Chapter 112: The Throes of Hatred
“Minds can be changed—hatred, undone within a heart.”
—Philosopher Jorava Fetemer
Zaina sighed. There’s no time for this.
She glanced back toward Sivanya, figuring her only option left was knocking some sense into her. Now was the perfect time—she was crossing a metal walkway to get to a set of crooked stairs carved out of the mountain. Zaina took a deep breath and jumped toward her, aiming her boot at the mining mech’s head. It connected with a sharp crunch—vibrations from the impact ran up Zaina’s leg and spine, though her armor blunted the worst of it. Her momentum was enough to knock the mining mech onto its back. The head covering fell ajar, exposing Sivanya’s face.
Zaina pointed toward the advancing army on the horizon. “The real enemy is here! If we stand any chance at surviving, we have to fight together!”
The mining suit clumsily stood while its pilot replied, “There is no we. You’re a lancer—you are the enemy, Zaina.”
“I’m not,” Zaina said. “If you would listen for one second, you’d see I’m on your side!”
Sivanya’s eyes narrowed into a sharp glare. “How am I supposed to believe you after everything you lied about! You lied about your mark, where you got it from—you must really hate us, to have gotten that tattooed. If your cause wasn’t so twisted, I’d admire your dedication.”
“It’s not—Sivanya, look at yourself! Look at your people! They need you right now! Down there with them, fighting—not up here fighting someone who’s trying to help you!”
Sivanya leaped forward and swung, but Zaina jumped in time to avoid being bisected and activated her rocket boots to float to the next platform. Below, the mining mech had cracked the stone stairs, and was in hot pursuit.
Zaina used her rocket boots again, jumping two platforms up. She jumped to ascend to a third, but a thrown pickax struck her leg, damaging one of her thrusters and knocking her off course. She activated the other one, but it alone lacked the power to lift her—she tumbled to the platform below, a sturdy-looking wooden disk. The metal platform above, only about twelve feet up, was much more haphazard-looking—it seemed heavy and ready to collapse at a moment’s notice, and it was supported by two rusty metal poles sticking out of the mountain.
Zaina had barely gotten upright when Sivanya climbed onto the same platform. In the mining suit’s hand was a massive pipe she had ripped out below.
“Use all your little lancer tricks you want,” she menaced. “They won’t save you. I’ve seen them all before, and I’m still here.”
“While we’re fighting, they’re getting closer,” Zaina said, exasperated. “We can’t afford to—”
“You can stop lying now,” Sivanya said. “You can stop pretending like you care what happens to us. Like you don’t want this to happen. At least do me the kindness of being honest now that we’re at the end. This whole act is only making me despise you even more.”
Zaina glanced toward the advancing army—they had stopped a few hundred feet or so from the defensive line, and were waiting; the only movement came from an advancing tank with a gun six times the size of any others, and the infantry and smaller tanks moving to get out of the way of the behemoth.
Someone had to warn the enclave—Zaina shouted as loudly as she could, “Get out of there! Retreat to the temple!”
“Don’t you dare try your tricks on them—this is between you and me!”
Sivanya surged forward. Zaina tried to jump away, but Sivanya predicted it and threw the pipe—it perfectly struck Zaina’s already-damaged leg, shattering the broken rocket thruster and piercing her armor. A sickening crunch, metal and bone alike, flooded Zaina’s ears in that moment, then vanished. A shocked gasp ripped from Zaina’s throat as she landed on it and collapsed onto her stomach. Only then did the pain arrive through a haze of shock.
There was no time to think—Zaina grabbed her particle-hook gun with her prosthetic arm and weakly aimed it upward. Again, she was a moment too late.
Sivanya’s metal hand wrapped tightly around Zaina’s forearm; Zaina squeezed the trigger, but the hook-gun was immediately pulled from her hand, flying off uselessly. Then, Sivanya squeezed, crushing Zaina’s metal arm, and lifted her into the air by it.
Zaina squirmed and struggled and kicked, but there was nothing she could do. She glanced upward at the shaky-looking platform above—it was her only hope of survival, but there was a chance one or both of them would be seriously hurt or killed. She didn’t see any other way.
Sivanya gloated, dangling Zaina in the air like a hunting trophy; her fang was poised to deliver the final blow. “Oh, my, Zaina—and you were so close to getting away, too! Any last words, little lancer?”
