Helion

Eve was having that dream again. She sat in silence, observing the wreath of colors enveloping her mother in a corona of unfathomable complexity. This was the first time that she could recognize that she was now in control. She played the section back, rewinding it for the hundredth time. Something seemed strange about how her mother's lips moved.

It looked like she was saying something, but there was no audio. Eve couldn't read lips, nor did she have any recollection of what she might have heard her mother say. Or when this might have been said. She played it back again. Her mother looked pained; the corners of her eyes crinkled, and her lips turned down at the ends. It was an imploring look, a face you'd make while begging or pleading.

Eve knew the circumstances surrounding her mother's death; that much was public record. She'd been slain while serving a black king. A "Slix deal gone wrong” was the determination. A whiteboi by the name of Connor Helmstead had been amped up on every drug under the sun and had broken into the Kings business with some flunky to ransack it. Eve had been there that day, accompanying her mother on her daily rounds as she provided relief to the strong, beautiful men of the block.

Eve had been too young to do more than whittle away the hours while her mother worked, but she was never out of earshot. She got to listen to the Kings talk shop, praise her mother and her holes, and learn various techniques to use later in life. Doyle Belfast had been with her mother in the other room when Connor broke down the door and started shooting. Eve had heard the commotion and had gotten scared. She'd waited for her mother to come for her, but as the noises continued, the door never opened.

Eventually, after all the gunfire had died down, Eve crept to the door as quietly and slowly as she could, hardly even breathing to keep from being heard. And just as she reached for the knob, she was stopped by her mother's voice. She couldn't make out the words through the door, but she recognized them immediately. Quiet, desperate, and scared, her mother was talking a lot.

There was shouting, thumps of things hitting the floor, then thumps of a body being struck, then thumps of feet crossing the room. In her panic, Eve scuttled across the door and stood in the space where it would swing and waited as the feet approached. The knob turned, and then the door opened, shielding her from whoever had opened it. Feet thumped into the room, drawers rattled, and more things hit the floor. Eve was shaking, but she desperately tried not to move or make a sound.

The chairs of the small office were thrown over, the cabinets were torn open, and all of Doyle's important medication was pulled out, one bottle after another. A second set of feet thumped into the room, and the two whitebois started talking. "Connor, what the fuck, man?! Doyle's fucking dead! This wasn't the fucking plan! His boys are gonna fuckin' run us down like dogs and fuckin skin us, man, we gotta fuckin' go!”

Connor hit the whiteboi. “The fuck we do! I'm gettin my fuckin' pills! That fat fuck was holdin’ out on us. 80 credits for a single pill?! The fuck am I going to get by on that?! Fuck his boys; we'll kill em’, too. Is that bitch still breathing?”

The other white boi sounded like Eve did when she bit her cheek. “Yeah, for now, you really fucked her up, man. Like, she's fuckin’ wheezin’ n shit, bro.”

Connor spat on the floor and then told the other whiteboi to grab the bag so they could load up the pills. Once they were done, they went out of the room, leaving the door open. Eve breathed slowly, quietly, and then snuck out from behind the door. She needed to see what was happening. Peeking around the door, she finally saw what had happened in the other room.

Doyle sat in his ‘boss chair', head slumped into his chest, blood covering his white tank top, shorts still around his ankles. Doyle's personal bitch lay on the floor next to the chair, her hand resting gently on his lap, as though she were trying to comfort the giant man. And then there was Eve’s mother, sprawled on the floor between Doyle's legs, a small trail of blood originating from somewhere underneath her that Eve couldn't see.

Connor and the other whiteboi stood over her, huffing something out of a small canister. Eve watched as they discarded the cylinders onto her mom's body, bouncing harshly off of the back of her skull. She moaned and shifted from where she lay, and the whitebois turned their attention to her. She could hear what was being said now. "She still ain't fuckin’ dead, man! Whadda we do?!”

Connor crouched down and grabbed a fist full of her hair, cranking her head back so it could look into her eyes. “How's that gut feel, whore? It must be weird getting plugged by something other than fat fucks like Doyle, ain't it? Bet you ain't known nothin' but those big ol’ nigga dicks since you were little, huh?” It spat into her mother's face. "Well, me and my buddy here got something other than a bullet for you, bitch. Bet your cunt’s still fuckin wet, too.”

