Page 5 of Reaper

Thanh, our pilot, broadcast a high-pitched sound to the surface that sent the Zebiers fleeing, the frequency painful to their sensitive ears, but impossible for us to hear. The dreadful creatures vaguely resembled a bulkier version of a velociraptor with longer front arms that they could use to run on all fours if they wished, although they could also walk and run exclusively on their hind legs. Their faces looked like they had been smashed into a wall, making the snout much shorter than it should have been. Large, globose eyes akin to those of a chameleon gave them a nearly 360-degree view of their surroundings. Their thick scales, similar to an alligator’s in appearance, but far tougher and more impenetrable, were oddly colorful, almost shimmering in soft, pastel colors.

Their long tail, seemingly unremarkable, could wrap around an enemy like a snake before toxic needles would jut out from it, inflicting close to a hundred punctures in the area constricted. The toxin could cause temporary paralysis on top of a rapidly spreading painful rash. But its deadliest tool was its tongue which it could launch like a harpoon over close to two meters before reeling in its target. The wretched thing behaved like a grappling hook, the pointy tip of the tongue opening up inside the flesh once it had harpooned its victim to prevent it from freeing itself.

It took a good ten minutes of flying around the area to drive the Zebiers far away to reduce the chances of them messing with us. Sitting in the Science Officer’s chair, Madeline dropped a series of sensors on a wide radius that would give us an early enough warning should the creatures creep back here. After performing a smooth landing, Thanh deactivated our cloaking shield and lowered the ramp of our vessel.

As the two crewmates with the rebirth ability, Doom and I were the only ones to step out of the ship and approach the pile of debris that surrounded the beaten down, reinforced door barring the access to the secret base. Kryptids had the bad habit of laying traps everywhere. Neither deep nor surface scans had revealed any active ones. However, a series of contraptions a short distance underground on a vast radius around the base led us to believe that if they ever awakened, things would become extremely unpleasant for us.

A part of me wished if anything should happen, it would do so now. Even as we descended the ramp, our Soulcatchers—Jessica and Martha—were preparing Shells for Doom and me. Should we die, our souls would seek refuge in our Soulcatchers’ psychic vessels until they could be transferred into a new Shell: an identical replica of our current body grown in an incubator.

“Well, that’s going to take a while,” I mumbled under my breath as I eyed the damage.

Doom pursed his lips with obvious displeasure. Like me—or rather even more than me—he wanted to know what we’d find below. Our scans didn’t detect any life inside, but we suspected scramblers or disruptors were interfering with our equipment—a standard tactic of the Kryptids.

“Let’s get busy,” he said, whipping out the remote to the excavation bot.

The hovering device, equipped with four mechanical arms with high precision lasers at their tips, glided over the surface before stopping in front of the door. It immediately went to work, its arms moving in every direction as it began carving the large boulders blocking our path into smaller, more manageable chunks that we hauled out of the way. Twenty minutes into the task, after further scans confirmed it was safe for the others to come out, the rest of the crew came to help us clear the debris.

The door’s locking mechanism had long ceased to function, whether from explosion damage or disuse. But even if it had, the battered door wouldn’t have smoothly opened. Despite being reinforced, the concentrated power of all four beams cutting through the same spot carved a large opening in no time. Using magnetic handles on it to prevent the carved-out section from falling in, we pulled it out only to be confronted with more debris blocking the way in.

My curses echoed those of Doom. With an angry growl, Stran suddenly rolled up into a ball and, spinning forward, he threw himself against the boulders blocking our access.

“Stran, no!” Doom shouted.

But it was too late. The Creckel slammed into the rocks with a thundering sound. It wasn’t fear for his long-time companion that had prompted Doom to try and stop him, but what followed instead. Some of the rocks shattered under the force of the impact. Small pieces fell first, making the stack shift enough that a much bigger boulder fell down. It took a few seconds before a loud crash rose from within when the boulder finally reached the bottom. We could only hope it hadn’t harmed anyone down there—assuming there were any survivors.

