she knew what she was getting into when she volunteered.
- How long will she be aware of the task before she joins them?
- Long enough to save him, after that it matters not.
---
The silence was absolute. Not a sound could be heard while we approached the ledge on the wall. Same mild light shone around the enormous cave under us, whose ceiling was covered with stalactites. I looked a bit closer and noticed it weren’t real cave ornaments but rather copies made from the same material as the corridors were. Someone seriously took his effort to make this cave as close to real thing as can be.
- Be quiet now. They don’t speak, but there’s nothing wrong with their hearing and sensing sudden moves. We must be extremely cautious.
- Do you think we’re in danger?
-Me not so much, they’ll recognize me, but you definitely are.
She bent a little and started walking in front of me down the easy slope. I did the same while watching the curves of her body flex with the movement. Light must have played with my mind because at one point I almost saw her skin ripple under her clothes as if made of liquid.
The descent seemed to last forever, but it was actually circling around the central plate of the cave. On the bottom, we could see a small forest of strangely shaped low trees and almost nothing else. I could notice not even the slightest move, not a single animal, grass or moss. Only those trees were growing on a barren floor.
- What are these trees growing without soil?
- Those are not trees.
- What is it then?
And then I realized. It was them. They stood immobile, absorbing light from their surroundings. They stood almost monolith in structure, with just a single branch stretching to the next one, seamlessly merging with the neighboring body. The best analogy would be a network of neurons in the open as if I was watching a tiny part of the brain under the microscope. This “forest” of bodies formed almost a perfect circle around the only building in the cave as if standing guard.
- Let’s go to that building.
- Let us go. I hope you’ll find out what you are looking for.
- That’s my hope too, so far we had no problem.
- Sadly, it will not remain so. Sooner or later they are bound to notice us, and then we can only count on our speed.
I turned my look on her face and noticed large beads of sweat popping along hear temples. She seemed to suffer from some internal struggle.
- What’s up with you?
- Have no concern. Their presence influences me, but I’ll be fine.
It didn’t seem to me so, but I let it go. When she feels like it, she’ll tell me.
---
We walked through the rows and rows of motionless figures for almost an hour. That ripple of her skin and beads of sweat became obvious. There was no dilemma something strange was happening to her but I dared not to speak and wake these sleeping figures up. Picture of that screaming horror from the Archives was carved in my mind; I could only imagine what was hidden here. Especially without the protection of thick plastic chamber. At that point, we suddenly emerged to the clearing in front of the building entrance and I had a moment to see its structure better.
It appeared as if it was grown out of the floor, the only opening was straight in front of us, and it was dark inside. We entered cautiously and moved toward the center.
- Is there any light – I whispered – how can we see the way?
- Wait a moment – she answered, and tiny light appeared in front of us, constantly strengthening – the light depends on the presence, and we are alone here.
The way opened in front of us, with a low ceiling and slowly narrowing walls. Far ahead I could see a much brighter light and we automatically started towards it.
- What’s that over there? It looks like an egg, but quite large.
There was no answer to my question so I turned to look on her. She was standing quietly and looking straight into my eyes, only there was no recognition on her face. Her clothes tore under the pressure of the bubbling and piercing flesh. Her body sprouted new and grotesque limbs, almost tentacles, and her mouth, nose and ears completely melted with the rest of her face. The only thing standing in front of me was a figure resembling an anemone with two green eyes without pupils. The transformation was relatively brief but horrible in its unstoppability. One of the new limbs moved towards me in a gesture of an outstretched hand, and I ran scared towards the center of the room.
Few steps from the center I tripped on the roots of some plant and fell head first over that egg we saw earlier, pressing both my hands on its surface. It broke like a soap bubble, opening to show something resembling a very small man, not larger than a newborn infant, yet noticeably grown up. It just lay there, connected with branches to those roots I tripped over.
There was a movement behind me, and I could see my altered escort approaching, her multiple arms surrounded me and carried me towards the exit as if I was not heavier than a feather.
---
There’s no telling how long this escape took. I played a passenger during the whole time, no more than a parcel, but I can remember the fierce battle for me. She carried me like a baby in her arms, and her peers tried all means they had to stop her in the attempt to carry me to the cave exit. What I was able to see as if dreaming, was the unusual fact that all attacks were directed and coordinated to avoid even the least possibility of touching my body – every strike and each withdrawal were aimed solely to my companion.
For as long as it lasted, they were harming her. Whole chunks of tissue were falling off her body and sizzled to nothing as soon as separated from the main figure, but she kept advancing while holding me firmly in her embrace. In front of the slope, I could feel her slowing and losing her strength. In her eyes, the only thing remaining of her former body, I could see the pain and immeasurable sadness, but she didn’t give up. In the ultimate strain, while the limbs of her attackers protruded her body, arms that held me blossomed with thorns that pierced my muscles. She threw my far beyond the reach of the chasers and disappeared in the mass of their bodies. For the moment, I felt weak, but the wounds her thorns gave me soon healed and I managed to escape from that hell.
---
- You say that you remembered everything from your past?
- That’s right, influenced by the trauma, a partially with information transfer from my companion, all the dices finally came to the place.
- And? What can you tell us? I hope the news is good.
- When I took part in the creation of the symbiont my primary goal was the progress of humanity. The army used my findings to develop just the opposite to my research because they rightly understood the pacifistic nature of my product. They perverted all the positive procedures and created extremely aggressive and offensive organism.
- But they are not aggressive, I don’t understand.
- Huh, the thing is that the military product was totally destroyed in the Code Black procedure without a trace. What happened to you is the result of incomplete notes that depicted an early version of the symbiont. It had all the positive effects as the version in me does, but also had the negative ones I managed to avoid later. Focusing on sexual hormones produced symbiont polarization, and that caused a consequentially different effect on males and females – created passive male objects and active and aggressive females, just as it is normal in nature. In most species females are more aggressive, we are not different. The fact our culture changed those roles couldn’t fool the nature.
- So, what now? How do we solve our problem?
- Simply, you will separate my symbiont from the blood I’ll give you and administer it to any newborn child as a vaccine. That will completely stop the changes and even up the humanity in the next couple of generations.
- Great! Thank you for everything, you are a true hero of our race!
<
br />
---
I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to, tell him the whole truth. At the moment her thorns clawed my flesh, she gave me a second part of the complete information. Nonverbal, a true package of information contained in the very genetic code of the symbiont. Version inside me wasn’t final; it was just one step behind it. You see, I wasn’t working on the advancement of the current status of humanity. I was working on the next evolutionary step towards the stars. Towards humanity’s liberation from the circle of birth and death. I’m not truly a liberator of humanity, I’m its last example. When she transferred the information she released the last part of the genes leading to the creation of a new man, immortal, ideal, resilient to all attacks.
How do I know that? Simply. It is growing in the amniotic sack on my back.
###
About the author:
Radoslav B. Chugaly (a good query at google or any other net browser) - brick mason, carpenter, tile layer, concrete worker, poet, writer, performance artist, Dudeist, graduated as Bachelor with honors in economics. He is currently working as an accountant at public elementary school in Serbia. These are dry facts.
Thank you for reading my prose, I love you all. If you enjoyed it, won’t you please take a moment to leave me a review at your favorite retailer?
Discover other titles by Radoslav B Chugaly
The Book of Answers
Two Tales Without a Head
Artist: https://chugaly.weebly.com
Writer: https://chugaly.simplesite.com
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