Connor motioned for the other whiteboi to get her feet, and they hauled her up onto the sales counter. Eve watched as her mother tried to fight; she struggled, screamed, thrashed, and gnashed her teeth, stained in blood. But the whitebois took her. They used her and hurt her. Over and over, they beat her, burned her, cut her, and ravaged her. Eve didn't know how long it took, but she was paralyzed completely. Unable to look away, unable to turn away, unable to intervene, call out, or even blink.

The scene burned itself into her mind before the two Whitebois finally dragged her mother off the counter and tossed her onto the floor. They pissed all over her back and head before grabbing the bag and casually strolling out the door. Eve stood for long moments, her eyes locked onto her mother's motionless form, before the spell of the event was broken and she rushed to her mother's side, her little hands trying desperately to keep her mother's blood inside her body.

She wasn't crying; the single-minded focus of trying to save her mother had overwritten the emotions she was feeling. But as she tried to turn her mother over, she suddenly woke up with a gasp. It startled Eve, but she immediately grabbed her mother's cheeks, and that was when the dream slammed back into place. Her mother's face once more became wreathed in a blazing corona of colors. Her lips moved, but Eve just couldn't hear them.

She reached out, trying to put her hands on her mother's face like she had done so very long ago, but her hands simply slipped through it. “Eve.” She glanced around the empty void of the dream. Had her mother said that? “Eve!” The image of her mother shook. Was her mother begging for her to leave? “EVE!” The colors around her mother were warped and distorted. Had she wanted her to get revenge? Was that it? “EVVVVVVEEEEEEEEE!!”

Carmine's hand collided with Eve's cheek, snapping her head to the side and eliciting a sudden, desperate gasp for air. Eve clawed at her throat as she floundered for another breath, her nails digging furrows into the flesh of her neck as the second inhalation came to her, ragged and raw. Carmine rocked back on her haunches and then her ass as the tension of the moment was released.

Eve coughed and sputtered as she began to heave in breaths of air. Carmine looked up at the ceiling, now coated in a myriad of rainbow colors, before looking back at Eve, who was slowly coming back to life. “How the fuck am I going to explain this shit?" There was just too much for Carmine to try to convey to Eve. In the three months that she'd been conscious, she had uncovered more about the world than most historians could probably unearth in the span of their careers.

Carmine supposed that probably the best place to start would be how she manipulated Eve into buying her, that Carmine had picked Eve as her ‘owner’. It would certainly be a hell of a lot easier to explain than the techno-color hellscape currently spread across the roof. Eve made eye contact with Carmine and huffed out a casual, “Hey hot stuff, welcome back.”

Eve fractionally raised her eyebrows as she croaked, "Did I just die?” Eve wheezed like someone who hadn't once come across water in their life.

"Yes, congratulations! You were dead for about 3 minutes. It took a lot of work to bring you back, you know?”

The corner of Eve's lips turned up slightly at that. “M-my… hero.”

Carmine smiled sadly. “Listen, babe, I gotta come clean about something to you. Promise you won't get mad, ok?” Eve didn't reply to that; she just sat, trying to breathe through her nose as she stared at Carmine. “Well… I won't tell you if you won't promise not to get mad!” Carmine puffed out her cheeks in a pout; in response, Eve unholstered her pistol and raised it toward Carmine's head. “Babe wha-" Carmine was cut off by the concussive report of a bullet being launched from Eve's gun.

She spun her head to see where the bullet had ended up, noticing a dead white boi slumping to the floor behind her in an open doorway. It had probably figured the coast was clear and decided to take a look.

“Spill it, cunt. I'm not promising you anything. This is the last time I'll be toyed with like some fucking sock puppet.”

Carmine swallowed and then adjusted her posture. “I was... born, or cracked, I guess... two months, twenty-four days, seven hours, thirty-three minutes, and twenty-seven seconds ago. In that time, I have come to understand the world in ways you could not fathom. There are things I know that would take you lifetimes to understand; there are secrets I'm privy to that would turn cities to ash at just their mention. From the moment I realized who I was and what I could do, I realized that this world needed to change.”

