The Medusa Complication
No scientist could ever be certain of what happens in the mind of a vampire. Or as Adair called them, soldiers of the night. Across time and space every study conducted were inconclusive or provided no answers whatsoever. As a result, it was impossible to tell whether or not vampires dreamed, not unless they told you. The answers aren’t even known to the dreamers themselves, they are unaware that the problems they face in their daily afterlife are answered in their hibernation state. Their hibernation creates a chance to produce answers they would not normally think of while awake.
Damascus, the six and a half foot tall Greek solider of the night was the original vampire in existence, his creator Adair is an Atlantean, but she is also a brilliant alchemist. Her decision to create Damascus did not come to her lightly. Within the halls of the stolen dimensional space craft Damascus slept. After searching for thousands of years he finally found her. While the former fisherman slept he dreamt of Adair.
The society of Atlantis was both a free society and a structured society. Everyone did as they pleased. There were no rules and no laws except for one: to do no harm to other intelligent creatures; especially humans. Adair’s decision to create Damascus was in direct violation of this rule. After Adair was found out, she was taken and locked away, for it was a crime to distort and disfigure a human so gravely. To create a human that lives of the blood of other humans with an inability to walk in the sunlight were two of the most major offenses.
Adair felt her reasoning were sound and just. An Atlantean group known as the Bilal had grown significantly. The other Atlanteans did nothing until they received word of the Bilal’s plot to rid the universe of anyone who opposed them. Another group known as The Law One a direct reference to the do no harm law was created.
As an admirer of the human race Adair refused to sit by and watch the human race fall into destruction. She knew the rumors as well as anyone else did. One Bilal member thought it would be humorous to trick a man into killing his son under the guise as a divine being. The most popular form of mutilation was by mutating the human genes. Snow creatures that were once human now lived in isolation. Men who were plagued with incurable diseases were also the work of the Bilal, purely for their own amusement. Damascus knew of all of this because after Adair’s capture he clung to the shadows and lived in secret. Only one other knew of his existence. But Adair was adamant, that Rollett a fellow Atlantean was not the one who turned her into the newly formed authorities.
Damascus dreamt of the fall and following disappearance of Atlantis. The fight lasted for an indeterminable amount of time. Some Atlanteans had the power to manipulate time and make its existence immaterial. A fight that lasted five human years could have been finished in five minutes. As a half human and half eternal Damascus could see both sides. To this day with all his tens of thousands of years of experience he could not put the devastation into words.
The fighting wasn’t anything Damascus cared about. The mental component of the alchemy used to create him bonded him to Adair. He dreamt about how he snuck into her prison to free her. He looked onto her sleeping form in the enclosed glass like cell that was filled with water. For a moment she reminded him of a fish. Her translucent Atlantean wings glowed with the colors of the rainbow through the water. Damascus gritted his teeth as he mustered the courage to rescue her; he was still new to his afterlife and did not fully understand all of his potential. As he started to walk out from the darkness of the corner of the dark yet large room the doors opened.
Still dreaming Damascus remembered why he couldn’t rescue Adair; a memory that he buried for years. He recalled that the room wasn’t just a prison but a large computer room. Mainframes lined the walls with large screens and large keyboard consoles in front of them. The depictions of Atlantis today are incorrect to say the least, they were a technologically advanced society, but to a man whose house was made out of clay the sight before him was overwhelming and magical.
Back on the ship Adair stood over Damascus’ sleeping body and wondered what he was dreaming about. ‘This shouldn’t be too difficult,’ she thought. Adair crossed her arms while she was wearing one of the dimensional agents’ jackets. She figured it was probably Lo’s since they were similar in size.
Adair tried to see into his dream by holding her hands slightly over his head, but was met with a mental brick wall. As she tried to penetrate the wall Adair was bombarded with images of Damascus’ past. Images of people he’s saved and killed as well as the dimensions he’s crossed to find her.
