Sorrow's Fall Read online

  “Really?” Sorrow smiled, still looking down, “where?”

  “At The Finger,” he said.

  Sorrow frowned. She knew The Finger was the other major city on this planet, headed by Shu, but she knew little else about it, other than it was a place Etienne would have found highly amusing, just for its name. Thinking of her French friend, she shook her head. She missed him already but hoped he was enjoying a well-earned rest on Avalona with a flock of feathered women to warm his bed. She hoped he found one who would appreciate his dirty sense of humour, as she did.

  “There are women there?” she asked Jury now, concentrating on his statement. “But Judgment said he had never seen a woman before me.”

  “They are not like you,” the boy muttered, plucking at his uniform and frowning.

  “Oh?”

  “They do not have,” he pointed to Sorrow’s breasts, just visible under the waterline.

  “Breasts?”

  “Skin.”

  ‘No skin? What the fuck?’

  “Huh,” Sorrow frowned, considering how to phrase her next million questions, “how do you know they are women?”

  “One birthed me,” the boy said, frowning.

  “Your mother?”

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged, “but I was birthed.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Sorrow laughed. She was about to ask him more when they were interrupted.

  “Enough, Jury,” a deep voice said from the doorway.

  Sorrow looked up, surprised, to see another Earthborn standing in the doorway. He was nude and Sorrow immediately moved to cover her own nakedness, only partially hidden by the bubbly water, with the boy’s suit.

  “Go,” the man said to Jury, who nodded and scurried away, giving Sorrow a worried look as he left.

  “Ah, you can have the pool,” Sorrow smiled to the newcomer, “I was just leaving.”

  “Stay where you are,” he said, his dark eyes roaming her face, and lower as he sauntered closer and stared down at her.

  “Thanks, but I’m going to become a prune if I don’t get out.”

  “And this is what we fight for?” the man snorted, waving his hand at her body.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Judgment leads us in this revolution to free the planets, to overthrow the gods so that we can live as he says was intended, man and woman together. He tells us you are bountiful creatures, that you have feelings; empathy, love – things bred out of us. He tells us you are worth the battle – if this is so, show me.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sorrow frowned, rising from the water and reaching for her wet suit.

  She sighed as he casually pushed her suit back into the water with his foot.

  “Show me,” he said again.

  “What do you want to see?”

  “What it is that Judgment saw? What you did to him, or with him, that convinced him you are worth questioning everything.”

  “I fought beside Judgment for a year,” Sorrow said quietly, her voice firm, “I watched his back, he watched mine. We became friends. And you are misinformed if you think this revolution is for me or for womankind. You, Judgment, Truth, all of you are the very abominations you fight to destroy – you are half-god, half-human. Shu and Tefnut, your leaders, they lied to you when they said you were a superior race, and that those you destroy are lesser beings – they are all victims of the gods’ genetic experiments and cross-breeding – as are you, as am I.”

  As she said this, she noticed his body had stirred at the sight of her nakedness, and she quickly flicked her eyes away from his torpid member. His chest, like Judgment’s, was heavily muscled, perhaps a little more so that her former fighting partner’s, but just as deeply crisscrossed in scars, including the scar across his chest where his second heart had been removed. He had obviously fought in many battles. She wondered how long he had been part of the resistance, and if he was the only one questioning the reason behind it, now she had materialised. She realised she might have more hearts and minds to win over than the heart of a six-year-old boy.

  “Show me,” he said again, breaching the distance between them and reaching for her.

  She stood still as his hands gripped her shoulders, and he stared with lust-filled eyes at her face.

  “Do you even know what it is you want?” she asked quietly, seeing the confusion in his eyes. She knew Judgment had known nothing about women, or sex until that day by the stream on Avalona. The fact that this man was aroused meant he was attracted to her, clearly, but he obviously had no idea what to do with his bulging equipment.

  “I,” he shook his head, “show me.”

  Sorrow sighed.

  “I’m only going to say this once,” she said quietly, looking him in the eye. “You need to take your hands off me.”

  He moved his hands down, from her shoulders to her breasts, and squeezed them, hard.

  “Seriously?” Sorrow snorted, “what is it with you men and breasts?”

  “Show me,” he demanded.

  “Ok,” she sighed, bringing her knee up forcefully into his groin.

  He gasped and bent over, his hands going to his crotch, and she brought her knee up again, this time into his face. He bellowed and reeled back, and she knocked his feet out from under him with a well-timed sweep of her own. As he landed on the hard, rock edge of the pond, she kicked him once more, tipping him into the pool.

  She watched him moan, blood pouring from his nose, as he rolled in the water, clutching his bruised genitals.

  “Seen enough?” she asked blandly, leaning forward and fetching her suit from where it floated on the surface.

  “I think he has,” a deep voice said from the shadows.

  Sorrow looked up to see Judgment enter, Ib and Jury close on his heels.

  “Judge, I thought you would be busy at The Fist for days.”

  “A quick trip, just to ascertain what medical supplies I might need to procure for the resistance,” he murmured, looking from the man in the pond and back to Sorrow as she hastily donned her still-dripping suit.

