Kadin's Intent

Kadin’s Intent

T.L.S. Robinson

Copyright © 2014 by Tui Whiu.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014914654

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4931-9235-9

                Softcover         978-1-4931-9234-2

                eBook              978-1-4931-9236-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/18/2014

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CONTENTS

Prologue

PART 1

1      Waking Up

2      The End Of The World

3      New Resolve

4      Dead Forest

5      Shadows And Hallucinations

6      Malachi And Company

7      Loyalty

8      Refuge

9      Best Laid Plans

10   The Bizarre Train

11   Moving Out

12   The End Of The Road

13   Ghost City

14   Strange Destinations

15   Strange Beings

16   Charmed Illusions

PART 2

17   The New Recruit

18   Beginnings

19   Misfits

20   Some Things Are Just Meant To Be

21   It’s Not Over

22   Waking Up

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

I n ad 3008 the metalworkers tried to infiltrate Helligdom, the final sanctuary. No one was prepared for the way they fought. The metalworkers had ravaged their own homeland of all resources and sought a new place to pillage. People had tried to stand against them but had failed. The metalworkers figured to expand their territory of Sheolton without any real resistance, just as they always did.

The first attack was always stealthy, unexpected, and without casualties on the Sheolton side. Karvesh made sure of it. This time, however, Karvesh was unprepared for the level of devotion, loyalty, and love shown amongst the Helligdoms.

PART 1

Control

The illusion of power

Only fools deny the fractured nature of reality

A bent figure huddled over the first bed. Tubes and machines hummed quietly in the background. ‘Remember, you agreed to this,’ her weak voice scratched. ‘You never did listen to anyone when she was concerned.’ Silence. The recipient remained stiff and unmoving, the same way he had been for the past two days. ‘Don’t you stop now!’ Weathered hands reached for his. ‘You must go further under …’

1

WAKING UP

L ight stole its way through the shade of my sleepy lids, dancing a gruesome pink and orange trail. The pebbly earth beneath my back kneaded through my clothing.

And heat.

Heat like a desert drought. If there was such a thing. My brain was not functioning properly. I lay there a few moments, disorientated, bewildered. My head weighed a tonne, my eyes cemented shut.

Another scorching wave hit.

That intensity, unreal, where am I? I forced open my leaden lids, gauging the situation. Try to focus. I peered out bleakly from under a hazy green hood and was stung by the unnatural glare of the sun. My eyes watered and blinked. I rejected the sight, confused at the oversized inferno trying to break through a nebulous haze, prickling my vision with fresh tears.

It was strange, a fluorescent light bulb with electricity running all over it, as if the sun itself had been fused with lightning and was no longer able to radiate warmth but only give out flickers of fierce heat. A bow of radioactive death shot into one of the clouds as I watched. The sickening white glow emanated from the otherwise drab sky. Grey clouds. No blue. Weird.

I closed my eyes to help them regain focus. An eerie silence spread out around me. Straining, I sought to hear the smallest hint of life.

Nothing.

Dull aches thudded in my skull. Where am I? I did not recognise any of this. Searching side to side, my head ebbed and flowed like a see-saw forcing me to be still. I turned sideways and retched involuntarily; the pain was hard to manage.

Slowing my breathing, I felt tendrils of fear press flittingly at the edges of my mind. Don’t panic, just breathe. I kept still and focused on breathing. Where am I? Focus! I told myself. It was way too hot to focus.

Where am I? Focus and breathe.

Fiercely, I searched my brain trying to remember how I got here and what I was doing, but all I could feel was the dull ache, hot sun, and increasingly uncomfortable ground.

Cautiously, I lifted myself into a sitting position and covered my face. I needed a moment to think. A minute passed, and finally calm came over me. Breathe, just breathe.

As I paused, a warm trickle seeped down the back of my neck, tickling the skin. My fingers instinctively reached for that spot, parting what felt like coarse hair and discovering a small opening just above the nape. The wound was beginning to clot, and despite my superficial calm, nausea turned my stomach. I stared at my fingers smeared with the sticky red coagulation and swallowed quickly, forcing the bile back down where it belonged.

Hopelessness scratched at me. There was no one around, and I had no idea who I was or why I was here. The shock sent me back into unconsciousness.

