Europa II

  In the grand hall outside the decontamination chambers of the Garden, twenty-seven of us awaited the arrival of our escort. Just moments ago, the plebeians here were handed their masks—the only thing that would save them from the ‘horrors’ of the outside world. From the defilement of the Rot.

  As was usually the case, my eyes found the prettiest girl in the room: a pale woman with even paler blue eyes; her black hair was a bit boyish, though: shaggy and cut to her jaw. She was struggling to prepare her mask—more accurately, she was struggling to connect the tube to the trunk of the mask.

  I wandered over to her. “Do you need help?”

  “Yes please,” she giggled, her eyes still locked on the connector. “You think they would give a better explanation?”

  With my right hand, I took hold of the trunk of the mask, and with my left, I twisted and turned the tube into its lock. In my peripheral vision, I saw the girl finally look up at me.

  “You’re a sister?” she questioned.

  “What gave it away?” I smiled.

  She threw her eyebrows up in a playful tone. “The pink eyes, for one.”

  Laughter became me as I gave her back the prepared mask and made contact with her hands. Following that, her eyes. “I wasn’t aware I had another identifier? Pray tell?”

  “Well,” she replied, doing a thankful gesture with the mask. “You’re beautiful, for two. I’ve now seen two sisters in my life, and those are the constants.”

  Clueing in on her words, I glanced at my mentor, Elder Cecelia, who was currently engaging in talk with a labourer of sorts. She is beautiful, isn’t she? “You know, we’re not all like that. I know a girl with no teeth—if you can believe it?”

  “I can’t!” the girl exclaimed, brushing a hand over her forehead. “How’d she lose them?”

  “Well,” I mimicked the girl, but the next bit was harder to say without laughing. “Sodomy’s the prevailing rumour.”

  “And rumours are to be disregarded,” Elder Cecelia’s croaking tongue cut off our laughter. “Aren’t they, Sister Europa?”

  To my left, my mentor now stood like a deity of contempt. In preparation for her mask, she’d pulled back her hood and revealed a greying set of brown hair braided into a clean, concise tail—which was how she did mine, mind you… she insisted on it. Although I shan't fault her for it: I imagine my favoured bun would go terribly in such a mask.

  She gazed at me with those pink marbles we shared as a look of sorrow and contempt flashed before she turned to the girl. “A pleasure to meet you, young lady. I am Cecelia, an Elder of the Sisters.”

  “A pleasure to meet you too!” the girl replied. “Betty’s mine.”

  “That’s a lovely name,” Elder Cecelia declared—as if there were ‘not-lovely’ names.

  Well, I suppose there is, actually. Cecelia, for one. Mine too, for that matter—I may put on a rather… prejudiced manner, but I actually rue the day my late mother deigned to give me the name of some old graecian whore—and a planet of Old Sol too, as if that makes it any better.

  “Is it short for Elizabeth?” Elder Cecelia continued her faux-probing. “Or Beatrice?”

  Betty—now that’s a lovely name—eyed her in phony-disgust at the question. “Bethany—and that’s the only good one of the three.”

  I got to give her props, she’s right. Elizabeth… wasn’t that some queen? Betty’s not a queen, she’s a princess. And with this slightly heavy gun weighing down my pelvis like a…

  Point is, I’m her knight. Prospective. Probably. Inevitably. But I am younger than her—probably. She looks like her early twenties—that, or, based on the volume of her breasts, she’s matured fast.

  Catching me staring, Elder Cecelia slapped the back of my head. “You’ll have to forgive us, but Sister Europa must prepare her—”

  The elder was cut off by glaring sirens bursting behind us, signalling that the decontamination room of the Garden’s entrance was in use. It only took a minute—or two, but soon enough, the great metallic wall of the chamber rose and inside we saw six sons dressed in their dark green uniforms and grey masks. One of them, in particular, wore a red cape.

  He was the first to take off his mask, and a boy most definitely younger than me showed himself! With a tidy, short head of brown and eyes of no remark, he tore the tube from his mask, stuffed said tube in his harness, and folded his mask into the gap between his neck and uniform. The others followed suit, and immediately two other sons came over with a large metallic box, saluted their fellow soldiers, planted the box firmly on the floor, and connected a tube to each of the returning son’s oxygen canisters on their chests.

  Under his red cape, I eyed the automatic rifle he—and the others—carried. Why couldn’t I get one of those?

  “Is everyone ready?” his still-deepening voice called out.

  “We are, Myrmidon Perseus.” Elder Cecelia did a light bow.

  A myrmidon? Someone so young? Also… what is it with this fucking Eden and making everybody of import—even us, as damaged as we are—wear fucking red?

  “How’s he a myrmidon at his age?” I whispered.

  “You win it by combat,” Elder Cecelia informed me, maintaining a pleasant smile. “Obviously he was good enough.”

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  “How come no-one’s won it back?” Betty practically yelled behind us. Not one for stealth, is she? “I reckon I’d have a shot, young as he is.”

  Perseus laughed as he heard his canister beep and walked towards us, stopping before the group. “Only sons can try, I’m afraid. Key word being ‘sons’, but you should try your luck at the Blades—they’ve always been fairer to the fairer sex.”

  Alright, I don’t like him anymore. That was reasonably funny—key word being ‘reasonably’—but a joke against Betty? Not anymore. Not. Anymore.

  “Are the sons like Achilles himself, then?” I asked, stuffing a stray chuckle down my throat. “Do they favour the unfairer sex?”

  Perseus gave a wry smile. “That was just mean. You get a pass for that—in the trenches.”

