had a grudge, he was hiding it well.

         Tor glanced at the clock, “Eight hours, only eight hours? Oh, damn, this house has too many windows.” He looked to the heavy oaken doors that separated him from the living room and the hall that would lead him to the door into the basement, and sweet sanctuary.

         Ebon looked up at him from his position on the floor, looking under a chair, “What was that?”

         ”Nothing!” Tor answered hastily and too forcefully, “Nothing at all. Just – talking to myself.” He toned down the emotion in his voice.

         Sol peered through a window, oblivious to Dragonmaw, who was kneeling on the window sill only one window away. “Oh, they’re gone. I wonder why?”

         Ebon rushed to the window and peered out as well, “Good. Now we can get back to business.”

         ”Which was?” Laelin asked, hugging her broken arm to her stomach.

         ”Locking this damn place up.”

         ”It’s been almost three days, if they were going to come for us, they would have come when we were less prepared. Seriously Ebon, you can be so paranoid.”

         Ebon spun from the window and walked close to Laelin, he put his face close to hers and her eyes widened in surprise, “If you knew those people like I did, you would be paranoid too.”

.::.::.::.

         Dragonmaw was glad that Dr. Ailan had coaxed the Psyver Hidden Capitol into remodeling his head gear. Or else this mission would have been impossible. He looked up, squinting as even his heavily tinted goggles didn’t shelter his experimentally sensitized eyes from the harsh sun. Fluttering high above him was Alpha, her great wings radiating in the sunlight.

         Shall I go in? Alpha sent to Dragonmaw. He shook his head and pointed to the ground. She was the reason all the reporters had fled, but several media groups now had footage of a strange flying humanoid.

         What do you want me to do? Alpha’s voice was childlike and strangely easily comparable to crystal.

         Wipe the film those people had. The ones that were below us. Dragonmaw doubted that Alpha had gotten most of that, as he was only human and his sending abilities were only registering because of her psychic proficiency.

         The ones below? They are everywhere though, it would take me days to find it all.

         Don’t worry Alpha, we have time. Alpha looked at Dragonmaw quizzically, nodded, and faded from view.

.::.::.::.

         He nuzzled the young man’s neck, “Hold still.”

         ”Hey! Uh, wait, what are you doing?” the young man shook sweat soaked violet hair from his face. He was only twenty-four at best, but taught muscles lined his every limb and etched his honey colored body in a tantalizing fashion.

         ”You asked for this, didn’t you?” the man, who looked not much older than the violet haired punk, continued to unzip the young man’s pants.

         ”Yeah, but, this wasn’t what I was expecting. Sirius, hold it.” The punk’s breath hitched as Sirius’ hand plunged farther down, “I didn’t mean it that way!”

         Sirius grinned, “What way did you mean?”

         ”Just, get off.”

         ”Scaring now are we? I thought you were tougher than that.”

         The punk pushed on Sirius’ shoulders so that he could slide from his position on the wall where the bigger man had pinned him, “Yeah, I am. Just not now.”

         Sirius made a tsking noise and began buttoning his own shirt, “Oh, I was hoping you new ones would be more – resilient - than the ones I grew up with.”

         ”What?” the punk asked, brow furrowed in confusion. His eyes widened when Sirius lunged at him, pinning him to the floor.

         ”Ever heard of Project Orion?”

         The punk nodded, sweat beading anew on his quickly paling brow.

         ”You know the one who escaped? The rash of murderers afterwards? That whole thing, right?”

         The punk nodded again, gulping audibly.

         ”I’m the one that got away.” Sirius’ face began to elongate, the sharp muzzle of a dog replacing what was once a handsome face. Intelligent grey eyes gave way to feral black ones, and his human teeth warped and bent to make way for yellowed, crooked fangs. Already well developed muscles broke and reformed in corded, deformed, bulk. His chest puffed and bones snapped as his legs fused together to form a long serpentine body.

         Rearing before the violet haired punk, was a brute armed lupine creature, heavy coils of a snake body the color of dead flesh inching their way towards him. “What the hell?” he stuttered.

         ”Heaven’s wrath.” The monster retorted. The boy was dead in moments, a crushed and charred body lying on the floor of a back room in a back streets club.

         Sirius calmly walked from the club, paying for the room he had rented out. They wouldn’t find the body for another week, he knew, for the club managers new better than to get tangled up in risky business. “He wasn’t worth it,” he whispered to himself, unbuttoning is shirt to make room for muscles that hadn’t returned to normal yet. “Not worth it at all, little punk.”

         Sirens blared and a cop car flew down the street. Sirius paused, and as the cop car passed, any passers by would have one minute seen a man on the sidewalk and another, empty air.

         Clinging to the hood of the car, Sirius road to the site of whatever this particular cop had been called to. When the blaring vehicle finally slowed, Sirius dismounted and took in the sights.

         There were bodies everywhere.

         Pale light reflected off of pools of blood that had gathered on the street. Tangled about each other as if they had been fleeing all at once, shocked bodies littered the road. Up a drive that was spotted with debris and shards of red material, was a building.

