Sarah7

Ch31

Sarah fought. As the darkness enclosed her she swung Orna wildly. She connected with something that crunched under her attack. Then there was a needle prick on her neck, and awareness left her like a rising mist off an ancient forest.

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Images came and went in her minds eye. Playing on the beach as a little girl - Sarah. Looking up to see the first Vixen ships raining destruction down on the neariest major city, while the same thing was happening all over the world. The terrified looks on her parents faces as they raced to their car and the nightmare drive back to their home.

Faces came and went. Amil, Creed, the little girl she’d rescued in the cave, Sarah 5 with her wild eyes.

Suddenly she was standing in a hospital room. Doctors were swarming over a body that was covered in blood. Sarah felt strangely detached from what she was seeing and hearing. No one noticed her as she came up to the hospital bed. She looked down on the bloodied face and saw it was her own, only as she might be if she was 13. The girl’s eyes opened and turned toward Sarah 7. She seemed oblivious to the frantic doctors as they fixed a strange device on her head.

‘An engram encoder’ the words came to Sarah’s thoughts.

The little girl looked into her eyes.

“They tell me that I can save the world. But that I will have to die to do it. They said, someday there might be another me that they will make better. Someone who will fight the monsters. Is that - is that you?” The little girl spoke in a thick Scottish accent, but Sarah could understand her perfectly.

From somewhere - despite the detachment - tears flowed from Sarah 7′s eyes. She stepped forward and reached out to the little girl’s bloodied hand.

“Yes, Sarah. You are with me.” she pointed to her heart and head “here, and here.”

The little girl smiled.

“And we are going to fight the monsters.” Sarah 7 said.

The little girl closed her eyes, peaceful at last. The scene faded.

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Constriction, pain, and that horrible tar smell overwhelmed her.

She cried out and tried to move her arms. She discovered she was still holding Orna, but that she was encased in a tight hard cocoon. Anger flared within her and the darkness was shoved away by all the lights on Orna’s surface blaring to almost sunlight brightness in an instant. Sarah pulled her arm toward her and the sword cut through the cocoon as if it were paper, but left her own bodysuit and skin intact.

“Creed! Captain Danner! Max!” she cried out.

The intense light faded to an amount that allowed her to see all around her. There were cocoons attached to the floor and walls. There were people in them! She walked unsteadily from person to person before crying out once again. She had found Creed. And next to him was Captain Danner. They were both unconscious.

Frantically, she tore at their cocoons before taking a breath and swiping Orna across - cutting the hard shells away easily.

“Sarah, the time is coming soon. Our destiny is upon us.” it was Orna. Sarah felt her face and ears, but she had no earpiece. Orna was speaking to her directly in her mind.

“How? How are you doing that?” Sarah asked as she glanced nervously around the enclosure.

The walls were uneven and smoothly merged with the floor. It was as if she were in some kind of giant cave. She held Orna high in the air and saw cocoons as far as the light would reach. The room was immense, but there were no Vixen around. She could hear a low hum all around her - it was oddly dissonant.

“There are a great many things you don’t know about me Sarah. I am sorry that we have had so little time to get to know each other. I realize now that you are not the Sarah that left me alone. You are the one I have been seeking for a very long time.” Orna sighed.

“Look, I really don’t understand any of this. But what I do know is that my friends are here, and they are in trouble. Is there anything you can do to help?” Sarah demanded.

“They are under the thrall of the Vixen. I was able to free you because of our contact, but I cannot help them. There is only one way you can release them. You have to face the Queen. And it seems she is not far away.”

Sarah stopped and placed the sword in front of her.

“The Queen? How do you know this? No one has ever talked about the Vixen having a Queen.”

“She came to visit me once, Sarah. A long time ago. When I was alone. She tried to take me. To use me. But I did not allow her.” Orna sounded determined.

Sarah shivered. There was a Queen Vixen? Her thoughts went back to the time when she had awakened in the village. She remembered the odd painting. Didn’t Captain Danner mention something about a Queen? She shook her head. It was hard to breathe in the dark and musty chamber. Hard to think. The Vixen smell was an almost physical presence.

She looked over the rest of the cocoons - even the ones along the walls and her heart fell. There was no sign of Amil.

She found herself wishing Max were here. But the memory of what he had done, of his betrayal steeled her resolve.