Maryelle turned to the second bed and sighed, ‘Finally, he has connected.’ The young patient didn’t respond. The orb-monitor in front of her was fuzzy, the worst connection Maryelle had ever seen. A few shadows on a snowy background, nothing but white noise. It belied the reality of their connection in life. ‘You need to find him,’ she spoke to the screen as if the stumbling shadow could hear her. ‘You find him out.’ Her grammar always got worse when she was nervous or excited. It had been close this time, too close. One more day of no activity and well … she shuddered to think of what would’ve happened to those who were under now and the rest of them in the end. This was progress, but the strand was still frail and she would not give in to full-blown hope just yet. She would watch more vigilantly now than ever before.

Opening my eyes, I willed myself to remember where I was and how I had got there. Turning sideways, my ears honed in on the only thing that helped me to recognise what this place was: the hollow sound of lacklustre waves, lethargically hitting the shore and lapping at the dulled wooden legs of an old wharf. I looked towards the sound; this was some kind of inlet. The wharf was about fifty metres away from me, and the dark tide was in.

Unsteadily, I got to my feet, wanting a better sense of my position. My eyes had cleared, and to the south I saw the edge of a forest only twenty paces away. I was standing on a rocky shore covered in small pebbles, fine debris, and driftwood; ten metres behind me was a cliff face. Then in front of me stood the wharf and the inlet.

I peered closer at the wharf; it seemed familiar. The length of it was short and almost stubby in appearance, as if the inlet dropped away into fathomless depths after only a few meters. The size and shape of it left a shadowed impression in my mind. I stared at this only recognisable thing with a sense of expectancy.

Out of nowhere, I was thrown into confusion as unexpected images flashed through my mind. I cradled my head in shock, haunted by the sound of cheerful laughter and hands quickly feeding something down underneath the water. Echoes of ‘Don’t drop it!’ A camera attached to a string. Loose gravel moved under my feet as the memory played out.

We were lying on the wharf, warm wood under us, and tense excitement in us at what the underwater world might reveal. Fishermen sat on purpose-built seats; mooring lines were attached to the well-kept bollards there … down there!

My mind faltered as pain racked through my whole body, some kind of longing at the echo of that voice. A knot settled deep in my stomach. This was not right. Where was everyone? I turned my attention back to the deserted wharf. The same wharf from my memory. It looked ominous and frail, gloomy shadows pooled underneath it, and its lengthy sway seemed disproportionate to the size of the swell.

Flash … another image, this time of silver arrows speeding across a turquoise blue. Beautiful, the voice echoed again, laughter tinkling. I told you it would work. The laughter tapered off into something more sinister.

Panic now swirled up into my chest as I ran stumbling over debris and loose shale to the edge of the wharf, desperate to find the owner of that voice. My heart was pounding, and cold-sweat tendrils chased down the small of my back. The wharf seemed too far away, and I knew I had to get there fast.

My heart was breaking at the thought of what might have happened … happened to her. At last I was running on wood, compensating against the pitch and roll of the rickety planks. Ignoring the ever-diminishing throb in my head, I pushed on.

Too long it seemed to get to that edge, and the precious minute took an eternity. She must be there, the owner of that voice! My mind didn’t register the holes eaten away by miniscule marine insects or the missing boards as panic drove me forward, desperate to find the owner of that voice. Desperate to find her.

I stumbled down into the same spot from my memory, oblivious to the lichen and moss twisting around rusted piles and broken bollards. I looked down into the murky black liquid. Did we fall? I wondered. It would certainly explain things.

Edging my way closer to the water, my eye caught a glimpse of something. A pale grey object was just below the surface. It looked like a plastic bag, and on closer inspection, I saw a few more of the same objects scattered around in the water. Some kind of intuition stopped me from diving in headfirst.

I focused on the memory again, the only real evidence I had of my life before the last few minutes. It took a while to resurface, but then the power of the memory made me breathless.

It started … green cheerful eyes staring at mine. A deep green, much like a forest that always sees the rain. And blood-red coils framing a warm olive face, she smiled. See that one? It’s chasing his line. The camera had taken footage of the underwater world of that wharf, this same place.

The intensity of the memory changed, quick flashes, jumbled blurs, screaming, falling, and shrieking, emerald eyes staring at me full