Monster of the Dark Read online

  This one was pretty easy, and she solved it in only a few seconds. The next was a different story. Her heart sank as she tried to comprehend it. It was only by minor miracle that she managed to avoid being shot again. She started tapping her finger against her desk. There was nothing else she could think to do. Carmen was well and truly stumped.

  Well, maybe if I just… she thought, but then two of her distracters tried to take a shot. She ended that by telekinetically aiming their guns at each other. Then she gritted her teeth. It was hard enough to think as it was. Her head hurt so much from concentrating on the problem that she half wished the distracters actually would put her out of her misery. Seconds later, one attempted just that. Carmen foiled the shot by again holding the trigger open. She was a bit sick of them. They were just doing their jobs, but enough was enough.

  A different distracter tried to shoot her, and she made her move. Her method was nothing sophisticated as she pressed all four distracters against the wall and held them there. They struggled against her power, but it would be no use; she could hold them for hours if she needed to. She sighed contently. Scratching a hard-to-reach itch was always satisfying. Then Carmen got back to work, never noticing her handler’s raised eyebrow.

  Minutes passed. Carmen sat hunched over her PDD as the air filled with the groans of the distracters struggling against the unnatural and tangibly felt will of an eight-year-old girl.

  Janus glanced at his watch. “Time,” he said.

  Carmen leaned back and pushed the PDD away. He picked it up.

  “You passed,” he said.

  She smiled broadly for the briefest of instants. The expression died, however, when Janus looked at her. She glanced away and then stood. He only shook his head, which prompted a quizzical look from Carmen.

  “What about them?” he asked casually, pointing to the distracters.

  Oh, yeah, Carmen thought. She released them without pause and then turned to her handler, not registering their groans and muttered curses.

  “If you do that, it kind of defeats the point,” Janus said. It was as much a question as it was a statement.

  “The point is to pass the test, right?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” he replied.

  Carmen nodded. “Well, I needed to concentrate harder on the test, so I dealt with them. They shouldn’t have pointed guns at me in the first place or gotten in my way. They know what I am,” she said, quoting his nonsense back at him. She didn’t believe a word of it, but if luck was on her side, it would at least shut him up.

  Janus looked at her hard for a long while before he spoke again. “Indeed,” he said simply. “There is one more lesson for you today then.”

  He left the room with no further words. Carmen, close behind, had to fight a smile. It worked! In fact, he didn’t even offer a counterargument. She wasn’t foolish enough to think this would be the start of a trend, but she’d take what she could get. She made sure, however, to wipe any elation from her face before Janus could notice.

  The two of them entered an elevator and dropped off on the floor they had been on previously. Carmen knew that meant only one thing: there was more fighting in store for her. Each floor seemed to have a dedicated purpose. The fighting rooms were on one, the classrooms on another, and the dorms on yet a different floor. She really did hate fighting. It was a waste of time. Unfortunately, it seemed like she’d have to put up with more of it before she was done for the day.

  They entered a room that was the same as every other fight room. Janus didn’t say anything; he just walked to a corner of the room to observe her. Carmen got ready. As usual, she had no idea what would come for her. The door burst open, and two terran Constructs ran toward her. She sighed as she wondered what the point of the exercise was. They couldn’t beat her. They couldn’t even really press her—not anymore.

  The Constructs covered the distance in all of two seconds, but it seemed like an eternity to Carmen. She nonchalantly raised one of her hands. To the outside observer, the movement happened in a flash. Carmen, however, took a moment to revel in the energy gathering in every fiber of her being before it was focused and finally unleashed through the palm of her hand. The raw power was only slightly reduced by her internal resistance, and the beam of heat was a dull red. She didn’t need much; the Constructs weren’t wearing any armor. The beam hit her first target in the chest and burned a hole straight through him, continuing on to ablate the padding on the wall. The Construct fell over, his momentum sending his body sliding a few feet before finally coming to rest.

  Her attack couldn’t be carried on to his counterpart, as he was too close to her. It wouldn’t ultimately matter, though. The Construct lashed out with a punch. She dodged out of the way, and he broke every bone in his fist against the wall. The damage to his hand didn’t slow him down, and as he grabbed her with his other hand, Carmen could only shake her head. This was an especially stupid Construct.

  Any other time, she took in the various energies of the world around her, enjoying them and using them as she saw fit. Now the process was reversed. She allowed her inborn discipline and reserve to fail. There was no focus to her power anymore; there was just power. Arcs of electricity rippled across her body, and her eyes glowed a bright silvery blue. The room filled with the rancid smell of the Construct being cooked alive as her current flowed through him. His grip on her tightened, a byproduct of every muscle in his body seizing. Then, all at once, it stopped. The Construct fell to the ground, dead, and Carmen looked down at his twitching body. She always hated doing that. The inefficiency grated on her nerves.

  Just then, three more Constructs ran into the room. She punched the first in the head, her remaining charge causing a large spark on impact. It was a dramatic display, though of moot consequence, as her fist struck with enough force to send pieces of his skull flying across the room. Carmen frowned. She didn’t mean to be so messy; it just happened from time to time. She telekinetically cleaned the blood off her hand before breaking the leg of a Construct as he tried to kick her. She answered back with a kick of her own to the head. The force was a bit more modest this time, granting death not by crushing his skull but by simply disconnecting it from his spinal column.

