Born in Darkness Read online

  She yelped involuntarily, but suppressed any other noises of pain or discomfort as she twisted the giant's head sharply to the other side, then back the other direction one last time. The third attempt was met with a wet snapping sound and the giant instantly went limp.

  She pushed herself away and stood panting over its corpse. She felt of her ribs. The skin was torn, and bled freely. She probed the wound and the area around it, gritting her teeth against the pain. None of the sensations matched her dreams of broken bones.

  A chair crashed into the table, bounced over the top, and skidded to a stop next to where Victoria stood. She looked up, then dove to the side as another chair crashed down where she had just been. It landed on top of the giant she just killed, bounced, and clattered to a stop a few meters behind her. It hit something and rattled and Victoria spun in place. She knew nothing had been there before; even in the dim light she had been able to tell that much.

  When the second giant died, it dropped its rod and she lunged for it. Her lunge turned into a roll and she tucked the cold metal against her chest. Victoria rose and turned toward the last giant. It stood on the far side of the table, which itself now sat in the middle of the room at a sharp angle. Having seen what happened to the other one, or perhaps simply being smarter, it avoided the table altogether.

  With nothing between it and Victoria, their arena shrank to a scant five meter triangle. The corner of the room was only a short distance behind her back, and the table sat blocking the rest of the space from easy access.

  She hefted the rod. The whole weapon was longer than her forearm, but the blunt thrusting spike on the end fit into her hand well enough. The end that had been the giant's grip served as her striking surface, turning the weapon from a small spike to a heavy baton.

  Victoria watched the giant, using the baton as though it were a sight. Something about the weapon in her hand felt right. It moved easily, and seemed to float rather than drag. She had no real time to appreciate it, however, as the problem of the last giant remained. If its bearing was any indicator of whatever was going on inside its black suit and mask, being slammed into the floor only served to make it angry.

  It lunged for her, intending to strike with the spike in its fist. Victoria sidestepped with one foot, pivoting off the other, and let the giant's arm sail harmlessly through the air where she had just been standing. She lashed out with her own weapon, thrusting it into the monster's belly.

  It stumbled, bellowed, and swung again. This time, it aimed for her legs. Victoria completed her turn, brought her weapon close to her body with the point down, and intercepted the giant's swing. Against an enemy closer to her size and strength, that would have worked. Instead, its wrist slammed into her baton like a sledgehammer. She was able to deflect the spike away from her ribs, but only barely. The impact still wrenched her wrist in a painful circle.

  Victoria moved, coming forward and toward the giant rather than away from it. Its arms were long, but getting inside the first giant's reach had been the only thing to disrupt its strikes.

  The giant hammered on her again, going for her head, and she raised the baton to protect herself. The thing's weapon skidded off of hers and she used the force of the impact to twirl her wrist around and slam the baton into the side of the giant's helmet. The hard strike sent a jarring stab of pain through her wrist. The voice of her memories told Victoria the pain was only from where it had been twisted moments before.

  The faceplate shattered like the little one she first fought. Beneath, the features were different. Its face was flatter, squarer, and with only two eyes. Its skin was still the same oily white beneath. The same unnaturally green eyes ringed in red skin glared out at her.

  It swung downward again. This strike came with more force, but less precision than the first two. Victoria seized upon the opportunity, pivoting on both feet. She turned her body halfway around, shifted her weight onto her rear foot. She brought her baton up in an arc that struck the side of the giant's forearm, deflecting the attack. As the spike on the end of its rod slammed into the tile at her feet, she thrust out at its face with her own weapon. The baton crunched the bones on the receiving end of the attack, and it recoiled with a roar that shook her insides.

  Victoria shifted her balance again, grabbed the thing's knee, and flipped it onto its back. It hit the floor hard, harder than it had when its former compatriot threw it. As it fell, it struck out with its weapon. The move looked instinctual, rather than planned, but the metal rod aiming for her knees would do the same damage either way. She slipped backward; the blunt spike slashed across her thigh just above the knee, sending another jolt of pain through her body. It was forgotten a moment later as she moved forward again, toward the fallen giant.

  By the time she got back to it, the giant was already starting to rise. She planted her foot as it came to a sitting position, pivoted, and drove her other heel into the giant's forehead. It dropped back to the tile, immediately struggling to rise again.

  Victoria darted forward, mounting and pinning this one. Its neck was easier to snap than the other's had been. She knew now how much force was required to do the job. Her mind was a frustrating patchwork of ideas she had no context for, and memories she could not possibly have formed.

  She took out that frustration on the giant. Her hands found the ideal positions on the giant's head and she gave a single sharp twist that severed the spinal cord instantly. It twitched, went limp, and she dropped the head with a heavy thud. Just to make sure, Victoria jerked its helmet off and drove the heels of her hands against its face several times.

  She stood and took stock of herself. The wound on her ribs dripped blood. The giants' blunt weapons failed to pierce her skin with every other strike, but she could already feel the deep ache of bruised tissue. Her leg showed a bright red streak across the front, but no blood.