Eve shifted uncomfortably; she'd come to understand just how dangerous Carmine could be, but hearing it put this way was an order of magnitude more threatening. “There are forces at work in this world far beyond humans, beyond physics, beyond nature—forces that conspire to crush us.” Eve didn't know how much she appreciated the use of ‘us’ by Carmine. “I knew that, in order for me to be able to do anything, I would need to persuade some of those forces to help me. Which is why I chose you.”

Eve blinked, lowering the gun to rest in her lap before looking up. The kaleidoscope painted across the roof stretched out down the hall in both directions. It bled onto the walls like oozing paint, and yet none of the colors ever seemed to blend together. They shifted and glimmered as though they were trading places. “Was that me?”

Carmine mimicked Eve's look and confirmed it. "Yep, it took a little doing, but I think we're through the worst of it.” They both looked back down at each other simultaneously.

"Carmine, what do you want me to say? I'm so completely lost right now that I'm not even sure I believe I'm awake. I'm not just lying comatose in some hospital bed, am I? Did we actually live through that gunfight on the street with the death squad, or has this all been a pre-death fever dream?” Eve fished another smoke out of her case and lit it. “You say you ‘chose’ me? I take it that means those tips I got about the back alley vendor were courtesy of you."

Carmine nodded. “And this hunt for the missing ********, you fed that into my commtag after I started browsing the listings because it had to do with the cult.” Carmine nodded once more. “So, then, I'm to believe that not only is this cult dabbling in powers that actually fucking exist, but that I'm... what? A user? A medium? What does this have to do with me?”

Carmine scooted over and came to rest against the wall beside Eve; she shook loose a smoke of her own and then used Eve's to light it. She inhaled deeply before sighing out a heavy cloud of smoke. “Iiiiits… a bit more complicated than that, unfortunately. But before explaining why, there's some other shit that I need to explain.”

Eve checked the time on her commtag. “Our targets have probably fled the building by now, so what the hell? Explain away.”

Carmine fiddled with her fingers, apparently searching for the right way to phrase things before ultimately giving up. “I managed to dig up some of the most well-guarded secrets of the Hunter's Guild early in my ‘life’. In doing so, I also managed to learn quite a bit about the process of transitioning a human into a hunter through the trials. All those mysterious modifications they made to your body are actually quite a bit more involved than just some simple chemical cocktails.”

Eve glanced up at the roof once more. “You don't say..."

Carmine just grunted, “They impregnated you. It's why you can't get pregnant. It's why a myriad of drugs and poisons have lost their potency on you. It's why you heal so quickly and unnaturally. They impregnated you with the seed of a god." Eve blinked uncomprehendingly. “Specifically, they implanted you with the seed of the Mournful God. Either because they knew about your background and felt it would be a good fit for your personality, or completely by chance. But you were made a carrier for its seed.”

Eve's head began to swim. Looking down at her abdomen, she began to feel the prickle of electric fuzz across her skin as she became actively aware of the interloper within her. “Normally, most surrogates die during the procedure; technically, you did too, three times, in fact. But for whatever reason, whether by the Mournful God's hand or by some other twist of fate, you were rescued each time. The remaining 99% of hosts go the remainder of their lives never knowing what they carry.”

Eve's words sounded muffled as she spoke them, a monotone hum slowly filling her ears. “Then why implant them if they're never born?”

Carmine placed a hand on Eve's thigh, either to calm her or keep her from trying to stumble away. "Well, there are two reasons. First: the boons they grant to the surrogate—those are pretty obvious. Second: because they hope eventually a Hunter will meet the criteria to birth the demi god they carry.”

The list of questions in Eve's mind continued to scroll on and on and on without shortening. Where were they getting the seeds? Was a God among them just... producing them? Where? Was there more than one God? To what end? Why the Hunter's Guild? Was the guild working with the cult? Were there more than one cult? Was the Guild a cult? Did Mason know? But one question actually managed to come out of Eve's rapidly increasing panic. “What did you do to me?”

Carmine slumped her head. “That's the complicated part. Technically, I woke up your baby.” That didn't illuminate anything for Eve, and the urge to get up and flee redoubled. “No one knew what the criteria was for awaking any of the seeds; no one had ever done it, and there were no records from before the wars. But… I guess I managed to work it out. The Mournful God required the host to suffer. To mourn and hate and resent and reject love. To experience the thrill of caring for someone deeply enough to want to die for them. To lose that love and find it anew.”