  The third Construct gave no pause at the fate of his comrades. His dim mind probably wouldn’t even notice or care if he was set on fire. She was tempted to do just that. She hated them—hated them all. They were such pathetic creatures. She may as well be fighting her dolls. The Construct tried to punch her, and she moved out of the way with almost playful ease. Then Carmen ended the contest with a single blow to his chest. She sighed. Her fist had penetrated a good inch or two into his body and was again covered in blood.

  She kept that in mind as yet another wave of Constructs rushed toward her. She felled the first two by telekinetically snapping their necks. The next two she smashed together in midair. The last she finished by physically throwing into the wall behind her. His momentum, combined with a few hundred thousand pounds of telekinetic force, was enough to create a crater on impact. This came as a bit of a surprise. She’d been banging on the walls for years and didn’t think they could be damaged. When she turned to face her next opponents, she got an even bigger surprise when there was only one Construct to offer a challenge. Didn’t Janus see that they’d have to send dozens upon dozens of those things for her to even break a sweat? Yet a part of her, deep and largely forgotten, screamed a whisper that went unheard.

  The Construct approached her in a tight guard. Carmen didn’t waste her time with such things—not with Constructs. It was then that she noticed this robot was different from all the others. His eagerness waned as he paused and surveyed the death in the room. Horribly broken and mangled Constructs were strewn about, the usual result after an asset like herself exercised in one of the fight rooms. She didn’t know what to make of his countenance. Constructs didn’t have countenances. How was she able to sense a mood that wasn’t supposed to exist?

  The real
ization was off-putting. She could practically taste his anxiety. He moved closer, tentative and cautious, like he was trying to feel her out. Unlike him, all the Constructs she had ever fought had been stuck on kill mode from the gate. Her unease seemed to bolster her opponent, and as he tried to punch her, confidence gathered behind the blow. The Construct’s spirits rose ever higher as a kick grazed her cheek. Spirit? A Construct having spirit was like a ghost trying to buy a suit.

  Carmen soon had enough. This was almost embarrassing. The Construct tried to punch her again, but she blocked it hard, and his arm fell, limp and broken. She followed up with a punch to the face. It wasn’t as forceful as she could have made it, but it was enough, and the Construct staggered backward from the impact. Then she felt something new.

  It had been a while since she had sensed it in another person, but she was certain what it was: fear. She was also certain she was the cause. Her every move caused the feeling to ebb and flow like a kite on the wind. The Construct could barely move now, let alone defend himself. She watched him in curious amazement. No other Constructs appeared to be forthcoming, and Janus made no move to intervene. She had a bit of time.

  Her opponent didn’t say anything. She had long been of the mind that Constructs couldn’t or didn’t know how to talk, yet he groaned from time to time as he cradled his rather grievous injures. No one had ever hit her that hard, so she didn’t know how she’d take it herself. The Construct appeared just short of crippled. She raised her hand to scratch her nose, and his anxiety increased tenfold. Strange, she thought. She dropped her hand, and that same anxiety lowered as well, though not by much.

  When she cocked her head to the side, she felt his fear burble. She took a few steps back and it dropped. She took a step forward, and it rose so quickly that it was almost an explosion. She didn’t exactly know what to think. He was like a puppet on a string. Everything she did or even didn’t do affected him to magnified level. She couldn’t say she was unaware that she caused as much in the world around her, but she had never noticed it so clearly before. Carmen decided she’d had enough of this and prepared to put him out of his evident misery.

  As she walked toward him, he tried to slink away. It was no use in his condition, though. His thoughts were wild and raging to the point that she found it hard to focus through the noise. He slouched in a pathetic heap, trying to stay live for just a few seconds longer. He spat blood and his legs wobbled under him, and in that moment, he looked at his soon-to-be killer. The Construct didn’t speak, but in his biologically engineered eyes was a plea. Carmen knew it without even reading his thoughts. She was sure she’d given the same look to Janus on more than one occasion.

  The soft whisper, there and not there, like voice lost in howling wind, redoubled its efforts, but she ignored it. Then she telekinetically closed his eyes and snapped his neck without a second thought. What happened next was not just a pinprick on her consciousness; it was more like an atom bomb. She saw white, and her fingers went numb for a moment or two. The Construct was dead, yet he remained in her mind like a bad smell. Carmen’s stomach churned as she grew nauseous. She clenched her teeth and fought against it, and it slowly ebbed away, though not completely.

  Janus walked toward her. “You seem troubled, 111724.”

  “No,” she said defensively.

  “Hmm, interesting,” he muttered. “Well, if you’re not troubled, I require you to remember one thing. The power you wield is extraordinary. Accordingly, the consequences for using it are equally extraordinary. If this is not borne by you, it will surely be by others. There is nothing you can do to prevent this, just like there is nothing an elephant can do to avoid trampling flowers underfoot. You should always be mindful of this.”

  Carmen nodded glumly.

