Green-Eyed Monster by J. D. Brink

Author:J. D. Brink [Brink, J. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fugitive Fiction

A strange fire had been stoked within Kobal. He stood in the radio room, preparing to venture back out into the labyrinth of the Eyeless vessel, and he suddenly felt too warm and restricted in the tight garrison uniform. A sweat had broken across his forehead and back, under his arms. Flames had ignited and grown within his belly. His skin itched. His teeth ached.

He stripped the binding flak armor off his body and impatiently tore away the wet sock layers from his feet, one by one. In twenty seconds, he was bare foot again and back down to just his tattered, grey neoprene bodysuit, the second skin generally worn beneath his Huntsman armor. The chest and shoulders of it were severely ripped, a jagged V revealing the hairy, heaving chest beneath. He raked his fingers through the shaggy beard that hung from his face. He licked at his canine teeth, which seemed to him longer than last he’d noticed.

The wolf within, the creature that Abanon had drawn from its eternal slumber, was stirring again. It knew its time was coming.

“Not yet,” he told himself—and the beast within him—as he picked up his weapons again and buckled on the belts and bandoliers. “Let the man finish his mission. Then the monster can have its revenge.”

The wolf’s unconscious memory guided him easily back toward the place of its birth. He therefore knew where the laboratory could be found. But now that the engine room’s fire had been squelched, the ship’s passageways were busier with robed cultists and half-machine servants returning to their usual duties.

And that suited Kobal just fine.

He heard a mumbled conversation around a corner and sped his pace to meet it, his bare feet pounding hard on the steel grid of flooring.

Two Eyeless One Ronin and a robed servant were caught unprepared; they were not expecting a half-naked savage to come bounding around the bend with a glowing vibro-blade ready to kill. Kobal beheaded the first Ronin with a vicious slash, then pinned the second to the bulkhead just above the sternum. He seized the thrall by the throat with his free hand and held him still, saving the least threatening target for last.

The Ronin did not put up a fight, however. Black blood pumped around the gently humming blade as the light faded behind that expressionless mask.

Kobal sniffed the frightened slave inside his hood. He recognized this man. He’d been a lesser officer of the Civil Defense Garrison, one who’d led the Huntsman party on a tour of the Tundra Station Headquarters. Of course, back then—just days ago—he’d had two eyes. Now the nervous traitor had a red scar across his dead left orb and the scent of warm urine piddling down his leg onto the cold, steel floor.

“You seek to be eyeless?” Kobal whispered. The nails on his hand were longer now, and slightly curled to a point. “Allow me to anoint you.”

Kobal gouged out the man’s other eye, then stifled his screams and his life before he could draw too much attention.

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