         The paint was new, or, as new as paint got in the slums of Aearth. While the rest of the city had moved onto pillars in the sky, those who would have normally lived on park benches, took up residence on the ground. This particular building looked to have been a country club in the prime of Aearth’s ground days, and the vast expanses dilapidated green around it only confirmed it. Now, it looked like a gathering hall. And the people that had been here had been slaughtered mercilessly. I would like to meet this person. Sirius thought to himself.

         Sirius stooped next to one body. A young woman who had scars marring the whole of the left side of her face. Clenched in what would have been a white-knuckled grip had she been living, was a pamphlet. Prying her hand open, he pulled the piece of cheap paper free and read it, “First Symposium of the Life-Giver.” Sirius read. Intrigued, he opened it, within was a picture of a glass womb and a strange sigil comprised of an ornate four and a blue moon. Next to the glass womb was a small box with simple, but florid text within. “Has fate marred you?” Sirius read, “Has life scarred you and left you hopeless to redeem yourself? Visit the First Symposium of the Life-Giver and believe in living once again.” Laughing silently, Sirius turned the page. On this one there was a picture of a strange looking old man, and the footnote only angered Sirius. ”Dr. Ailan is the Life-Giver?” He hissed and threw the paper to the ground. Ignoring the medical workers and the cops, he stomped up the drive.

         As he made his way up, Sirius looked at the corpses he passed. All had been marred or disfigured in someway, “People actually believe this crap?” he growled to himself. The door to the country club turned church had been replaced recently. The shiny oaken door was carved with frightening gothic era demons and serpents while the other had angels and the four-and-moon sigil.

.::.::.::.

         Ivory listened as the heavy door was thrown open. Blood still dripped from his fingers and the cries of the condemned outside, and even within still rang in his ears. He had bound several of the church goers to the walls around the main hall and several rooms and beaten them. Even now their pained moans and hysterics echoed about the Spartan rooms.

         ”What is this?” the intruder called. Ivory focused himself and brightened the room slightly.

         ”You intrude.”

         The intruder stopped and his deep voice called over the cries of the damned, “No, I envy. Marvelously hellish, I think, but are you really planning to get away with this?”

         Ivory turned quickly, but his hair and coat did not settle. Instead, they stayed suspended seemingly of their own will. “You envy? Get out, you disturb me, and unless you want to be turned into a coat, I would heed this warning.”

         A deep animalistic growl sounded, “I do not fear you, demon. Who are you?”

         ”I should be asking the same of you.”

         ”I am Sirius, Sirius Drowa of the Orion Project.”

         Ivory’s breath caught, he had heard of the four in the Orion Project. Sirius, who had escaped and only been known by his murders. Alpha, who was still in captivity, Borealis, the strange ‘light mage’ who could kill someone with a forty watt bulb. Then there was Centari, who had vanished without a trace one night and neither hide nor hair of him had been seen since. “Sirius Drowa,” Ivory repeated, as if savoring the name. “Do you still retain your strength.”

         Sirius laughed, “I’m not answering any of your questions until you answer mine. Who are you?”

         ”Ivory Vector, project 666.”

         Sirius laughed again, “The Ivory Vector? No way! You’ve been all over the news, I think you may even call Centari out of hiding. I wonder where that boy is.”

         ”Ebon.”

         ”What?”

         ”Ebon, do you know him?”

         ”Oh yeah, who doesn’t know that snot? Big business guy I hear, doing pretty well for being one of Dr. Ailan’s ‘children’. What’s all this Life-Giver crap?”

         ”You never answered my question.” Ivory hissed.

         ”Yeah, I do, shapeshifting, the whole bit.”

         Ivory nodded almost imperceptibly, “Dr. Ailan has decided to free the world from their pains by making them like us.”

         Sirius hated when the others in the Orion project had said ‘like us’ and he hated it now, “How so?”

         ”He was going to set up tanks here and change them, he thinks he knows how to do it perfectly now.”

         ”What do you have to do with all this?”

         ”I know a better way to free the tortured masses.”

         ”That is?”

         ”Death.”

.::.::.::.

         Night had fallen by the time that Alpha had cleaned all the media stations of their footage. Sure, there would be a few thousand households that would be angry when the news couldn’t broadcast tomorrow, but it was worth it. Dragonmaw stood in an enclave that marked a deep set window, arms curled against his chest. Alpha could get in easy enough, but Dragonmaw wanted a shot at Ebon first.

         Alpha sung gently to herself, a thin crystalline sound that made the air around her shimmer. As she neared the end of the song, she tucked her wings in and began to plummet to the earth far below. When she hit the last soft note, she felt her self being pulled from this spot until she stood behind Dragonmaw. He didn’t move a muscle.

         ”Alpha, restrain everyone but Ebon, I want him. There should be five of them.”

         Alpha nodded, “Consider it done.”

End ---> Nightlife: Orion
Next ---> Nithglife: Orion Complex
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