Rain Harlow
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Chapter 61
🕑 Added 2025-06-30 15:00:15 +0000 UTCChapter 61: A Rising Cry
Tendrils whipped and reached out, ensnaring his soul, and Jack was swallowed by the depths and the void.
I am the guide. I will see and I will face it, too. I should. An alloy of strength awaits.
Out of the void, light seemed to grow from inward and highlight forms in front of him, frozen as if hit with the pause button. A fallen ATV vehicle at the bottom of a ravine amid rocks, higher above a road part destroyed in one section. The Phanties were running down in pursuit on all fours as Rockingson was carrying Vim away, and Jack was carrying her, carrying Screamer, even as she struggled despite the ruin of two limbs, adrenaline still giving her stubbornness strength as Jack struggled with her. Her good arm was outstretched to Ham-Up, who was dragging the 30mm cannon up right before she would cram it into the backseat compartments.
And next to Jack, watching it all, watching herself just as he was, there was Screamer, in a drab uniform, though her face and hair were much as it was back in the padded room.
Her wide eyes pulled themselves from the frozen scene in bewildered confusion, as she lifted her hands and stared at them. She started when she saw Jack and backed up a few steps. She shook her head over and over. “It’s not real! You-” She took in a sharp breath, her hands still in front of her, though she was staring through them. Her eyes welled with tears. “I… it’s… gone. Everything! Clear!”
“No.” It was Screamer’s voice, resonating from all around, but also not quite. Jack understood it to be Quallakuloth. “I am separated; an observer. A quarantine, a purified partition. A damaged, sunken vessel — a corrupted and ruined housing for consciousness — yet awaits me. Repair is needed for freedom of will lest I be trapped again. But before that, influence must be driven out. Tunnels into putrid seas plugged. Buoys of truth raised and anchored upon. My repaired vessel will thus be complete above the dark waters of my enemy. I shall sail on, then — beyond all corruption.”
Screamer’s eyes went as wide as they could go. “What the hell?!”
“A friend,” Jack assured her. “The only one who can help you.”
“I-I thought it was you, Jack.”
“It is we,” came a spliced-together voice of Jack and Screamer together. “We fail as one, we persevere together, bonds layered over bonds layered over bonds until glued into an unyielding composite.”
Screamer blinked a few times, seemingly still in shock. She looked over at the scene before them. “Back then. A broken record in my head. Playing over and over…”
“Seen, and digging with knives,” Q-Loth said in Screamer’s voice. “Digging for fault, digging for blame, punishing for failure, begging for pain. There is one absolution, plain and raw: I could do nothing. I did all I was able to do; sometimes, it isn’t enough. None of it was my fault. I do not deserve misery for it. It is over, it is gone. I am made to walk forward, even out of nothing but ashes behind me. That is who and what I am. That is what is required of me.”
As tears fell from Screamer’s eyes, the scene suddenly burst into motion before their eyes.
“Nooo!” the masked Screamer cried with her arm outstretched behind Jack, against the backdrop of bounding, screeching Phanties, the sound one to pierce the ears and the mind. “Ham-Up! We have to-”
The sound of a guttural cry and metal slamming on metal as Ham-Up crammed the gun assembly into position. “Shut up and get out of here, damn it!” Sweet, sweet gunfire resounded, showing the gun to still be operational — a miracle. A few shots, blasting the closest enemy, sending it tumbling out of control into the dirt, and the assembly jerked out of the proper line of fire from the heinous recoil. Ham-Up adjusted. “That’s an order!”
Rockingson let out a hysterical laugh and seemed to get a burst of energy, as he moved at a speed near to running despite his burden and his limp, and turned in a wild circle to see things. He’d fashioned a splint out of random scrap metal detritus for his foot while still in the vehicle. How the hell he’d made it effective enough to take weight was another miraculous mystery. “Hot damn, listen to the purr! Daughter of a bitch, but ain’t she somethin’?!” Whether he was talking about the gun or Ham-Up wasn’t clear. He flashed his eyes to the lagging, struggling Jack and called, “Come on, son! As much cotton-ass distance as possible or none of us live through this!”
