Kyle West - Darkness

And with Elias’s apparent connection with Askala — was it possible that he was my counterpart?

I decided to find out once and for all.

“Elias — have you ever been in a Blight before?”

Elias frowned, and appeared puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“A Blight,” I said. “Maybe you have never heard them called that name before, but they are outside. They are areas of land that have been taken over by xenofungus. Sometimes, the virus that creates this fungus can infect people and morph them into something else entirely. Sometimes its violent, but other times, the virus can make someone possess abilities they didn’t have before. Like communicating with the Voice.”

As the women watched, Elias frowned in thought. After a while, he turned, motioning me forward.

“We can speak of this in my office.”

It was the last place I wanted to go, but at least I had touched on something. If Elias had been in a Blight, it could explain why he had the ability to prophesy. Askala could have infected him with the virus, directly or indirectly. It would explain why he believed such crazy things — not that people had to be infected with the xenovirus to believe crazy things. But it would explain how he knew about Askala. If all that were true, it didn’t bode well for my future. As long as I could keep Elias talking, though, I might be able to buy enough time to find a solution.

Again, I looked at the woman who was alone in the corner. I was sure of it now, by her eyes. The eyes of the others were dull, hollow. Hers…

…still had a soul.

I wondered: could all of these women also be infected with the xenovirus? Howlers were easy to spot by their completely white eyes, but these people seemed to be something in between.

I felt the woman was trying to say something. I wanted to know what, but that would have to come later.

If there was a later.

Connected to the commons was a door leading to a small office. Elias walked inside, flipping on the lights. I followed him inside, sick to my stomach. A pale bulb hung over a cluttered, dusty desk. The walls were covered with grime. The sickly smell of sweat hung in the stuffy air.

Elias turned, regarding me as he sat in a simple wooden chair. The computer that had been in this office was long gone. Wires spilled from a hole in the wall like a mass of tentacles. The copper of the wiring glinted in the light.

I turned my attention back to Elias, who weighed me with intense brown eyes. He steepled his fingers. He wore a coy smile, revealing several yellowed teeth.

“Are you afraid, Alex? Do not lie to me; I can tell.”

The door to the room was still open, allowing me to hear the women whispering.

“No.”

“Yes, you are. I can see it in your eyes.”

Elias’s voice was silken, yet deadly.

“I have no idea what will happen,” I said. “But I’m not afraid.”

Elias waited for me to continue. When I didn’t, he gestured. “Go on.”

“I am afraid of what might happen to my friends.”

“You do not want to fail them. Do you?”

I said nothing. I felt as if this were already over. Elias held all of the cards and none of us were leaving this place. We were all dead. It was the not knowing how we were to die that was the most horrible part.

“Why did you kill all of the men?” I asked.

“We men, Alex — we are darkness.” Elias shuddered upon saying this. “Men do not obey the call of the Voice, so it is men that must be killed. Only I answered the call — along with the women you see here today. Some were just children when the Uprising started. And not even all women obey the call. I cannot say why this is — perhaps some genetic difference between the sexes is the root cause. Maybe the Voice herself does not like men.”

“Why would the Voice choose you?”

Elias shook his head. “I cannot answer that. Perhaps she saw a means to use me, to further her ends — to hasten the Ascension. I cannot dare to know her purpose outside what she reveals to me. All I have to go on is the Prophecy of the Five, which ushers in the Ascent.”

Elias’s mentioning of the prophecy reminded me that Elias had only captured five of us. I only wondered who escaped his net — and what they were doing to rescue the rest of us.

“When does the Voice speak to you?” I asked.

“At night, when I dream. It’s not even that I understand the words. I never do. I only understand — the intent. It first happened when I was sixteen, the night after my first recon.”

“It came as a result of going outside,” I said.

“Yes,” Elias said. “We left by the bottom entrance at the base of the mountain. You cannot go out that way anymore; it was collapsed during the Realization. Nonetheless, my team and I were visiting neighbor Bunker 83, about fifty miles to the east. They needed extra men for a mission they were going to undertake. A mission to Ragnarok Crater itself.”

I started. “Wait. You went to Ragnarok Crater?”

Perhaps he was infected with… something. This would have been fifteen years ago — Bunker 84 fell in 2045. Only I didn’t know if the xenovirus would have been evolved enough by 2045 to infect Elias and make him a pawn of Askala. I guessed it was possible. Bunker One fell in 2048, three years after that, to a swarm of mutated animals and crawlers. Maybe the xenovirus was starting to become more advanced by 2045, at least in the immediate area surrounding the Crater. It had taken it a while to spread to the Mojave.

“Did anything strange happen while you were at the Crater?” I asked.

“It was a sight,” Elias said. “I don’t think the Bunker authorities planned on me going. But I sort of got caught up in it.” He smiled. “I still remember the airplane ride there, watching the clouds sail by as we got there in mere hours. We landed vertically near the rim, and the scientists we were guarding took samples. We returned not thirty minutes later.”

“Nothing happened besides that?”

Elias shrugged. “Not that I could see. But…I just remember it being so beautiful, Alex. So majestic. An entire field of fungus, red and pink and every color imaginable. I’d never seen anything like it, a boy who had grown in a cold gray world of metal. It was as if the very ground were afire. I felt something awaken in me at just the sight. I wanted to go down into the Crater itself, but I was forced back onto the plane. I remember feeling an emptiness, leaving that place behind. A sadness I could not explain.”

I grew quiet at Elias’s story. A lot of what he’d said reminded me of my own vision given by the Wanderer, when the sleeping spores were released by the Xenolith. There, everything had made sense, and I felt a sense of connection with the Elekai. Maybe the same thing had happened for Elias only with the Radaskim. I thought of how easily our positions could have been reversed. Elias was just a tool of Askala — could he fight against her will even if wanted to? Could I fight against the Wanderer, even if I wanted to? I had agreed to help fight Askala. The Wanderer had given me that choice, at least.

Something told me that Elias hadn’t had that choice. It was in the nature of the Radaskim to conquer. To control.

“I began having the dreams the night I returned,” Elias said. “Dreams about the Crater. Dreams about a Voice, speaking to me…”

Elias paused. I waited for him to continue. But he didn’t. It was as if something… stopped him from going on.

“I will say this much,” Elias said. “The Voice is the reason for all of this. The Community. The Realization. And it will be the reason for the Ascension.”