  “I also wanted to ensure you were settling in. That all was well – and to tell you to stay hidden. The ruse to use you as bait worked, but there are still troops out looking for you since your body was not among those left strewn in front of the portals. I intend to kill them all so that no word of your existence leaks back to The Fist, but this mop-up may take a few days.”

  “Right. Well, everything is fine here. No worries,” Sorrow said ruefully, watching her victim roll in the water clutching himself, his face a mask of pain and anger.

  “Good,” Judgment sighed, “come, we have much to discuss. It is meal-time. Will you join me in my quarters?”

  Sorrow nodded but paused before leaving.

  “Wait,” she said.

  Turning, she walked back to the man in the pond and extended her hand to him.

  “Come on. You will need some plaster on that nose; I imagine it is broken.”

  The man gave her a deadly look and ignored her hand, but rose from the pool as bid.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” Sorrow said, cocking her head to one side and considering him.

  Brushing past her, he moved to the doorway, where Judgment stood, blocking his exit.

  “Do we need to talk about this, Requiem?”

  “We do not.”

  “Your questions were answered?”

  “They were.”

  Judgment nodded and let the man leave.

  Sorrow watched him go, shaking her head.

  “I suppose that was to be expected,” she said quietly, “I guess I will need to prove myself to your resistance before they can see me as one of them.”

  “You will never be one of them,” Judgment murmured, “you are more than the sum of all of us combined.”

  As he said this, Ib turned big, black intelligent eyes on Sorrow.

  She shook her head.

  “We are partners, Judge, equals.”

  “You are a woman,
” Jury said quietly.

  “Yes,” Sorrow laughed, “and a doctor – I need to fix that man’s nose.”

  Judgment nodded.

  “I’ll lead you to the infirmary.”

  She patted Jury on the head as she followed Judgment out; she didn’t attempt the same with Ib, something in his eyes told her, not yet.

  His quarters were really just a divided off section of the larger cavern, but the thick material walls afforded a rare moment of privacy away from curious eyes, as she sat alone with Judge and ate the rudimentary oat and berry biscuit provided.

  “He did not deserve your attention, medical or otherwise,” Judgment said, seeing Sorrow frown at some of the man’s blood on her newly cleaned uniform.

  “I hurt him. I needed to fix him,” she said, shrugging, “he didn’t really even know what he wanted.”

  “No,” he shook his head, “neither did I until that day by the stream. But I want it very much now. I think of it often.”

  “Judge,” Sorrow frowned, “we won’t be doing that again.”

  He smiled.

  “The portals are closed for another twelve months. We resume our guerrilla attacks on the establishment. But we have time now; the pressure is off for us to jump straight into battle. We have time.”

  “Judge, time or no, we won’t be having sex again,” she shook her head and threw her hands up in exasperation at his confused expression, “that, sex, it is a physical thing men and women do together, yes, and it is fun, yes, but it is also more than that – it involves feelings, emotions, it involves trust.”

  Even as she said this, Sorrow felt guilty. Because she had enjoyed sex with Khalili without any feelings being involved. She had wanted a physical release, an escape from the harsh way of life, a purely physical domination of her memories of Anhur. Telling Judgement that sex was other than this was, in some ways, simply not true. But he needed to hear it because she no longer wanted him that way.

  “I felt things,” he said, nodding, “I want to feel that again – I want you to trust me again. I will make it so.”

  “Judge, I trusted you enough to follow you to this godforsaken shithole. But I didn’t come here to fuck you. I came here to help you defeat the Gharial and free you and your followers so that you can live a life where relationships with the opposite sex can be possible. To free you from war, from living like a robot created for a single purpose. I want to heal this planet and free those that inhabit it from the tyranny of the gods. Don’t misinterpret my agreeing to come here, please.”

  “I understand,” he nodded solemnly, “but still, I want to fuck with you.”

  Sorrow sighed.

  “You never told me,” she smiled gently, changing the subject, “how is it that Ib lived after you didn’t return from your mission on Heaven?”

  “Ib feels what I feel, he knows my thoughts,” he said, carefully thinking through his words, “he left The Fist and hid here, in these caves. He was waiting for me when I jumped back through the portal from Avalona.”

  “Wait,” Sorrow shook her head, “he feels everything you feel? Like he was living through it?”

  “Yes. It is how we feel each other’s pain.”

  “And pleasure?” Sorrow grimaced, beginning to feel like there had been another party present to the very private moment she had shared with Judge by the stream that day.

  “Yes.”

  “Then,” she leaned back and set her meal aside for the moment, “why doesn’t he like me?”

  “He likes you,” Judgment said, looking away and picking up a drink.

  “Judge,” she lowered her voice ominously.

  “He feels you are clouding my ability to think clearly,” he conceded, shrugging, “he feels you are a threat and a risk to our insurrection; he says you look like one of the gods. He does not trust you.”

  “Huh,” Sorrow took the proffered drink and sipped the cool water, “is that why you didn’t tell me the whole plan before our attack yesterday?”

  Judgment was silent.

