Dark Dweller by Gareth Worthington

Author:Gareth Worthington [Worthington, Gareth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dropship Publishing
Published: 2023-02-27T23:00:00+00:00

Kara Psomas

My teeth sink into Kilkenny’s arm, squirting tangy liquid from his flesh into my mouth. The doctor yelps and leaps off my back, raising both hands over their head in surrender. I fold to the cold metal floor and crawl away; but even in low gravity, my limbs are pathetic, withered along with the rest of this dying body.

I haven’t made six feet before another set of hands are on me.

“It’s okay, I got you,” Dallas purrs like I’m some sort of child, fallen in the playground.

“Fuck you, Dallas.” I fight her off and crash into the fallen gurney, my rubbery legs barely allowing me to stand. “You don’t have me; you don’t have anything—I’ve appeased your damn ego long enough. She’s here, she’s come. We’re all going to die.”

The psychiatrist remains ever calm. She rights the gurney and tries to herd me back onto the shitty mattress as though I won’t notice. “Right, you said that. We’re all going to die one day.”

“I’m talking about … about all of us, you … dumb bitch!” It’s exhausting to speak in English now. To pull the words from my consciousness. My tongue clicks against the roof of my mouth, my lips purse and slap together to form a string of expletives that only my love, only Syke, would understand.

“She’s doing it again,” Dallas says to Kilkenny, who ignores her in favor of rubbing a disinfectant into the bite marks I left behind.

“All of humanity is screwed,” I shout in Dallas’s face. “Because they couldn’t take it! Their egos were … were astronomical—even bigger than yours!”

“Who?” she asks, her arms wide, preventing my escape.

“The Six. Haven’t you been listening?” I snap. Has Dallas understood anything? “They fucked everything. Such potential. Such gifts. But we are only toys. And jealous children fight over toys. That was the beginning of the end.”

“This Six fought over us?” Dallas says, penning me in so I have to sit on the gurney.

“Us doesn’t mean humanity,” I spit back as I fall to my ass on the uncomfortable mattress. “We are the youngest, the last. Many, more civilized and greater in purpose, have come and gone before us. Eros and Erebus created the first. The first sentience beyond just the need to procreate and ensure the survival of their biology.”

“Eros and Erebus, two that you considered male?” Dallas asks, her voice annoyingly calm.

“Does it matter?” I scream. The world around me dissolves and I slump to my back, head hanging off the edge of the bed.

“Kara, Kara?” Dallas says, her voice distant. “Kilkenny help me.”

The Irish doctor replies but the sound is so faint.

Flashes of light punctuate the gloom in my head then morph and bleed into one another until they form spheres; planets of red, blue, white, and even gold. The great worlds past, forged by Eros, Erebus.

“Kara,” an indistinct voice says. Or, at least, I think they do.

From the sea of stars between planets, two forms emerge. One a gladiator, stoic and proud, the nebula his armor, comets his weapons.

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