  “Are you sure you’re not bothered?”

  “No,” she said more forcefully. “The flowers should move out of the way if they don’t want to be trampled,” she said, trying to repeat his mantra back at him. “Nothing you’re saying is my problem.”

  “It’s not?” Janus asked.

  “No.”

  “You are powerful, 111724, but you are no match for the entire galaxy, nor even a small town that has decided it doesn’t want to be trampled. Even if you were, you could not continue completely unmarred. There are few who can, and trust me, you don’t want to be like them.

  “I assume you saw something like a flash when you killed the last Construct,” he continued. Carmen didn’t say anything. “He was different. I’m sure you’ve realized that by now. He felt pain. He was self-aware. He had hopes, dreams, so on and so forth, like any other person. You can consider the flash you saw as sort of a psychic shockwave or one last scream. It grows in strength in proportion to the mind that produces it.

  “Remember your lessons of thermodynamics, 111724,” he said. “Mentally, we are all energy, just like a stick of dynamite or a star. When we’re snuffed out, we don’t just stop; the explosion is perceived as grief. There is no defense against it and no avoiding it as a Clairvoyant. Our abilities put us closer in touch with others whether we want to be or not. The effects are cumulative, like a building repeatedly bombed. You will remember each and every death or hurt you cause, probably for the whole of your life. And sometimes the weight of one can be too great to bear. It takes a very…special type to not be affected by it. Most refer to them as sociopaths, but we call them type ones. You, at least according to your personality profile, are a more sensible type three. And it didn’t affect you?”

  Carmen was quiet for a short moment. Her skin tingled. She didn’t know her face was pale as well. She looked at Janus until she noticed one of his eyebrows rise. She turned away sharply. It was then that she realized there was a tear in her eye.

  “What about all that stuff you say about taking care of someone who gets in my way?” she asked. “And bending the world to my will?”

  “Everything has its price, 111724. We all create our own worlds, whether we realize that or not. That’s your choice, just like it is mine. There is no choice, however, as to whether we live in it. Even Clairvoyants must account for their actions. Your power simply magnifies the outcome of your will to more than your immediate environment. And that power will set the course for many.”

  Carmen turned around. She was always loathe to show him her back, but in this case it was better that than him seeing her tremble. “That’s…” she started, but her voice quivered.

  Carmen looked at all the constructs all around her and the different one at her feet. It was at that moment that she also noticed the smell of burned flesh and their bloody entrails splayed all over the floor. She had seen this before, but not when everything was quiet and she could really stand back and look. She wiped her face then turned to face Janus, who looked down on his charge. His eyebrow rose again.

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said, her voice steady.

  “What did you mean, 111724?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Janus slowly shook his head. She knew she shouldn’t have asked. “Why didn’t I tell the Clairvoyant that she affects more than what is in her small bubble? That other people and things can affect her as well?” he asked, though his questions were more statements than anything. “Now that you’re aware, does it bother you?”

  She looked at her handler, unsure of how to answer the question. It was hard to determine exactly what he wanted. When Carmen closed her eyes, she could still clearly see the vision of death all around her. She shook her head, pushing the image to the deep dark depths of her mind, where it could be forgotten. She hadn’t done this. It wasn’t her—it couldn’t be her. Janus had made her do everything. Slowly, the revolting feeling that had gripped her ebbed away.

  “No,” she answered, opening her eyes.

  Janus looked at her hard after she said that, but she remained stone faced. He nodded slowly, obviously considering something deeply. “Well, I think you’ve had enough for the day,” he said after a quick gr
imace.

  He then left the room, and Carmen followed close behind. They walked in silence as usual, but Janus seemed a bit different. He took an increased interest in her, glancing in her direction every now and then. She didn’t know what he was looking for, but it couldn’t have been anything good, knowing him.

  After entering an elevator, they exited on the dormitory floor, as expected. They reached Carmen’s room soon enough, and Janus opened the door. Mikayla leaped on her as soon as she could fit through, which was also typical. The German shepherd was as big as she was now.

  “Down,” she said harshly, pushing the dog to the ground. Mikayla whimpered.

  “I’ll come for you in the morning.”

  Carmen nodded, and the door closed. After a brief pause, she undid the tie in her hair and let it fall free. She then sat down and called Mikayla to her. She hugged the dog tight, as she often did at the end of her day. Her friend knew the routine, giving a sympathetic whimper and resting her head on Carmen’s shoulder. The dog was always there for her, for however long she needed. Today was one day…it was every day. She was sure she would not remember it.

  6

  Edge

  Subject: 111724 Age: 12 Status: Naming

  Janus had no particular like or dislike for most of his coworkers. They tried to make the most out of a job that was unfortunately as gruesome as it was necessary. The majority of the personnel who weren’t Clairvoyants had wives, husbands, kids, or pets and could even be called good people, despite everything they did here. Janus wasn’t sure where he fell in that measure, but most of the people he knew here were inoffensive. That most certainly wasn’t all of them, though, and it always amazed him how they seemed to sniff him out.

  “Everybody wonders,” one of the dolts began. “Even you have to wonder, Janus. 111720 or 111724?”