  “Because he is right to a certain extent,” she said firmly, “I would not have sacrificed planets to this cause, and I would not have sacrificed Truth. He seemed like a good man, if he was your second in command, he must have been a good leader.”

  “He was.”

  “Then, why?”

  “He was not planned to blow the portal; he undertook the task left by another.”

  Sorrow was silent for a minute.

  “Requiem?”

  “Yes.”

  Sorrow frowned, disturbed, disturbed and upset that her arrival had cost a good man his life, although, she conceded, either way one of Judgement’s team was going to die to close the portal. Another of his plans that she simply could not agree with. Perhaps he had known that too, or perhaps Ib had.

  “Judge, the portal you blew up today,” she swallowed hard, “you did that for me, didn’t you?”

  “Any planet that could birth such a creature as you,” he said gently, “must be saved. But no, I did not do it just for you. The Gharial will not invade Earth; it is the will of Shu and Tefnut that this planet is set aside for some future grand plan. I have not impacted greatly on that plan, of course, because portals on every planet lead there – but I have stopped the importation of humans directly here for at least the next twelve months – they will have to hop from the Earth portal to another planet and then into here if more are to come next year.”

  “This is a regular occurrence?”

  “Every year,” he nods.

  “You said you had never seen a woman before me, and yet the Earth portal is bringing in people, humans. Surely women have come through?”

  “I have never seen one. Men are regularly delivered and sent to The Finger – those that are selected stay, those that are not, return to the cages for The Games and the Hunt, or to the kitchens of The Fist.

  “To cook?”

  “To become dinner,” he chuckled.

  “Oh my God, you never told me…”

  “We don’t eat them,” he snorted, “the Gharial do. They eat only meat, you know this, Sorrow – where else do you think we would get it, on a barren, desert planet such as this. We hunted out the locals centuries ago – all the food must be imported through the portals or from nearby planets by ship.”

  “So, destroying the Earth portal is another key to weakening those that are left here – to stop the growth of the Gharial armies?”

  “It will slow it, but not stop it. The Earth provides meat and salt. But it is but one harvest planet – there are many. I have targeted them specifically, yes, when I have blown the portals. The planets that the armies invade now each have the ability to become food bowls or mining colonies – each has a different reason for invasion.”

  “What was the reason behind Heaven and Avalona?”

  “Both had something the gods wanted; Heaven had an abundance of Earthborn; the gods want to destroy this race. Avalona was to have held a large population of gods, left behind from the original settlement – this was not the case. The gods who rule here do not care that the Angels survived the original invasion; they believed the Chosen to be doomed due to the miasma and understood all the Winged were killed at birth. So, it was no great hardship to abandon that planet – I thought I told you this.”

  “No,” Sorrow shook her head, “you didn’t. I don’t understand. What would Shu and Tefnut want with other gods?”

  “They wanted to return them here, to their centre of power, where they could join with the other gods they have collected over the aeons; they want to rule them.”

  “There are other gods here?”

  “Many.”

  “Where?”

  “The Finger.”

  “Have you seen them?”

  “No.”

  “Huh.”

  Sorrow bit into the oat biscuit to think through this information. If Shu and Tefnut were building their own little empire of gods, they must have an ulterior motive beyond ruling the
m – both were insane. Clearly, something else must be at play. And surely the gods were not happy living on a barren wasteland of a planet. No, the twins must be planning to move them all at some stage – but where? Earth?

  “So, the food for the gods, they are all vegetarian, like us, it must come from other planets too?”

  “I think it must, I am not certain, but the quantities that are brought in during the week the portals are open is phenomenal. I know of no production facilities on this planet. Water is pumped from underground, but few plants can survive the lack of oxygen.”

  “Yes, it is difficult to breathe here, not impossible when you get used to it, but I do feel light-headed much of the time when I’m outside – it is better in here though. I imagine it is because the pools are constantly bubbling oxygen.”

  “Yes, it is one of the reasons we chose this cavern. Its size, location and accessibility via underground tunnels also.”

  “Of course. So are The Fist and The Finger linked via tunnels?”

  “The Fist, yes, but none of us have attempted to find a way to The Finger.”

  “Why not?”

  “We have no reason to go there. And,” he paused, “if we were to admit fear, I would say none of us wants to ever return to the place that we left when we were four. We have no memory of our time there, only a lasting dread.”

  “Interesting,” Sorrow nodded, “do you think the gods altered your memories in some way?”

  “I do not know or care,” he said, his tone indicating he did not wish to discuss this.

  Sorrow changed tack.

  “So, what happens to the male slaves who stay at The Finger?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Jury said he remembers he was birthed by a woman, but she did not have skin.”

  Judge looked irritable at the conversation turning back towards The Finger.

  “I do not know.”

  “Judge?” she focussed her attention on the man before her as he shifted uncomfortably where he sat.

  “I said I do not know. Enough now, Sorrow. I must return to my garrison and finish my report to my superiors.”

  Sorrow said nothing. She could tell she had upset him with her questions, but how or why, she wasn’t sure. The fact that he had shared so much information already, though, was a positive sign. On Avalona he was reticent to talk at all.