  I burst out in laughter at the double innuendo I hope he didn’t mean, which prompted Elder Cecelia to hit me half-a-dozen more times. “Forgive her, she’s never been receptive to etiquette.”

  Gathering what made me laugh, Perseus chuckled. “Oh. Very good.”

  I wasn’t a fan of him saying that, and it lowered him heavily in my decrepit book. Call me a would-be schizophrenic, but I have a marvelous ability to perceive when someone uses words that aren’t their own.

  Leaving us be, Perseus went on to address the group: “You can wait until we’re in the Deco to put on your mask, but make sure it’s tight—there’s no second chances out there. Now, we’ll be heading alongside the road to Enoch. It would be incomparably stupid of you to somehow stray from the group and not find this road again, as it is lined with the heads of ten-thousand imps—you can thank my myrmidon brothers for that grotesque display.”

  I always wanted an imp for a pet when I was a kid, but from all I’ve heard of the ‘Imp Wars’, that was probably a reasonable response.

  “Either way,” he continued, “if you do get lost… we are not coming to find you. Nor are we stopping for you. We do not have enough oxygen, and we have neither the tools nor the Rot converters necessary to build a Foxhole. When we reach the waypoint, halfway along the road to Enoch, we are going to rest in the Foxhole there. If anyone touches the Rot Converter once we are set up, they will be shot and their body left beside the imps. And… is that all, Hadrian?”

  “No sir,” Hadrian, a son, replied, standing beside him still wearing his mask—although the nozzle on the canister had been switched off. “The Abyss and an ambush, sir.”

  Perseus nodded to himself. “Right. As some of you may—or may not know, the Aenied—or the Garden, I should say—crashed next to a large abyss in the earth. It was in the caverns beside this abyss where Eden was built. And the bulk of the road to Enoch is built alongside this abyss due to a rather annoying river. If I say ‘stop’, everyone stops. If I say ‘run’, everyone runs to the left, past the imp heads and into the river—your mask can survive being submerged, mind you, and don’t go too far. It becomes impossible to swim in after a few metres. If I say ‘stop’ and someone doesn’t stop, they will be shot. If I say ‘run’ and someone doesn’t run, I guarantee you they will die.”

  Perseus pursed his lips and looked back at the soldier.

  “Ambushes, sir.”

  “Right again,” Perseus smiled. He’s really not good at this, is he? “If I call out ‘ambush’, those of you that are neither a sister nor a son, for your own sake drop to the earth and lay on your chest-canister. Ours are armoured, yours are not. If it gets shot, you will die. That’s all, now let’s get—”

  Perseus stopped as he eyed one of the sons in the group that did not return with him. A soldier with oily black hair and brown eyes. The two of them, after a short, slightly palpitating stare, broke into laughter as they hugged one another—I guess these two got a pass.

  “Oh,” Perseus laughed, “Gideon will be shocked to see you, Sam. Since when were you coming with us?”

  “Since last evening,” this oily ‘Sam’ replied. “How is he?”

  “Good, good.” Perseus’ eyebrows went up for a second. “Better soon, I imagine.”

  There it fucking is again, those words that aren’t his. ‘Very good.’ ‘I imagine.’ Which butt-buddy is he copying?

  “Alright,” Perseus let go of Sam and held a hand towards the Decontamination Room. “Let’s go.”

  The twenty-seven of us followed the six sons into the room, and the metal wall closed behind us.

  “Masks on, people,” one of the sons commanded. I think it was Hadrian, but the voices kind of blur with it on.

  Pulling my black mask from its lovely spot between my canister and my breasts, I connected the tube, dragged the mask down my face and tightened the straps at the back of my neck.

  Seeing Betty struggling, I tightened her straps whilst doing my best to ignore Elder Cecelia’s stare. Ha! ‘Tightened her straps’. There was probably a pervert’s magnum opus there. But I must say… the back of her neck; that pale, glittering skin—it’s hard to distinguish nowadays, but I’m sure before the Rot I wouldn’t have found a fucking neck attractive. Maybe… probably…

  “Everyone set?” Perseus’ boyish voice filtered through his mask.

  We all nodded.

  “Right. Let’s be off, then.”

  Red lights flashed overhead as a blasting horn berated my ears, making me wish I didn’t have a mask that actually allowed you to hear properly. Following this, the metallic wall in front of us opened and a… surprisingly pleasant scenery introduced itself.

  You know, from all the dribble you hear folks going on about how we’re in Hell and all that, this wasn’t that bad.

  The grass was the first thing I noticed, being an odd shade of purplish-blue. I’d heard about ‘real’ grass before, obviously, but I never really thought anything other than green would tickle my fancy. This did. This, contrasted with the rushing pink river to our left, the jagged, glittering abyss of black rock and gold gems to our right, and the brilliant amber sky beset by a pale purple sun, really cast the thought through my mind that we might be in Heaven instead. Maybe God saved us.

  Of course, though, my eyes soon cued onto the decayed imp heads, ranging in various sizes, stacked upon bloody stakes that dotted the grass road that seemed to stretch on forever.

  It… surprisingly, it wasn’t that unpleasant. Kind of cool, even—like a literal incarnation of our triumph against the Great Imp Tribes. And hey, I’m sure it made the dullard imps think twice about the whole war thing.

  “Beautiful,” Betty’s filtered voice declared.

  That makes two—although her mask had a certain… kink to it I wasn’t terribly fond of.

  “Looks can be deceiving,” a son replied.

  “That it can,” Perseus followed. “Keep a steady pace, I want to reach the Foxhole before night comes.”