The rest of the stack of rocks shifted again but finally settled, leaving a large enough opening for one of us to squeeze through. At first glance, it looked like the base’s doors had opened directly into a lift that had been destroyed. A very weak light could be seen at the very bottom of the shaft, indicating some power still remained inside the base.

But that didn’t mean life.

The stale and rotten smell that wafted to us through the opening boded ill. I recognized all too well the scent of death and decay. Doom and I exchanged a glance. My hearts tightened at the sight of his shoulders imperceptibly drooping. He had so desperately wanted to give his friend some good news—as had the rest of us.

Stran unfolded himself to peer into the hole. He stared for a few seconds before emitting a small keening sound I had never heard from him before. It tore at my hearts. Like the rest of us, he had known the chances had been slim. But, until now, I hadn’t realized just how deeply he had held on to hope. He curled into a ball and rolled a short distance from us, leaning against the rubble of stones we had moved from the entrance. His dark scales changed color, taking on the washed-out sandy hue of the rocks in the area. Had I not seen him go to that location, I wouldn’t have known Stran was there at all, so effective was his camouflage while he mourned.

But I refused to totally give up hope.

“I can fit through the hole,” I said pensively while giving it an assessing glance. “I can fly down and see what’s going on.”

I didn’t need to go into specifics for Doom to understand I meant to evaluate if there was any point for us to continue clearing the debris. Our team leader gave me a stiff nod before his eyes flicked towards the Creckel, his jaw clenched with sadness for his friend. I squeezed his shoulder encouragingly then, making sure the debris surrounding the opening was steady enough, I lowered myself in.

Chapter 3

Janelle

Asizzling sound in the distance penetrated my foggy mind. I dismissed it, presuming it to be one of the many auditory and visual hallucinations I’d been experiencing over the past few days. There was no more food. We should have had more larvae, but over the past week, every morning when I went to prepare the rations, one or two more had gone missing. It wasn’t just the mature ones either, but many of the young and then the eggs.

At first, I had struggled with accepting that one or more of the Creckels could be betraying us like this. They were almost always with me anyway. Since that only left the membrane as a potential suspect, five days ago, I’d moved the remaining larvae to one of the farther tanks, out of its reach. The next morning, the membrane had shifted on the wall, and the tank had sat empty.

I had wept loud, ugly sobs while Brees attempted to console me. I didn’t even shed tears: my body was too dehydrated to produce any. She’d carried me on her back to the great hall. Along with the other Creckels, they had moved the beyond used mattress that served as my bed to the center of the room, well out of reach of the membrane. I no longer doubted that it would kill us in our sleep to feed itself.

In desperation, I’d tried to eat some of the vegetables. It made me horribly sick for three days straight. Everything hurt, even my skin. With my severe dehydration, my muscles cramped almost non-stop.

The Creckels had gone into hibernation, every single one rolling up into a ball around me. They would die in that position in a few weeks for the youngest ones and maybe in a few months for the adults. I wished they would keep me company instead of spending my last few hours alone. But they were doing it to reduce their oxygen consumption in order to leave what little there was for me. Either way, I’d finally made my peace with the fact that my time was up.

My efforts to create a new membrane had failed. I was too blind to see what I was doing and too weak to think straight. I couldn’t bear wearing my optical aid for more than a few seconds before feeling like my brain was getting fried, or bleeding from my nose or my ears. I’d just wanted to feel the sun on my skin, to have soothed the dry pain in my throat with fresh, clean water, and to have gone to sleep on a full belly one last time.

The sizzling sound persisted. My hallucinations usually only lasted a couple of minutes before shifting to something else. This sound had been steady for a good fifteen minutes if not more. And now, a burnt smell was seeping into the room through the closed door—or was that another delusion?

No, this smell truly stings my nose.

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