  It was the wound in her side that worried her. Her exertion in fighting the last giant had opened the hole wider and, while it was still a rather shallow wound, it bled heavily. Her entire left side from there down was covered in wet, red streaks. She knew had to stop the bleeding before shock set in.

  Victoria knelt, examining the giant's suit. Underneath the armored plates the suit itself seemed to be a tightly woven fabric, the same fabric that made the bag she dreamed about hiding. Her mind then went back to the first black-suited enemy—the smaller, unarmored attacker—that she fought. She remembered breaking its nose, but no blood ever leaked beyond his helmet. Either the fabric was water-tight or very absorbent. She moved the giant's arms around, searching for an unarmored spot, and spat on it. Her saliva instantly soaked into the fabric. The dark wet spot was gone a moment later and she felt of it, finding it dry to the touch. That gave her the answer she needed.

  None of the giants' suits would fit her. She stared at the fallen giant, contemplating for a moment the idea of simply taking a weapon and continuing as she was. A quick glance at her skin, already showing signs of bruising and cuts from the first few hellish minutes of her life told her how bad of an idea that was.

  Another memory, another body, flashed through her mind, bare skin torn apart by unseen teeth and claws.

  She stood and crossed the room to where the first of the giants fell. The handle of her knife jutted from its face. She withdrew it, returned to the body of her first attacker, and set to work cutting its suit apart into pieces large enough for her to wear.

  Underneath the heavy black fabric, she found the giants' skin to be the same shiny white as their faces. She was momentarily repulsed by the idea of wearing the same fabric that had been in contact with those corpses, but she saw little other option if she wanted to wear anything at all.

  She considered trying to disassemble the giants' armor, but her only tool was a knife. She found it profoundly unsuited to the task of cutting through the armor plates and left them alone.

  Every noise from her environment made Victoria jump, and each time she jumped like that, brandishing her baton at n
othing, she lost her place among the growing pile of fabric. After the third random creak from the walls, she sped up her efforts. She knew she needed to finish, but each passing second made it harder to calm her heart rate enough to concentrate properly.

  Rather than try to cut form-fitting pieces, she hurried through the simple process of cutting long strips, which she wound around her body as best she could. Victoria left her hands, head, elbows and knees bare. The fabric strips bunched too much there and interfered with her movements.

  Again the memory from before surfaced. Infected hands from cuts that went unwashed for too long grew black and bloated in her mind, the pain translating onto reality as hideous cramps along the bones of her hand. She took some of the thinner fabric from the back of the giants' suits and cut long strips, winding them around her wrist and between her fingers in a pattern she never remembered learning.

  Two of the giants' helmets were intact, but they were far too large. Even stuffed full of padding, they would have been dangerously heavy and bulky. Frustrated, and growing ever more nervous as time passed, she tossed them away from her.

  The closest she came to any sort of head covering was a long piece of the black fabric wrapped around her forehead to keep sweat out of her eyes. Where ever she was now, the air hung warm and wet around her, and sweat threatened to be a problem during her fight with the giants.

  Another few minutes of nervous searching turned up nothing of use in the room or on the corpses of the giants. A vague sense of remembered exploration pointed her in a direction she could only call forward, and with the metal baton raised high to defend or strike, Victoria slowly moved that way.

  She tried several doors as she passed, finding most of them locked. When she finally came upon a door she could open, Victoria did so with the baton high over head head, ready to smash anything on the other side.

  The room beyond was so dark that the dim area she was leaving seemed bright by comparison. She opened the door as far as it would go, but the light spilling into the darkness only went a short distance before the absolute blackness of the room beyond took over.

  She stepped inside, led by that feeling of direction. Above her, something creaked, and the door behind her shut. In an instant, the room plunged into total darkness. Something else hit the floor a few meters ahead of her with a dull thud.

  It growled.

  ***

  Nothing tried to kill her for more than a day as Victoria moved through the facility, aided by memories of the noises the green-eyes made as they prowled. Her guiding beacon, at least in her mind, was the memory of a previous pair of hands hiding that bag of food. The closer she came, the more she remembered, including that the room contained a source of water that did not kill those who drank from it.

  She found a different source of water that morning, but another vivid memory kept her away from it and the strange white creatures that swam in it. A slow end brought about by vomiting herself to death was not ideal.

  As she grew closer, she followed the scent of iron. The water she drank in her dreams smelled like metal and nothing lived in it. Except for one dream that ended with an ambush and her death, she always survived the experience.

  Unfortunately, this time seemed to be more like the one bad dream. When Victoria found the water, she also found a group of the small creatures, like the first one to attack her. They had no weapons of their own, but they fought so well as a team that they overwhelmed and tried to drown her.

  Her lungs began to burn as one of the creatures held her head underwater. Others held her arms and legs as well, and despite her thrashing, she was unable to free herself. As the burning in her lungs grew worse, her head began to throb. Her vision started to fade as well, first going gray at the edges. This death was different than the one she remembered. That one had been hands on her head, submersion, a quick turn, and then nothing. This was going to be drawn out, long, and quiet. The hands holding her head did not possess the strength to snap her neck.

