GREEN [complete]

CHAPTER 14: Sekam

The alarms grew louder the deeper they got into the facility. Sekam flinched with each pulsing shriek, pressing her hands tighter over her ears. It was so loud. Her skull was going to shatter. She could feel it. Any second now.

Another shriek. A blast of red light, washing her surroundings crimson. A moment of merciful nothingness; her ears still rang; red still burned her eyes. Then, again. Another shriek. A blast of red light. A moment of merciful nothingness. Over and over. Every half-second.

Dylan's fingers are her arm. Tugging, tugging, tugging. "Sekam! Sekam, we need to move."

She could barely hear them over the vile noise. They gave her another sharp tug, and she yielded, stumbling along behind them. "Make it stop," she whimpered. Weak. Unstable. Every step was harder than the last. She squeezed her eyes closed tight. The relentless screaming didn't stop. Where was the exit? How were they so far from the exit? She needed to get out.

A sharp bang! cracked in the too-skinny hallway and the banshee's cry fell silent. Sekam's ears still rang, her head still hurt, but her thoughts began to snick back into place. She forced her lids up and peered toward where the alarm used to be. A mess of plastic and wiring stuck out from the wall.

"Here." Dylan offered one of her guns to her.

Sekam looked down at her hip to find an empty holster. She couldn't remember them taking her gun. "Thank you," she said. Her mouth felt far too dry. She accepted the gun, slipping it back into its holster and releasing a quivering sigh. "Thank you."

"Yeah. No problem. You were kinda shutting down on me there." They started forwards again, then stopped and looked back at her. "Just shoot the alarms. We've already lost whatever chance we had of sneaking in. They know we're here."

Sekam nodded. She could do that. But before she could shoot any more alarms, a party of mongrels rounded the corner in front of them, and she got to shoot them first. One. Two.Three. The first dropped. The second. The third pressed forward. Dylan never broke stride. Four. The third went down. Five. Six. The fourth and fifth went down.

Seven. The alarm spluttered out in a celebration of sparks and flying hunks of plastic. Sekam smiled at its death, flashing her pointed teeth. Silencing the alarm brought her delicious, delicious satisfaction, but it wasn't why she was here. She was here to reach the end of her path; to wipe out the green once and for all. She was going to get her fur back.

Dylan skidded to a stop at the next corner, flinging their arm out to stop her. "Wait."

Sekam wasn't in a waiting mood. She barged past Dylan, leveling her gun on—oh no. A human stalked toward her, face pinched and pushed in all the wrong places. But, shimmering around the human's form, was the spectral image of something much, much greater: the first creator god.

The neon green outline of the bear god walked on his hind legs, his ears nearly brushing the ceiling. He stepped with the human, his figure bound to it. His noise twitched as he breathed her in and the brilliant green of his eyes seemed to consume her. Sekam's gun fell to her side as she stared up at the bear god. If he was here ... what had she done wrong? How had she failed him? How could she fix it?

Before she could say anything, Dylan stepped around the corner. "Thompson, don't get in our way."

The bear god's lips moved with the human's, his arms and shoulders shifting as the human's did. "Ah, Dylan. It's wonderful to have with us again. I knew you would come back." The human's smile was far less ferocious than the bear god's.

Sekam didn't let them answer. "What did I do wrong?" she asked, tipping her chin up to meet the bear god's eyes rather than the human's. "Why have you come here?"

"To send you a message." The bear god spoke with the voice of the human. "The green cannot be purged with red, Sekam. I brought you here to save him ... not to drown the world in their blood."

"Save the mongrel?" She couldn't believe what she was hearing.

But the bear god had no more words for her. He disappeared in a cloud of silky green smoke, and with him, the bright green that tainted the human's eyes. Only blankness remained. The human dropped; the puppet's strings cut.

"What ... what just happened?" Dylan asked.

Sekam tore her eyes from the fallen body. "Where is Mars?"

Dylan, realizing they weren't going to get their answers, took the lead again. "We should be clear," they said. "Those four guards? They were the bulk of ORCTech's security here." They glanced back at her. "Usually, people don't die. It's a pretty peaceful place. Usually."

The came to a quick stop in front of a door as white and featureless as the rest of the hallway. It was hanging open, wide enough that Sekam could see most of the room—white lab benches, white stools, white tables, a glass cage. It was empty. Judging by Dylan's expression, it wasn't supposed to be open or empty. "They can't be doing the tests early ..."

Dylan spun around, pushing Sekam out of the way as they took off at a dead sprint. Sekam jogged after them. She didn't try to ask them where they were going, or why they were in such a panic. Instead, she made it her job to destroy every alarm they passed. Mercifully, there weren't too many. She silenced the final one as Dylan burst through their next door and into a small room. Too small. Too bright.

Two walls were made of mirrors, the other two white, white, white. A woman stood in the center of the room, and next to her, a mongrel like none that Sekam had ever seen before. A human torso with four arms sprawled over a table, and heaped next to it was the rest of him. Nearly twenty feet of a body so disgustingly similar to a rattlesnake's it made her fur bristle and pushed her a step out of the room.

Danger, she thought. Danger. Kill it before it can kill you.

But she had more present concerns. Dylan crept toward the woman, fury rolling off them in waves. "You're going to kill him," they said fiercely. They tried to reach for the mongrel—Mars—but the woman cut them off.

"You came back," she said. Her voice was level, but she held a syringe brimming with the green like it was a weapon. And it was. Against Dylan, anyway. "I thought you were smarter than that." She edged forward, her feet shuffling over the tile floor.

"I came back for my friend." Dylan wasn't swayed by the advance. They held their ground, their shoulders tense and their fist tied into a vicious knot.

Sekam, gagging down her revulsion of the mongrel, stepped deeper into the room and touched her gun. "Let us have him," she said. The bear god wanted her to save the mongrel without further bloodshed, and that was what she was going to do, if she had any choice in the matter.

The woman's eyes flit from Dylan to Sekam, then to one of the windows. Bodies shifted on the other side, Sekam could feel the pressure of their eyes, but they didn't move to her aid. "Stay back," she said. "Stay back or this will not end well for you." She enunciated each word carefully.

Sekam raised her gun, jabbing it between the woman's eyes. "Let us have him, please."

Instead of surrendering, the woman drove her needle into Sekam's forearm. She injected the green. All of it. Sekam yelped, yanking her arm free as the woman skipped back, her eyes fixed on Sekam's arm as her veins turned neon. The green spread up her arm and into her neck, burning hot as fire. Then, quickly as it had come, it vanished, the pulsating green blinking out as her blood devoured it.

Sekam rolled her shoulders and took a long breath. "Now, are you going to let us have him?"