She took a deep breath, held it, then breathed out slowly.

“Which way?” She almost whispered.

“I will guide you, Sarah. Our Destiny is upon us.” Orna answered in her mind.

----

The brittle ground crunched under Sarah’s steps, sending odd echoes down the dimly lit corridor. Orna would brighten or darken as Sarah made her way towards... something. She tried not to think about it, but dread was a dry grey taste in her mouth, and the air was doing it’s best to give her a searing headache.

A noise caught her attention and her senses grew heightened. The hallway seemed to brighten as she became aware of every detail and surface. The pungent smell grew sharper, but she found that she could selectively ignore it’s effects, and she began to sense other things - undercurrents of sounds travelling up through her feet.

Orna spoke, but Sarah already knew what the sword was going to say. “They are coming. There are many, Sarah. Take heart. This is what you were born to do. What you were born to be.”

The humming sound grew sharply intense, and the air was filled with clicking and scraping of chitinous claws scrabbling frantically toward her. Sarah bit her lip and ran forward, holding Orna high over her head. The sword began to glow like a small star and reflected off the shiny insect like Vixen warriors as they drove headlong toward her.

Her thoughts and fears shrank to a sharp point. A point that fixed itself to the end of her blade. She began to swing Orna as the first Vixen connected with her and she cleaved it in two in a shower of shell and ichor. Another came, and another. There was nothing now for Sarah except claw and shell. Eye and fang.

Sarah began a deadly dance of killing or be killed. The Vixen were relentless. Their screams shook the very air as Sarah waded into the swarm. Orna hummed under her grasp. There was no shock of impact as Sarah had thought, and as had happened before with Max. Sarah could have been swinging a staff in a field of tall grass for all the resistance she felt. Angry hard shells exploded before her onslaught. As vicious as the Vixen became, Sarah grew harder, sharper. She was no longer a scared girl trying to learn how to live another day, she was a weapon. She was death to these creatures who had taken everything she had ever cared about. And she was not going to let them win.

Sharp pieces of shell would cut her in the exposed parts of her bodysuit - around her neck and wrists. Blood flowed freely and mixed with the dark green ooze that served as the Vixen’s lifeblood. Sarah could feel the training, memories, and her own self merge into one with Orna. They were no longer disparate parts seeking a whole. They were ONE.

And then - it was over. Sarah swung Orna and met only air. She was surrounded by shattered bodies of Vixen of every type. Warriors, Scouts, smaller ones with many eyes and horrendous teeth, and others that only served as fodder for her sword.

She was panting - gasping for breath. All around her was stillness - except for the twitching of a leg, or the falling of some unrecognizable part of a Vixen body. Somehow she had moved forward as she fought. She was no longer in a narrow hallway but instead in another immense chamber. Her heightened senses began to spot other Vixen in the distance, but they stayed away. In fact, they were falling back quickly.

She came back to herself as a wave of revulsion and fatigue crashed over her and knocked her to her knees. She gagged and retched the remaining contents of her stomach.

“Welcome, Seventh of the Sarah. I have been waiting along time to meet you.” Came a dissonant alien voice that sounded as if a hundred different voices tried to speak in unison but only partially succeeded.

“It’s the Queen” intoned Orna, but Sarah already knew that voice. It was one that had been haunting her nightmares. The one that whispered to her as her darkest fears had threatened to overwhelm her.

Sarah was suddenly aware of her appearance. Her hair was wet with blood and ichor and plastered close to her head. Her arms and legs quivered in waves as fatigue pressed on her like a lead weight. Her bodysuit was tattered with thousands of small cuts. Her hands were cramped like claws as they clutched at the hilt of the sword.

“You are an impressive example of your species. Weak, filthy, and holding on to your pathetic technology as if it will have any hope of saving you today. Truly impressive.”

It slowly dawned on Sarah that this creature was mocking her. Her eyes lifted from the ground to take in the immense being that stood before her.

It was huge. Bigger than anything Sarah had ever imagined, even in her nightmares. The Queen had the same Preying Mantis like appearance, but scaled up beyond anything she could imagine possible. Any hope, any glimmer of faith that somehow she could prevail against such a being, fell away into an abyss of despair.

“But the time of waiting is over, Seventh of the Sarah. It is time for you to come home.”

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