Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

“Oh my word,” she murmured. “You killed Fenris!”

She did not know how it could be, but seated before her were two of Taranis’ creations. As if to confirm the terrible truth, both monks raised their hands to their heads and carefully pulled back their hoods. Now they revealed the merciless mask-like grimaces etched upon their faces and the grey, lizard-like skin stretched tight across their skulls. Ravana did what anyone else would have done in the circumstances and shrieked.

“zz-uunbeeliieeveer-zz!” screeched Dhanus. “zz-buut-yyoouu-wiill-beeliieevee-zz!”

“zz-iin-yyoouur-heeaad-bee-iit-zz!” declared Simha.

Ravana screamed again and fell backwards off her chair, landing sprawled upon her hands and knees. She scrambled across the floor towards the door and was brought up short by two pairs of legs blocking her path. Lilith stood in the open doorway, wearing an expression that captured her bewilderment at the revelation of what lay beneath the monks’ hoods. Jizo, stood beside her, looked oddly unfazed.

“We, err… heard a scream,” stammered Lilith. “Is this a bad moment?”

“Yes!” cried Ravana. “Very bad! Get me out of here!”

“What scared you, little runt?” Jizo sneered.

“zz-thee-paatiieent-iis-noot-weell-zz,” rasped Simha, making Lilith jump. “zz-shee-haas-miisleed-yyoouu-aand-reefuuseed-treeaatmeent-zz.”

Jizo gave Ravana a disapproving stare. “Is that so?”

“They’re alien cyberclones!” cried Ravana. “Created by Taranis!”

“Taranis is dead,” Lilith declared. “You killed him.”

“What?!”

“zz-taakee-heer-aawaayy-zz!” Dhanus ordered. “zz-doo-noot-faaiill-uus-zz!”

Lilith nervously bobbed her head in reply. Her face betrayed her shock at seeing the monks unveiled. Jizo stood defiant, radiating a smug superior air. Lilith quickly recovered and with Jizo, grabbed Ravana’s arms and dragged her backwards through the door.

They did not stop until they reached her room at the end of the corridor. Lilith went to fetch the usual medication and the look in the nurse’s eye upon her return was enough to tell Ravana that this time there would be no pretending. Lilith pressed the tablets directly into the girl’s mouth and stood glaring until she was sure the medication had been swallowed.

Jizo grinned and pulled a wriggling rat from her pocket. Ravana yelped and retreated in horror as the nurse did a grotesque mime of a pterosaur attacking its victim.

“Lizard men,” Jizo declared, staring thoughtfully into the rat’s face. She pulled her flask from a pocket and took a swig. “I told you it was something to do with dinosaurs.”

As soon as the nurses had gone, Ravana rolled out of bed and rammed her finger down her throat, already feeling a lightness in her head as the tablets got to work. Moments later she was on her hands and knees, trying to vomit as quietly as possible and glaring at the metal box under her mattress with justified paranoia. When she felt she had thrown up what she could of the undigested tablets, she reached beneath the bed and yanked the electrical cables from the box in a shower of sparks. The flickering shapes in her mind abruptly resolved into clearly-defined symbols, created by her cranium implant as it reached out and connected with whatever remote circuits it could find. Her mind had been messed with in more ways than one. Exhausted, she slumped against the wall, sobbing quietly.

“Why me?” she moaned. Her headache was worse than ever. “What have I done?”

Lilith’s accusation reawakened the guilt Ravana had bottled up over the fate of Priest Taranis, the father of the Dhusarian Church. The shock of seeing two of Taranis’ creations sent her mind into turmoil and her memories flooded back. The priest and his alien-human cyberclones had been blasted into space, cast adrift when her friend Zotz tricked the Dandridge Cole ’s safety systems into jettisoning the engine room and the priest’s secret laboratory into the void, deep in the Barnard’s Star system. Ravana and her friends abandoned the hollow moon shortly afterwards, for Taranis’ meddling and the crash of the Platypus had left the tiny world with badly compromised life-support systems.

Taranis’ clones had threatened their lives and left Fenris dead. After the euphoria of their escape, Ravana had nevertheless been haunted by the thought that she had been wrong to encourage Zotz to do what he did. Prior to the incident, the priest had been presumed dead for years. An inquest into what happened that fateful day was shelved and quietly forgotten. If Lilith’s revelation was true, Ravana and her friends had got away with murder.

Ravana found a new home on Ascension, gained a place at Newbrum University and tried to get on with her life. Yet she was also a thief; she had taken Taranis’ Isa-Sastra , a book that ultimately led her to join a student archaeology expedition in the Tau Ceti system during the summer break. What was missing from her memory was how she had apparently ended back on Daode, a virtual prisoner of the Dhusarian Church, in the company of two of Taranis’ surviving disciples. It was a mystery she was more than willing to leave behind.

“It’s time this patient was discharged,” she murmured.

Her cranium implant had already identified the remote control for the lock on the door to her room. All children born in the Epsilon Eridani system were implanted at a young age by order of the governing Que Qiao Corporation; Taranis and his attempts to meddle with her destiny many years ago had left Ravana with an unregistered special-services device with far greater capabilities than was usual. As she listened for any sound of movement in the corridor beyond, she heard a murmur from the room next door and felt guilty for not remembering Artorius. Moving to the wall, she put an ear to the flaking paint and listened.

“Artorius?” she whispered. “Can you hear me?”

There was a rustle of sheets, a soft patter of feet and a faint thud as someone dropped to the floor on the other side of the wall.

“Ravana?”

“Yes, it’s me. Are you okay?”

“I want to go home,” the voice declared.

“Me too,” admitted Ravana. “I’m leaving tonight.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want to come with me?”

“Can I bring Nana and Stripy?”

“Who?” Ravana rolled her eyes in despair. “This is an escape, not a group outing!”

She heard a shuffling noise and guessed the boy had moved from the wall. She crept to the door and pressed the control, but as expected the mechanism remained locked. She considered the implant image that represented the lock, a plain red square centred upon a stylised key, then carefully gave it a mental prod. With a soft clunk, the symbol changed from red to green. Ravana tentatively reached for the control again. This time, the door opened.

“Piece of cake,” she murmured.

The darkened corridor beyond was empty. Ravana pressed the wall-mounted release button to unlock the room next to hers and pushed open the door. Artorius sat on the floor next to his bed, looking downcast. Seeing her enter, he smiled and gave a little wave.

Ravana offered the boy her hand. “Coming?”

Artorius nodded and took her hand without a word. Ravana quickly led him into the corridor and down towards the interview room, which now she thought about it was the limit of her geographic knowledge of the hospice. Her implant detected security cameras, but no alarms sounded and any red symbols quickly became green, just as when she broke into Que Qiao’s headquarters on Yuanshi to rescue her father. Upon reaching the door she sought, she was annoyed to find Artorius trying to pull her further along the corridor.