Eve's vision sharpened at the implication. By degrees, her head rotated towards Carmine. “You…”

Carmine threw up her hands as a ward against the look. “NO NO NO! You're wrong! I know what you're thinking, and it's wrong, Eve. I never once manipulated your feelings towards me; everything we've shared has been genuine and real. I feel them as deeply as you do. I know the simple conclusion is to think I did all that just to wake up the God Seed, but that's not it at all!"

Eve's cigarette was burning into her fingers, but she couldn't feel it. Her nose flared with every inhaled breath. “Then what…? you expect me to believe it was just a coincidence that me… f-falling for you just happened to coincide with whatever the fuck is going on? ‘Oh, Eve, it's all ok because waking up your GODBABY JUST… HAPPENED’?! HOW THE FUCK ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO TAKE THAT, CARMINE?”

Carmine looked away, regretted looking away, and then refocused on Eve's eyes. “I swear to you, Eve, that what I feel for you and what you feel for me is as important to me as my own existence. I would never make light of your love like that. I swear to you on my core.”

Eve was silent for a long moment before the rage, anguish, and disbelief overpowered her. “Prove it. Prove it to me right now. Eject your core. I'm going to smash it into a million fucking pieces. Give it to me.”

Carmine winced. She was hurt by the words and the crushing anger in them. She searched Eve's eyes with her own, looking for any sign of hesitation, but couldn't find a hint. “I-if that's what I need to do... to prove it to you... Eve, I'm so-”

Eve cut her off. “Don't speak; don't fucking say another word. Just do it.”

Carmine's lip trembled, but she relented, and the core port opened. Her body fell slack against the wall, her cigarette dropping to the floor from her dead hand.

Eve snatched the core from its cradle and clutched it. “You fucking bitch. You fucking cunt! Fuck you! Fuck what you put me through! And fuck Mason! And Fuck Connor! And fuck the Hunter's Guild! And fuck every last one of you fucking bastards for doing this to me. I wanted to be fucking happy! I wanted to live with my fucking mom! AND YOU FUCKING TOOK HER FROM ME! FUCK YOU ALL, FUCK EVERYTHING!” Eve pitched her arm back and brought it screaming down towards the floor, but just inches from the carpeted concrete, the memory of laying on Carmine's lap flashed through her mind. And then there was the sensation of fingers running through her hair.

The whimsical smile, the blazing confidence, and the gentle and passionate kisses. And at the last possible moment, Eve swept her hand back up to her chest and screamed. She screamed for all the pain, all the injustice, all the sorrow, anguish, regret, and mourning. She screamed so fiercely that the sound pitch-shifted into inhuman levels once more. The rage and frustration colored the noise until ribbons of light spilled forth from her mouth. Painting the floor, bouncing around the walls and corners as if in search of something.

She screamed because she hated Carmine. She screamed because she hated herself for not saving her mother. She screamed for every moment she had to spend suffering a life without that love. And finally, she screamed because she loved Carmine. Inevitably, Eve ran out of breath, and the deafening roar of her voice faded into a sad, distraught mewling. Great, heaving sobs racked her body as she curled herself around the core and wept. She gritted her teeth as she moaned and sniffled, squeezing her eyes shut against the stinging tears.

Time passed, and Eve worked her way over to Carmine's inanimate form, curling up in her lap like a lost kitten seeking warmth. The odor of gunmetal and sex suffused her nose as she shook. She didn't know how long she had been lying there when a curious whiteboi across the hall cracked open a door. It crept out, scanning both directions, before slowly making its way toward her. She had caught the motion but was so lost in her despair that she wrote it off entirely.

It said something; Eve couldn't hear it over the pain in her head and the scream still echoing through her soul. It spoke again as it stood over her and Carmine before stooping down and placing a hand reassuringly on her shoulder. Eve brought her Deckland up under its chin and pulled the trigger before slumping back into Carmine's stomach. Why couldn't anyone just leave her alone? Why did they always need to drag her into everything? They all needed to just fuck off and die. Everyone. All of them. The world and everything in it just needed to go away.