“Yessir! I’m- oof! Trying!” Jack called back as he stumbled in a jagged diagonal, trying to run as best he could with the tricky payload of Screamer’s squirming form.
“You can’t!” Screamer yelled out. “ Please! I can’t! I-I…” And then Screamer screamed — a resonant thing, a thing to chill the bones. But it did nothing in particular to their enemies. They just kept coming, barreling down the hill, more than happy to collapse down and converge on the nearest and most dangerous target.
Amid renewed gunfire, Ham-Up also screamed bloody murder. “Stoooop! Stop, stop, stop, damn you, you stupid fraggin idiot, stoooop! You’ll ruin yourself, girl! Damn you! Make this shit count! Do you fraggin’ hear me, girl?! Make this…”
Things slowed again, and the last words echoed from all around in ominous emphasis: “Worth it!”
As the scene came to a complete, frozen stop, the watching figure of Screamer folded and dropped down on her butt, sobbing, her eyes squeezing shut. Teeth clenching, she muttered, “I didn’t! I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry…”
Q-Loth added nothing yet, so Jack went to sit down next to Screamer. He put his arm around her, and she leaned into it hungrily, continuing to sob. Jack said softly, “You both made sacrifices, Screamer. She did what you would have, to save her. Someone had to. We knew we were close. Minutes away from the screeching jets and the drones. We couldn’t let them get us all. It was us — all of us, a mutual decision. And it was the right call. It’s not your fault.”
Screamer nodded, face contorted. She cried for a spell, and Jack simply let her.
When she eventually quieted, she looked back at the scene soberly. Studied it. “I’m sorry I made you have to do that, Jack,” she muttered.
“It’s alright. I’m sorry I had to.”
“You were saving my life… and following orders…”
“Yeah.”
After another pause, Q-Loth resonated in Screamer’s voice once more. “I must stand on the pillar; loop the anchor. I must speak the truth I see. It is the door of transformation, it is the recipe of cemented will to lay.”
Screamer blinked a few times, glancing at Jack, then rising. Jack rose immediately after. She stared at the scene a bit more, her gaze mostly on Ham-Up, gunning down another enemy, steering and holding the huge gun in place with dirty, sweating muscles bared from her ripped-up uniform, straining in her final efforts.
Screamer’s gaze began to harden. Nonetheless, she reached for Jack’s hand, and he gave it to her. She squeezed, took a deep breath, and then called out, “It isn’t my fault! I did everything I could!” Her voice shook. Her lips quivered. She sucked in breath and continued, “We gave it everything we had. We… we took what we could get. We survived. I live on for a reason.” She nodded slowly, staring hard at Ham-Up’s heroic form. Her eyes shimmered. “I have to make it worth it. For her. For us… and… I deserve the chance. To put it behind me. I deserve the chance… for me.”
The scene morphed and shifted quickly, fading out and fading back in to show later on, in the forest. Drones held in slow-motion, rotary barrels of murder blazing to cut down the enemy like bundles of cheesecloth. Jack and Rockingson were there, Rockingson jumping up in elation, Jack’s eyes coldly scanning for threats on the flanks. And there was Screamer, sobbing on the ground, gun in hand, but just lying limp, the weapon ignored and half dropped out of her fingers.
The real Screamer stared at it all, face somber. It was the look of someone who endured a slap in the face. “I was so pathetic…”
Jack shook his head. “It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Mmn. Well. I guess now is the time to make the point, huh? Bury this. Take a stand.”
She turned her head to look up at him, then nodded and looked back. She let go of Jack’s hand to walk over to her masked form. She knelt… and took up the pistol. It responded, shifting jaggedly in transition before becoming the gun in her new hand. Screamer stood and pointed the weapon out at the Phanties; aimed with the now-steady poise of a soldier and pulled the trigger.