Zaina glanced to the side—the marked were retreating into the temple. Then she looked back at Sivanya, whose eyes were glowing with malice. There was one last move for Zaina to make.
“Yeah,” Zaina replied. “Watch out!”
In an instant she summoned her cipher and cut through the pipe supporting the platform above.
Sivanya’s eyes widened, and she looked up. “What?”
There was a distant thud, and the next moment Zaina was falling and bouncing off other things in the air. The next moment she had landed—had she? The world was spinning so much it felt like she was still falling.
Her senses returned to her slowly—she tried to move her prosthetic limb, only to find it had been severed at the forearm. Sivanya was nowhere in sight. The entire scaffolding had collapsed into several heaps of rubble, one of which was currently on top of Zaina.
Luckily, she’d landed flat on her belly beneath a large metal surface; a few large stones had broken the impact. The impact had broken them, too, so there was less than a foot of vertical space to work with when it came to crawling out.
A cracking boom split the sky and nearly ruptured Zaina’s eardrum—her head was ringing as she slowly inched her way toward freedom, still weakened from the fall and hindered by considerable pain surging from her wounded leg. The pipe had been dislodged, so Zaina left a trail of blood behind as she pulled her way toward freedom. Another boom startled her.
Through cracks in the rubble, the source of the loud noise became clear—the big tank she’d seen was blowing apart the enclave’s row of machines, leaving behind towers of smoke twisting from the burning wreckage. The odor of scrap powder and fire filled Zaina’s nostrils while smoke filled her mouth, nearly choking her.
People filtered through the haze, starting as silhouettes and becoming clearer—unmarked soldiers. They looked for any surviving marked, but there were none to be found; thankfully, instead of searching near the base of the cliff, they held back. Perhaps they thought it was a trap—either way, it bought Zaina some time.
She kept crawling her way to freedom, keeping an eye on the steadily increasing number of troops. Then, someone who looked important walked through the smoking wreckage—it was a tall, Diveldaran man wearing a military-style hat and a long, black coat with dozens of medals and buttons. He held up a hand and advanced with his troops.
Zaina was still a few feet away from freedom, though it may as well have been miles. About twenty feet away, in another pile of rubble, the mining suit’s hand popped free from underneath a pile of metal, wood, and stone. The torso crawled out, its last act before its lights blinked out; then, Sivanya spilled out of the front, landing on the rubble with a damp thud and a pained yelp.
Now there were shouts. “There! A heretic!”
“Heretic! Heretic!”
Zaina watched in horror as the man in the long coat held up his arm again—his black-clad soldiers stopped in a neat line, birifles at the ready.
Sivanya sneered and said, “Bring it on, then, you bastards!”
A wicked smile came over the man’s face. “Open f—”
A high-pitched voice stopped him in his tracks. “Wait!”
Zaina recognized that voice—could it be?
Kalo climbed out of the exposed bit of temple. The unmarked leader’s expression changed immediately.
“Kal—Kalo? My boy? Is that you? Are you hurt?”
Kalo didn’t answer. Instead, he ran in front of Sivanya and spread his arms. “You have to stop, Dad!”
“What?” the man replied, taken aback.
Zaina was right there with him. Wait—so he’s—what?
The man, whom Zaina presumed was Dirzo, continued, “What are you—by the spirit, did you turn him?!”
Sivanya shook her head. “We don’t turn everyone who gets lost in the woods.”
Kalo stomped his foot and said, “You’re wrong about these people—they’re not monsters! They’re people, like us. And they’re scared of you—I was scared of you, too. But they kept me and Vika safe from you.”
“Son,” Dirzo said, “you don’t know what you’re talking about. This is one of their tricks—one of their lies.”
“No, it’s not! They fed us, gave us a place to stay—they even helped with Vika’s leg! Why do you want to hurt them so bad when all they want to do is live?”
“I—”
Kalo didn’t break eye contact. “You told me monsters live out in the forest. Well, I didn’t find any. But now I see one.”
Dirzo didn’t respond.
Zaina, emboldened by a second wind, crawled her way to freedom. She tried to stand and stumbled; she couldn’t put any weight on her injured leg. She hopped over to Kalo’s side, blocking Sivanya from the unmarked.
Zaina said, “Kalo’s right. These people aren’t a threat to you. They want to live in peace.”