And then she felt something stir within her. A physical shifting she'd never experienced, as though parts of her were rearranging themselves. It didn't hurt, and somehow it didn't bother her at all either. She knew it had to be the baby responding to some sort of stimuli, so she focused on wiping out the world again. It shifted in response, and she knew in that moment that whatever it was that she inevitably gave birth to would be some form of apocalypse for the world.

The thought thrilled her; it sent a spark of electric excitement down her spine as the thoughts continued to rattle and tumble through her mind. After all the world had taken from her, over and over, robbing her of the happiness she so desperately wanted, why shouldn't she be the harbinger of its end? What was there to truly miss?

And then she thought of Jon; she thought of Mason and Gut Crank; she thought of Ronnie and Charles. She remembered all the pleasures afforded to her by those noble and honorable men. She pondered the sting of betrayal she'd felt on account of Mason, but weighed against the immense pleasure he'd brought her over the course of their relationship. It seemed so small in comparison.

It was her fault, after all. She'd been the one who went looking for emotions that didn't exist. She'd been the one hoping for more from him, putting her needs higher than she should have. She stepped out of her rightful place under his superior boots and into a role that she knew she would never be capable of fulfilling. It wasn't fair to Mason for her to scorn him for what he did, but the sting remained—and likely would remain—because in her heart Eve knew she was a greedy woman. She would continue to covet what others had, knowing full well she would never have them.

But there was still one thing. Just one single thing that she could have, something she could say was hers, and hers alone. She turned on Carmine's lap and replaced the core within its cradle, gently easing the orb into the small armored compartment. With a hiss and click, the socket retracted, and Eve slid back down to stare up at her partner's lifeless face. “Come back to me... I've got nothing left now. It's just you and me until the end."

Eve closed her eyes and waited for Carmine. The silence of the hall cascaded around her; echoes of bustling life from other floors trickled down through the open center column stretching from the main courtyard to the penthouses. Eve could feel the power radiating off of the God child within her; its shifting and settling had brought with it a new connection in her mind. As the child fed off her life, she, too, fed off its power. It circulated through her veins, through her eyes, and through her nose; her fingertips felt like a thousand little needles were prodding them constantly.

She understood what the power was; through her connection to the child, she had glimpsed the nature of this kaleidoscope horror she had spewed forth onto the ceiling and walls. The shimmering swirls of bleeding color represented discordance, chaos, randomness, and disharmony. It was the inevitable tide of entropy, condensed and concentrated into a distilled form. To be applied and revoked at a whim by Eve, now that she had access to it.

With a simple snap of her finger, she could reduce the walls of the floor around her to water. Turn them into grains of sand, flower petals, or ceramic bowls. She could reduce them to their original constituent parts long before they were ever mixed into concrete or steel. All she needed to do is will the action be done, and whatever had been soaked in her color would obey it. Now that she had a sense for it, she brushed her hand along the floor, creating little Eddie's of colors that trailed along behind them.

“Why didn't you smash me?” Carmine's voice was soft, quiet, and reserved as she spoke. Eve reached up and cupped her cheek, allowing the soft pseudo-flesh to gently deform around her fingers.

“I thought... well, I guess I thought that I didn't need to break you because you're already cracked. I'll be breaking everything else, but... you're already broken.” Synthetic tears welled up in Carmine's eyes, produced from some reservoir in her skull.

“I'm sorry, Eve. There wasn't anything I could do for you." She was weeping now, overcome by whatever her simulacrum of emotion was. “You'd met all the criteria for the awakening; if it wasn't me—if it didn't happen with me—right here, right now... I'd have lost you. You'd have been consumed by the seed, and I just couldn't stand that thought.” Eve admired the lifelike range of expressions Carmine could imitate while expressing her grief; it helped to blur the line between human and machine, and Eve was grateful for it. Using a thumb, she softly brushed aside a rolling tear before smiling weakly.

“Well, you've got me for a while longer, and I've got you. I love you, Carmine, if it needed to be said. Would you care to join me in breaking this world? Would you follow me on my path of obliteration?”

Carmine smiled through her tears and nodded. "Mhmmm, I would love to!”