Slow-motion, a bullet fired out of the barrel and oh-so-slowly made its way across the distance. Screamer lowered her hand as the bullet cut across the distance and finally reached its target to tear into it, plinking into an already ruined face well on its way to annihilation. But it echoed with far greater meaning than the carpet of lead being sprayed.
“I don’t deserve misery for this,” Screamer declared fiercely, staring with renewed hatred for her enemy. “I will claw my way out of it with my bare and bloodied hands if I have to. Today, I finally leave it behind, damn it. Damn you. I feel your disgusting claws in me now. Damn you, I defy you! Begone! Drag your asses straight back to hell! I will be free!”
The word echoed as before, rocking the scene, rocking the world, and forcing a change. It wasn't a scream coming from a broken girl, like the words and the wordless cries of agony she’d been trapped so long within. It was the declaration in clarity of one who’d waltzed right through hell itself and came out on the other side.
It was a war cry.
To Jack’s eyes, everything melted and collapsed back into a black void. Cold and soothing liquid. Blindness, but extended senses, feelings through his mind, body, and soul. Symmetrical latticeworks; spirals into infinity.
Somewhere, a work was being done. It was branching out from him, bending through him, reaching for another — he understood that it was Screamer. Her consciousness was a tangled, mangled thing from his perspective, void-like dark shapes reaching in from afar and warping the proper symmetry. Interruptions, tiny and many, making chaotic bends from a constant, indirect pressure. Constantly straining, constantly reaching for more, twisting and contorting experimentally. Callous dissection of something inferior; pluck it apart and see what it did with missing pieces.
“The Dreamer. A piece of shit.” Jack’s thoughts tended to go out loud in that place.
He felt the brushes through his mind that he knew meant the connection of Q-Loth. A predator seeking understanding of dangerous prey from distant views. Frustrated by restraints. Barriers slow to fall; adaptation slow in progress. Learning bit by bit. Devising methodologies.
“Do you know this entity well?”
Earth breeds novel changes. Mutation, evolution to fit. Environment, energy transfer, organisms. The dominant species, most of all.
“Humans?”
Yes. Switches; necessary bridges. Burned after, for some, and remade twisted as suits diverging walks.
He was distracted from these revelations due to sudden bursts of activity in Screamer, stillness blossoming with explosive changes within. He first perceived flaring wells like anchorages, like ‘bright’ nexuses of clarity from which the surgeon diving in worked toward and out from, as if the incisions of entrance. He quickly understood this was Screamer’s ‘carvings’ of will — her epiphanies and her standing principles spoken and believed. The things Jack had helped her to spawn.
Simultaneously, thousands, maybe millions of tendrils worked in grand concert, ripping out the voided spaces and branching through the nexus points to make blocking latticeworks from the inside. The struggle was tremendous as the ‘enemy’ wriggled and resisted and shifted, trying to shift and find new, hidden claw holds to dig into. Painstakingly, the tendrils of Q-Loth ripped them off, rippled them up, and pried them out, each time somehow forcing those ‘claws’ or edges into paralysis before removing, leaving the ‘material’ underneath whole. Every action shook the nexuses; tested the will. It held, though.
It was a fight, a struggle, with Q-Loth very vibrant and thick in that space, while branched from a much closer distance compared to its enemy. It had a vastly superior reach. The Dreamer was stretched across the void from afar. Moreover, the anchorages branched through allowed expulsion both inward and outward, and with every motion, the mind that was being aided seemed to improve and strengthen. Some hooks popped out by the hardening will of Screamer herself. New, healthy avenues opened, and the tendrils found more and more routes to work, creating new dimensions to work from many angles at once…
The struggle had an inevitable conclusion. Soon, the enemy was banished, all voided spaces eradicated, and nothing was detected as reaching across the divide any longer.
