Chapter 30 Children of the Moon

Chapter 30

Children of the Moon

  “Dream walk,” Kian muttered to himself, and then quickly focused his attention on the blur of white streaking past the tube car, using it to cleanse his mind. His mind had never been his own. His childhood, his entire life an open book read by strangers at their leisure for their pleasure. He must take it back. These strangers were evil. Maybe once, they had been good people driven by good intentions but power and time had corrupted them. It was time for them to go.

  The tube car eased to such a subtle stop that Kian did not notice. He had captured the white blur of the sliding tube wall in his mind; it stayed there as he stepped out of the car and into the anti-grav passageway that led to Camelot Command. He grasped the hand -rail and another blur of white reinforced the one already trapped inside his head, as it whisked him toward his target, Commander Read.    

   Maybe this was working, maybe not. He never sensed their presence in his mind. He projected, but never monitored. He entered the Commander’s Grand Office blind. His mind still fixed on the blur but not so much that he could not function. Surely, his will had weakened and his curtain of sliding white had slipped, spilling his thoughts like water on the ground for all to see. If so his plan had already failed. But he had no way of knowing.

  Like a preprogrammed robot, he walked a straight line toward the Commander’s desk. Massive chandeliers still hung overhead. He did not see them. However new pictures hung on the walls. Thankfully, he did not see them either. The white blur racing though his mind had spared that horror, if nothing else.

  These new pictures were not paintings, but snapshots blown up to three feet by four feet monstrosities. Apparently, the Company took great delight in documenting every gruesome detail of the Chimeran onslaught. 

  A dozen giant photos stained the walls with horror and gore. One showed the first attack. A great Silver Bowl was shooting a beam of white light at the Common. It was crowded with Chimerans, Lucius, Sprites, centaurs and a host of others had gathered to watch the sunset. The photo depicted in merciless detail the sheer brute force and searing heat of the beam as it struck the deck, blew it apart, set it aflame roasting, disemboweling and dismembering all in its ‘fiery  path.  

  Another showed William and the merfolk desperately trying to dive away from a bowl that could fly beneath the sea as easily as it could above it. Its’ beam turned the sea into live steam and boiling water. The Merfolk were boiled alive by the very medium they cherished.

 Mercifully, Kian saw none of this.  However, a tragic event that he had not clearly seen before waited for him when he approached the desk. Translucent ten inches tall images of Tammy Gray Walls’ horrific death replayed repeatedly just beneath Commander’s Read’s chin as he hunched over the holographic projection screen. It was as if he wanted to feel her hot blood splash against his face even though he knew it was nothing more than projected light.       

  “Clever Kian,” he said not even looking up at him when Kian took his seat in front of the desk. “Of course you know filling your mind with nil space imagery only tips us off that you’re trying to hide something. Still I relish the diversion, almost as much as watching this silly cow burst like a blood balloon all over her stupid husband’s face, too bad they were separated by glass, still it was quite original. I give it a nine. You can stop blurring Kian. It’s just annoying. Why do you not just evolve, be the God that you are and take your vengeance, stop clinging to your empathy, ditch your archaic humanity and join the club. It’s fun up here. Well, up here down here, you know what I mean. What are you hiding,” he asked with disarming abruptness.

  Kian hardly heard him. The Commander sounded a million miles away.

  Read slammed his hand on the desk, “Stop it Kian, you can’t keep us out of your mind, but you can endanger the girls.”

Read’s last words pierced his ears as if they were needles. “Hiding,” He asked.

  “Did you learn a new trick, and Kia, now she’s a wonder, who weaponized her?”

  “Who,” Kian asked genuinely ignorant.

  “Then what or where Kian, something changed her. Her eyes are now laser cannons, seems she traded her wings for them. How could that possibly happen?”

  “I’ve a better question,” Kian asked, “How can you not know? You have eyes everywhere. The Mind Movies prove that.”

  Read tapped his desk. The hologram blinked out. He then sat back in his chair and titled his head.

  Kian noticed a slick shiny patch covering his right temple. It had to be the interface devise he used to monitor his thoughts. After all this time projecting his thoughts, Kian knew it was time to project his soul, once more. Read was about to learn of Kia’s and Alexander’s Older’s Bed sanctuary. Clearly, they already knew about the island and its death wall and the small crystal sphere, but the massive second crystal sphere, was their blind spot. He dare not give it away. It was time to do what he came to do.

  Kian hunched forward as if he were about to speak, then tilted his head exactly like Read had tilted his. He then exhaled his soul straight into Read’s watery black pupils. There was much Kian needed to learn, first and foremost how to make Read remove his monitor patch, but he also needed to learn locations access codes and directions, all of which were certainly locked inside Read's evil little mind.

  Going inside this pig’s brain would be like skinny-dipping in raw sewage but he had to do it.

Going inside Kia had been easy, even delightful. She was a part of him and always had been. Read on the other hand was hostile territory, maybe not a locked door but none the less resistant.

  Darkness slowly erased the room. It was as if Kian was drifting down a submerged passageway. The air felt mushy and clingy. Read’s will was manifesting all around him. He shrank his soul to a thread lacing his way through shifting scenes of dark and light, touching and learning as he went.

  A silvery glob of slobber gathered in the corner of Read’s open mouth. It slid down his chin and dribbled on chest. Kian did not see it, any more than he saw the two armed security guards running toward him. Black gloved hands cradling A K 47s raised the weapons and aimed them at the back of Kian’s head. He did not see them, he was absorbing becoming drunk on knowledge he may never put to use.

  Muzzles flashed. Hair bone and gray matter painted the walls only adding to the unspeakable carnage depicted there. Kian never saw that either…

The End of Book Two