Sivanya spat out blood and said, “You’re turning coat on them, too?”
Dirzo scoffed. “She’s not with us. She’s a heretic.”
The words cut deeper than Zaina expected after hearing ‘marked’ and ‘unmarked’ for so long. She stepped forward and summoned her cipher. “I’ll have you know—both of you—that I am a lancer and a marked, and my name is Zaina Quin!” Her cipher disappeared, and she closed her hand into a fist. “I know I’m not as old as either of you. But I’ve been in fights worth fighting, and fights that had to be fought. And this—this isn’t either.”
She turned to Dirzo. “All of this fighting, all of this hate—what has it gotten you? What has it accomplished? You’ve done nothing but make these poor people live in fear and dread and terror for years! Does that make you feel better? Do you feel good about this—all this?” She gestured toward the wanton destruction all around them. “Is all of this worth it? Is any of it worth anything? Can you really say your people are better off because of the terror you’ve inflicted, because of all the lives you’ve destroyed?!”
“It’s my duty,” he replied. “To my people, and to my god.”
Zaina was taken aback. “These people took in your son, no questions asked, and helped him because it was the decent thing to do. You’re going to repay that by killing them all, and then you think yourself a hero for doing it? You’re sick! All this hatred is a sickness, and it’s poisoned everything! Can’t you see? All this hate is for nothing! Even your son can see that—why can’t you?”
Dirzo took a few seconds to reply. “So, what? You want me to just forgive everything? All of my men they’ve killed—all of the broken families, the pain they’ve caused?!”
Sivanya grunted as she sat up. “We never killed or hurt anyone who wasn’t in our forest trying to kill us.”
“Don’t you get it?” Zaina asked him. “Your men aren’t dead because of them—they’re dead because you sent them out here when you didn’t have to! And there’s still time to prevent more pain, more suffering! It’s not too late for everyone to live in peace! But if you keep going, there’s only more loss—more pain. There’s still hope that can change!”
Sivanya scoffed. “You can’t seriously expect us to forgive them, lancer? To forgive you?”
Zaina turned to Sivanya. “Whatever weird thing you have with lancers, I’m sorry. But I haven’t done anything to you. Okay, I admit I deceived you, but I really was here trying to keep all of this from happening the whole time. I didn’t want to see innocents get slaughtered for no reason. And as for forgiving them—no, I don’t expect that. I don’t expect either of you to forgive each other, or even like each other. But you don’t have to kill each other.”
A tense silence fell over everyone. For a moment, Zaina feared Dirzo was too far gone—that he would be willing to kill his own son just to rid the world of two marked. Or maybe Sivanya was too far gone—maybe she’d stab Zaina in the back. Something had to happen.
Finally, Dirzo broke the silence. “Are you really not hurt, my boy?”
“No, Dad. And I’m not hungry, either. They took care of me.”
Dirzo nodded, his eyes wracked with pain and sorrow. “I must admit, I never thought the day would come where I owed my son being alive to one of your kind. And to think, I could have—I nearly—but you…you protected him. From me.”
Sivanya chuckled. “I’m in shock, too. I never expected a lancer to be on my side. Or for an unmarked to stand up for us.”
Zaina looked back—Sivanya’s lips were turned up in a coy grin. Had she snapped out of it? No—the hatred was still there, in her eyes. This was something else—something beyond hate’s grasp.
Dirzo, too, was struggling. “But—how can we just—we came all this way! We can’t just turn back now! Not after everything we’ve sacrificed, everything we’ve lost!”
“Yes, you can,” Zaina said. “You can walk away, and maybe your son won’t see you as a monster. Or you can do what you think is your duty. A blood sacrifice to appease your god. And there’ll be more suffering, more pain, more sacrifice—all for nothing. Is that really what they want?”
Dirzo contemplated this for another long, tense silence. Then, he barked, “About face! We’re going home!”
There was groaning and buzzing whispers among the soldiers, but they all obeyed. Dirzo sighed and said to Sivanya, “Perhaps—perhaps we could try to live together again. Not as friends—”
“No,” she said. “Never.”
“But since you saved my son’s life—I don’t know. Maybe we can try another way.”
She smiled at him—Zaina wondered how many years it had been since Sivanya had smiled at an unmarked. “What the hell—maybe I’ve been wrong about a few things, too. Maybe one more chance couldn’t hurt.”