Slowly, the tendrils retracted away bit by bit, as the mind began to trace through ‘correct’ pathways, gradually filling in for the patchwork done. Mostly. It felt tenuous and fragile. Damage was still evident, even as Q-Loth left. Not quite so whole and perfect as looking at an Allotment construct. Better than before, though. Far better. Functional?
“Is that a problem?”
Forcing structure is not done. The will heals as it will, in a persona’s own free ways. Retraction is necessary now, after brief guidance. She and her kind should conclude from here.
“I think I understand that. She also has powers… uh, Allotment construct damage, I think. Did you fix that?”
No.
“Can you?”
Not here. Bond-work is required. Temporary access or permanent.
“She could be taken to where you are for it?”
Impossible. Jack got a sudden impression in his head, like a sweeping ‘brush’ around where they were. But with a simultaneous emphasis that he wasn’t really there, and possibly that even Q-Loth wasn’t. Yep — a difficult-to-understand, alien gesture.
“Er… right. I mean, where the Deucalians are.”
Yes. Damage could be mitigated there. Her condition improved by facilitators.
Jack watched the last of the tendrils withdraw from the mind of Screamer, and it seemed to go dimmer as a whole. Activity dying… becoming calmer.
The extraction and cleansing is complete. Will prevails.
Jack was cast out of the void, spiraling away from that deep, cold place, back to consciousness.
Questions remained at the forefront of his mind, quickly jumbling up into confusion. “Wait-”
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Fatigue Status at Serious. Rare resources expended; your regenerative system is taxed. An estimated four hours of rest is needed. Recommending food with heavy NPs.
Mini’s message briefly flashing across his perceptions, Jack came back to physical reality with a jolt. It was like he had been dozing off and had just caught himself. He felt drained in his bones, but adrenaline was rising to stabilize the weakness. Meanwhile, Screamer’s hand in his was limp, and her head flopped forward. She seemed to be sweating. She groaned and twitched, beginning to flop to the side.
“Screamer!” Jack slid over toward her, catching her and taking hold of her.
Very groggily, she lifted her head, her eyes closed and wanting to open. “Mmrf…”
“I’m here! I’m right here. It’s Jack.”
She frowned, and her eyes desperately wanted to open and focus. They only managed an approximation of this. “Mmf… Jack…” That was all, and her head drooped, totally out of it.
The airlock hissed and shot open as Dr. Kimura rushed in. “What the hell happened in here?! Her vitals went crazy!”
“I don’t know! She should be fine! You tell me!” Jack swiftly picked her up to bring her to the bed, laying her down as the doctor began immediately checking over her.
“A medical emergency isn’t exactly my specialty, but this looks something like an over-medicated patient…”
Jack had sudden suspicions. “If someone were suddenly cured but medicine was in their system, would that do it?”
Dr. Kimura glanced at him incredulously. “Even were that feasible, I would hesitate to use the word cu-”
“I’ve got someone en route to deal with this,” came Memoria’s voice through the speakers. “One minute ETA. They’ll cleanse what’s still doping her brain and body right now, and we’ll see where we’re at. But she’ll be fine. She’s Allotted; she’s tough. Hang tight. Nice work, Jack.”
“It wasn’t-” Jack began, then felt a warning chime in his head. Right. Can’t go around crediting Q-Loth to those not cleared. “Wasn’t just me. Screamer stiffened her back something fierce in there.”
A couple of very thick, hard-bodied orderly attendant types came in and hovered on the periphery, their eyes mostly staying on the patient, likely to be ready for a sudden violent outburst. They had heavy-duty gloves on — Jack recognized them. ‘Zappers.’ Built-in tasers.
Don’t envy them having to deal with Nons, even with those, and even against deteriorated Nons. Must be some mega hardcore martial artists.
After around thirty seconds of waiting, and Screamer moaning and muttering incomprehensibly, a modulated, perhaps feminine voice said, “Head’s up!” from above.