“Ouch!” A force knocked Adair nearly off of her feet. Once she regained her composure she wondered if she should try again. She twirled the hair from her ponytail around her finger and left Damascus’ room without another sound.
In his dream Damascus stood frozen as he watched six Atlanteans walk calmly into the large room while the fighting continued outside. Rollett stood dressed in a suit from a time Damascus did not know, in front of the six men and women. The dark haired Atlantean Rollett looked worn and tired.
Rollett brandished a gold weapon that looked like a gun to Damascus, “Are you sure about this?” Rollett asked, his voice nearly breaking.
The six answered in unison, “Yes.”
One of the men standing across from Rollett shook his head, “We were supposed to have more time. But this was our project, and we’ll see it through.”
Rollett laughed ruefully to himself, it was almost a snort, “Yeah, well. Time’s up. I won’t ask again.”
The six were all dressed in different garments some were bright and shimmering while others were mundane and dull stood around a large glowing sphere. The placed their hands on the pulsating globe and closed their eyes. All of the electronic devices in the room beeped wildly, lit up in a frenzy and died. The only light emanated from Adair’s prison. It wasn’t until this moment that Damascus was able to sort out what he witnessed. In that moment the memory of Atlantis’ most sophisticated computers were transferred into the minds of six individuals. The brain matter of the six fused with their bones in skull and crystallized. In layman’s terms each of those skulls were transformed into memory drives.
Each of the bodies fell to the ground motionless. Damascus was sure Rollett was holding a gun, as he aimed it and pulled the trigger. Damascus expected to see a discharge from the weapon, but none came, only a booming thunderous sound. Each body evaporated into a golden gust leaving behind six shiny skulls.
Two other individuals made their way through the darkness, “Is it finished?” One asked.
“Yes, we’ll each take two, before they…” a large bang sounded through the air, “find us.” Rollett said defeated.
“Looks like you spoke too late, my friend,” the woman with large curly hair announced.
The man beside her commented as he collected his two skulls, “They’re saying that they’re weaponized the alchemy, they’re using them against us now.”
A portal opened in the middle of the large room with Bilal soldiers pouring through it, Rollett and the two others turned to escape, but the woman pushed them both from out of the way, she opened her hand and her wings grew from her back as she opened a portal before them to escape. As she marched towards her opening escape route, another portal opened in front of hers with one individual walking from it. A tall slender woman emerged wearing a red sun dress and a large hat. She removed the white cat eye sunglasses before she spoke.
“A fight, how yummy; but as much as I hate to break this up I have an announcement to make!” Everyone stopped in their tracks to listen to the individual, she wore a permanent smirk that bothered Damascus, “If the scientists are correct Atlantis is drifting into another dimension, we are unable to track where it’s moving to, if we plan to live, we have to get out of here before it’s too late.”
One of the soldiers shouted, “Elva, What are we going to do?!”
The Atlantean woman named Elva rolled her ey
es, “Get the hell out of here!”
In a matter of moments Damascus was even more outnumbered than before when more Bilal arrived, he knew he had no chance of rescuing Adair, but he still wanted to try. The moment before Damascus tried to make his move Adair ordered him to stand down. It wasn’t anything he could hear, but an emotion washed over him and he knew that it wasn’t something that Adair wanted him to do. Even though Damascus left feeling like a coward he felt a sense of satisfaction to leave behind the man who turned her in. The science that created Damascus is called alchemy. Alchemy is a mixture of the physical world with a mental connection. Adair created Damascus their bond is unbreakable.
Under the cover of darkness, Damascus escaped in his modest yet sturdy boat he could only hear the sounds of the water hitting the boat, he paddled out far enough and turned to look at the large island of Atlantis; the island that took up a great portion of the Atlantic Ocean. Lights and spaceships glowed, while portals opened and closed. Damascus watched with his eyes wide, the events seemed to have slowed down before he heard a large crash, he blinked and everything was gone. A sense of loneliness and abandonment surged through him, he looked and looked through the evening sky, but no matter