I Walk In The Shadows

Chapter 4: Emotion

She awoke again in the infirmary, but this time she was not alone, and she was dressed as well, full fatigues, under armor, and underwear, he sat in a chair next to her bed instead of just an operating table, she had a blanket over her, he was reading. “So girl, what’s your name?” Her right eye twitched as she sat up and stared at him, he looked over the top of the book at her. “What?” She still sat there twitching. “You cause me immense pain, rape me.. And then everything is fine? What kind of sick fuck are you?” The book lowered, his face straight, no show of emotion, his head tilted slightly to the right and he smirked. “The best kind, the kind that will do what must be done, to quench your worries, you can’t get pregnant, ever, I saw to that two days ago when I took care of your wounds, two, you can either keep waking up in this infirmary or in a large bed next to me, once again, your choice…” Both her eyes were twitching now. “Three, you obviously enjoyed that rape, I felt it, I heard it, so that form of ‘punishment’ is now out the window, only pain seems to get through that skull of yours, that collar you so fatefully discovered proved it.” Now she was visibly trembling, remembering what she had felt, her hands absently going to the smooth, soft, yet painful thing about her neck. “Four, I can understand your anger, your loss..” Her body tensed. “Fuck you, you bastard, how can you feel my pain, my loss?!?!” His eyes became sad, she had hurt him, for once she had. “I can because I have experienced loss, loss on a scale you can’t imagine, ask yourself, why is there only one person in a Military Bunker of this size, when you wander you will see quarters, supplies, recreation areas, placement for nearly a thousand, and yet there is me, and now there is you…” He got up, adjusted the feed on her I.V. and then proceeded to leave the room as she began to drift off again. “Rest, you will need it for what I intend to put you through…” She smiled softly, victory, he came out. “My name is Kyra..” She was out then, he turned back and a slight curve to his lip would have been seen, he left and would begin to prepare what was needed.

She awoke again, and again he was sitting there, but this time he had just finished injecting something into her I.V. “What are you..” “I’m putting vitamins and stimulants into your system, forcing them, you’ll move onto solids once we start training harder, for now it’s acquaintance with your facilities and equipment.” They sat in silence for a while, she could feel energy returning to her, he removed the I.V. needle, sprayed something that felt kind of good over the wound, and helped her get up, she leaned on him and buried her face in his chest and… wept, never had anyone treated her so well, he held her, rubbing her back and shushing her, telling her it would be ok. He was not the compassionate type, but knew this was what she wanted, “You done yet, are you going to be fine?” She looked up at him, her eyes reddened, she nodded. “Good, now let’s get going.” With that he led her out of the infirmary and to the left, her right hand never leaving his left, they stopped at the T, “To your right we have every imaginable living space, dining facilities, recreation, food stores, clothing stores, enough to house Twelve Hundred and Fifty, a Battalion of Soldiers, but we’ll get to that later…” He led her to the left, explaining as he went, stopping all together when her head spun from information overload, cradling her until she was ready to move on. “This facility was designed for the worst, set up as a stronghold and manufacturing facility for current and future weapons of the time, its entrance is in the side of a granite face, it sits Fifty meters below the surface of the plateau above us, along with that entrance there are two other Hangar entrances, one for ground based deployment, the other for air power…” Her eyes shot open, “Air power?” He continued on, “Yes, planes, helos, all form of craft that can fly, anyway, those are all connected to shafts and elevators of all sizes used to carry you from the surface down a hundred and fifty meters to the Hangers themselves, our mass storage of munitions bays, armor, and other tech is stored alongside these bays or in this hallway here…” He motioned to the doors and large windowed bays covering the sides of the hallways, through the windows she saw all sizes and kinds of armor, weapons, munitions, accessories for said supplies, most of it she did not recognize at all, far too advanced for her at this time, and then they reached the end of the hallway and a large opening, a space thirty meters wide and a hundred long, all along each side were large blast doors, each fifteen meters wide , again looking like they disappeared into the ceiling, they stood a good ten meters tall. “This, is the complex of elevators that will take you to those Hangers, they’re another hundred and fifty meters above us, I really have no idea when they started building this place, but it’s huge and they spared no expense, it can take multiple direct nuclear strikes as far as I can tell, even the blast doors won’t give from a direct hit with a yield of twenty five megas, the doors on the right end up centrally in the ground bay, the left the same in the air, the far end, the last door in the middle takes you to a central command hub.” He stopped, her head was spinning, she dropped to the ground and he caught and dropped with her, they stayed like that for a long while, her eyes closed and breathing heavy, she was shaking profusely, and he just held her close.