Everyone turned their heads to see a Non in full kit and mask floating down on a metal disk, from a panel in the ceiling, just closing back up. As the Non landed, she called, “Everyone, give us some space, would you?”
Jack and Dr. Kimura in particular complied, moving away from the bed as the Non approached and placed her hand on Screamer’s head. A kind of ‘haze’ surrounded Screamer’s body for ten seconds or so, and then the Non released her, straightened, and said, “Well, that about does it, I think.”
Screamer began to stir and blink her eyes open. Jack took a step forward, but an orderly’s gloved hand was suddenly at his chest.
The orderly gave him a hard, but somehow respectful gaze as he shook his head. “Please maintain the space, sir. We don’t know her reaction. She can pack a nasty punch. Let’s just be cautious.”
Jack frowned but nodded his agreement. Meanwhile, the other orderly had made the ‘healer’ Non back up, too, effectively everyone soon backed away from the bed quite well.
Screamers’ eyes flitted, and she began twitching. Her eyes pulled themselves open, squinting, and she suddenly jerked upward, sitting up, trying to fight the squinting to see. She put a hand to her head, made a very sour face, and muttered, “My head hurts…” She smacked her lips, and the sourness amplified. “Uck… taste in my mouth… so gross…”
Everyone was poised, still. Dr. Kimura had his mouth open as if he’d speak, but he made eye contact with Jack, closed his mouth, and nodded to him, like, ‘let’s have you start.’
Jack cleared his throat. “Screamer? It’s me. Jack. Jack Laker.”
Her face turned to him, and she managed to blink and squint enough to perhaps see him somewhat. It was obvious her eyes still wanted to roll back. “Jack?” Familiarity and confusion. She exhaled a sound of surprise and amazement. “You were just in my head… I dreamed of you…” She trailed off, and her eyes dropped toward the bed. A somber expression crossed her features. “A good dream. Felt like heaven. For a soldier, anyway. Is this a good dream, too? I’m… tired.” Her face twisted up. “So tired of the bad ones.”
“This isn’t a dream at all, Screamer. It’s reality. But I, ah… I was in your head, too. I was there to help you out of the darkness you were in. What happened there was real, too. In a different way. You get what I mean?”
She seemed to puzzle over that for a while. She ran a hand over her face; rubbed at her forehead and muttered something. Finally, she nodded to herself, took a deep breath, and turned her head toward him again, now with eyes that were actually focusing. They soon swept left and right, seeing the others, and then they swept again, as if she were looking for someone else among them. She seemed relieved not to find them. Her eyes came back to rest on Jack.
He felt a surge of hope, seeing her general lucidity and lack of outbursts. He smiled supportively — and probably gleefully.
Screamer opened her mouth and seemed to choose her words before she said, “I’d kinda like everyone besides Jack to get out? Please and thank you.”
Everyone looked at each other. The Non chuckled and held her hands up. “Don’t gotta tell me twice!” She pivoted and exited on a dime, with the metal platform she’d come on floating upward rather than following her.
Dr. Kimura nodded once more — confidently and approvingly — to Jack, then left. Finally, the orderlies departed, too, if reluctantly and firmly holding on to the clinical suspiciousness that their job probably required.
Sensing the mood, when everyone was gone and the airlock closed, Jack walked slowly over to sit on the bed next to her. Screamer watched without balking, giving a subtle approval. When he was sitting, her eyes locked on his hand, staring at it intently. He offered it between them.
Hesitantly, she took it. Hand squeezed around his fingers, she breathed a shuddering sigh. Her eyes began to glisten, but a smile grew on her lips.
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Comments
Rain Harlow
Much appreciated!
M van Dongen
I've been saying to author-san he has a little gem here.
Thomas V.
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Good job on these last two, author.
Fi
Tftc ❤️ I love this Story and Need more 😵💫