  In her struggling, she took a deep gulp of the iron-rich water. The sudden influx of cold fluid rejuvenated her dehydrated and nearly asphyxiated brain, giving her enough of a momentary surge of energy to break free of their grip.

  She spun and twisted in the air, pulling one of them into the water with her. She knelt atop that one, subjecting it to the same end she nearly met.

  Another grabbed at her head and, with the help of the other two, started to force her face back down underwater. She slammed its faceplate into the edge of the basin, shattering its visor. It stepped away as she rose from the water, slinging great sprays of the life-giving liquid around the room as she attacked and killed the remaining green eyed creatures.

  Victoria spent the rest of that day in that room, steadily drinking more of the water as its gentle flow carried away the dirt and grit she left in it. A flash of memory, of drinking contaminated water followed by an agonizing death where her stomach seemed to be consuming itself from the inside, prompted her to remove the corpse of the green-eye as well. In that room, exactly where it was supposed to be, she found the bag made of green-eye fabric. Inside, she found nothing but crumbs and broken tools.

  Two small pieces of meat so dry that they could barely be called food sat at the bottom. Victoria tore at the hard meat voraciously, eating both in only a few seconds. The sudden influx of food only made the ache in her stomach worse.

  With hunger gnawing at her stomach, she crawled into the darkest corner of the room, under the tank of water, and closed her eyes.

  Even that proved to be too much for her nerves, and she awoke no more than a few minutes later. The water left puddled in the floor from her fight had yet to dry.

  Awake again, she took several long drinks from the fresh water flowing through the trough. Dirt and grime flowed away from her hands when she plunged them under the water's surface, and Victoria was careful to let it drift away before taking each subsequent drink.

  Her stomach cramped with the painful twists of hunger and she sat with her back against the cool metal of the water tank. That gave her a few minutes to inventory her personal possessions.

  Strapped to her shins were two long daggers, firmly secured in their scabbards. They came from the monsters that attacked in the dark after her fight with the giants. Six of them descended on her, but, like the giants, they failed at fighting as a team. She found them by their squabbling and the noises they made. They all died quickly, and Victoria claimed all six of their knives for herself.

  In the time that followed, she went back to the giants and used the knives to carve their armor into pieces she could use. She blunted two of the daggers and broke a third one by the time she had finished, but it was a day's effort well spent.

  At the bottom of her new bag, she found the remnants of a small box made from the green-eyes' armor. Seeing it, she remembered a dream where she used long needles to actually sew pieces of fabric together. That memory was fuzzy, coming out of a dream from a very long time ago.

  This box had been made for a different, unknown, purpose, but it would do. Flashes of memory and dream, all fuzzy and old, showed her hands that were much more patient and calm than some of the clearer memories had been. Those hands worked methodically, shaping tools out of trash. With that knowledge, Victoria used her fourth knife to whittle green-eye bones into new needles. For thread, she carefully unraveled long strips of green-eye fabric. She spent another day in the room with the water, cutting and sewing new clothing.

  The entire process was surreal. Even while making the needles, she remembered knowledge that she could never have gained on her own. Other pairs of hands all blurred together in her mind, but those strange hands had felt like her own as their memory guided her through the process of whittling the needles and sewing a suit of properly fitting clothing.

  None of their helmets fit her, and so she stitched together a rudimentary covering made of small pieces of armor sewn to a tight cap. It was uncomfortable, but so was death from head trauma.
r />   The water also solved her food issues, at least indirectly. The next morning, Victoria awoke to find several rats gnawing on the green-eye corpses. With difficulty, she was able to trap and kill many of them and, guided by events experienced in her dreams, she built a small fire to dry the meat. Another memory brought out the terrible pain caused by eating contaminated meat, and so she cooked the meat until it was dry and leathery.

  Another dream told her not use use their skin to hold water. She awoke from that memory cold and sweating, haunted by a painful, protracted demise that she felt as vividly as if it had been her own.

  What she needed, if she was going to survive, was a way to transport water. The green-eye fabric was too absorbent, which ruled out the only material she could work easily. Whatever her decision, she needed to leave soon. The green-eyes would likely come looking for water and, perhaps more importantly, she needed no mysterious memories to tell her that sharing a room with rotting corpses was a short route to a bad end.

  Victoria paced the little room, hoping the physical activity would stimulate her brain. The water stayed clean, with none of the murky rust she found from other, less safe sources. Hoping it had something to do with the trough itself, Victoria reached into the chilly water, feeling of the inside surface of the metal.

  She scratched at the slick coating on the inside, peeling some away with only minimal effort. The material that came away was pliable and grew softer the more she worked it with her fingers.

  Wax, said the voice in her head, and images flashed through her mind of candles and waterproof coatings. With her knife, Victoria scraped as much of it from the inside of the trough as possible. It would likely start rusting now, ruining the only clean water she had yet found, but if she could carry it with her, the effort would be worth the risk.

  She spent another day cutting and sewing bottles from the green-eye fabric, melting the wax to make them as waterproof as she could manage. They went into her bag with as much dried rat meat as she could save, and she hoisted the bag onto her shoulders, finally ready to move on.