They sat like that, him supporting her, for nearly thirty minutes, even after she stopped shaking, and then she talked, about not knowing her parents, how the only life she knew or even remembered was the Brotherhood, for the past fourteen years of her life, and so they had been the only family she knew, but caring they were not. So all this information plus the new emotions she felt for someone who had been her captor, just felt, so… weird… And he listened, and nodded his head, and comforted her. They rose as one and proceeded to the central elevator, the large door opening slowly, grinding as it went, then on and it closing so slowly again, the tension building for her, and it rose, quickly. The ceiling opened at the top and the platform slid to a stop in the middle of a room filled with communications and control panels for any number of things, and then she realized the windows, to her front and to her rear, speechless. “This” He motioned with his hands “is our command and control center, what few sats are still floating around up there..” Her head cocked sideways “What’s a ‘Sat’?” He blinked at her, as if what he spoke was common knowledge “You know, a Satellite, something that orbits a planet, except these ones were made by man, many of them have since degraded or fallen from the sky, only a few Military birds are up there, but they work, they give us imagery, geolocations, a massive advantage over anyone still out there, there’s even a few Atlas’ floating around up there…” Once again her head was spinning, he saw this, and waited for her response “Fucking…. English…. Please….” He laughed and decided to explain anything that could be foreign “OK, imagery should make since, you know, pictures of something found on the earth, only this is real time and can let you see anything on the planet below the sat, then a geo, that would be the sat telling you where you are without you having to know where you are, and the Atlas’, those are a real piece of work…” She still looked confused “Wait, slow the fuck down, just… what do you mean by where I am without knowing where… fuck… this is…” He held her then, tightly, and just rested his head on top of hers “It’s OK to not understand this right now Kyra, I just want it in your head so when we go over It later, you’ll have some idea” He lifted his head and looked down, she up “But why me? Why so much trust for me? You killed them all in seconds… about to kill me… but you didn’t…” Her eyes begged him, pleaded, that silver shining into his crimson, he sighed “Let me tell you a story…”

He was sitting against a console, and her curled up into him “When I was Twelve I had known nothing in my life but War, fighting was all I could do, and I was good at it, top of my class in the lower parts of this Bunker, I could face men ten years my Elder and beat them in hand to hand, armed, armored, any form of combat, I was unbeatable, the Elders said I was the best they had seen since my Grandfather. I had been breed not through love, but necessity, a need to make the perfect Warrior, genes had been spliced to make me. At Fifteen I underwent what everyone went through in here, augmentation, one implant after another went into me, which is why” He softly touched her right hand and held it “This broke so easily when you hit me, and you went for the kill too. Anyway, because I was the best, the strongest, it was determined I could receive the Fifth Tier in implants, only Eleven others in our units History had received them, two of them crippled by it, three of them died, but I lived. At Twenty I was adjusting to my new found strength, speed, if I was unbeatable before, I was a God now, they wanted me in Command of a Fire Team, I said no, so I became a one man show, a Scout. The Armor you saw was mine and mine alone, it is faster than most, more advanced in equipment usage, but not nearly as sturdy or powerful as the Warrior suits, this Armor was forged for me on my Twenty First. At Thirty I was once again the top of my field, we had scouted most of the wastes and knew of you’re…” It came out with so much hatred, it wasn’t intended, just used naturally “Brotherhood” He gripped her hand tightly and then released, not wanting to cause unnecessary pain to her “Out of curiosity, was there a rapid influx of light armors and laser tech about Five to Six years ago?” She nodded “Yes, the Elders said it came from a newly found Bunker, why?” He laughed “Figures, well, some brought forth the idea of meeting this Technology clad Group, the Elders opposed it, but who were They to Them? So up went all of Them, but not clad in our Tech, just light armor, laser weaponry, rad gear, and the trek began, all that was left here was Me, the one who sided with the elders out of the Thousand Plus that went, and so they had me follow in My Tech, and when the ‘Brotherhood’ found a large group of lightly armored Soldiers with extra Tech on them, they…” He stifled back something that was obviously Alien to his being, her left hand came up to hold him, to re-assure him “Cut them down, my Brothers, my Sisters, all of them, because they weren’t Equals, they were the Enemy, a large group of them, and they were Blasphemers with their Lasers but no other show of Tech…” A tear trickled down and dropped onto her face “A month ago I became truly alone when the last of the Elders died of old age and a loss of Heart, unable to bear the fact that his people had died because he was not a General, but a lowly Elder…” He lost it there, his body first shaking as he held her tightly, then openly sobbing, it went on for a while, she had no concept of time down here, she comforted him as she could to the best of her ability.

“And so a few days ago I got to see my Enemy again, and I relished, took pleasure in their quick and gruesome deaths, and then you hid, you made an emotionless kill into a Hunt, and then instead of sitting there dumb and full of holes your instinct took over, that saved you in more ways than you could of known…” He went from holding to hugging her, she felt a warmth that she could not describe “You thought on your feet, and then your only thought was to kill, to strike on even ground, with your fists, that takes courage beyond measure, and intelligence, you were only outclassed by training and technology, something I can and will give you, because I have met someone who can be it…” He paused, she thought for a second “What can I be, Ravenous?” He smiled down at her, but it was not innocent, happy, proud, it was knowing, it spoke of talent but untold trickery, of unknown knowledge that she would soon know “Well, my love, my Equal, of course…”