One Last Breath

By Sharon T. Rose

Sylenn Jenfsen continues to balance the alien living in her mind with the genetic alterations that make her a Descendant. The War for the planet Alluvia continues, but Sylenn is determined to find a better way to fight ... and finish it.

Jerell Graig has agreed to work for the Descendants to publish their deeds for the world to know. He soon learns that the Descendants are anything but the remote figures of planetary defense he's always believed them to be.

Things are changing for the Descendants and the people of Alluvia, and change is seldom easy. The War has endured for millennia, but it must come to an end. The time of secrecy is over, but what will the truth do to those set in their ways?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sharon T. Rose
• Release date: Mar 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476110691

Sharon T. Rose

Sharon grew up in the military, which did its level best to turn her into a highly-trained and functional contributor to Society. Being of the independent sort, Sharon rebelled and ran away to live under a rock, where she still resides. After frittering away some years with college degrees and corporate jobs in an attempt to amuse herself, she finally overthrew the last vestiges of her upbringing and became a Writer. Having attained this exalted state, she nevertheless persists in seeking new forms of diversion, primarily by reading online comics, weblit, spamming her Twitter feed, and ignoring social responsibilities.

Book preview

One Last Breath

Descendants of Ancients

Volume 2

by Sharon T. Rose

Smashwords Edition

This work is copyright 2012 Sharon T. Rose

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover photo used in compliance with Creative Commons and credited to micurs

Discover other titles by Sharon T. Rose at Smashwords!

For Margaret, who never gives up.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all of my friends and readers; you have made this a wonderful journey. Special thanks to those who have contributed financially and those who gave their time to beta read, edit, and offer feedback. I could not do this without you.

Prologue

No-one ever wants to become a monster. But what if there's no choice?

Two armies face each another across a misty expanse. Leaders, fighters, and aides all shift in eager readiness. Sounds ripple across the chasm between them: hoots, yells, jeers, clangs, stomps. The light shifts eerily, refusing to bend as it should, shrouding the exact shapes of those who stand ready to cause annihilation.

The creature twitches uncomfortably, chafing under this strange and painful new existence. It does not know what has happened, and It does not like the things that have happened. In a short time, however, It has learned to be still and wait for direction. Failure to do so is painful beyond imagining.

Taste is a sense It understands, and sights and sounds are not incomprehensible, but there is something else now. This is more than air, breath, the movement of gases and microscopic particulates. What is this strange sense that accompanies the known?

The Masters, the ones who unmade everything It had ever known, gave this feature to It. They are the ones who cause the pain and the ones who give relief ... on occasion. It uses the new aspect of Its respiratory system to examine the air and the unknown. The inhalation is loud, drawing far too much attention to It. The action also draws in a great amount of the unknown thing.

PAIN!

It screams, writhing against the restraints placed upon Its body. Pain lacerates Its respiratory apparatus, slicing through thin tissues and scoring blood vessels close to the surface. Pain rips down into Its belly, lighting a fire that consumes It.

Mindlessly It lunges forward, straining to break the bindings. Screams continue to bleed past Its shattered control as It slams Its body forward again and again.

All sensation abruptly vanishes, causing the ground to rush upward. Dimly, It hears the voices of Its Masters. It has learned little about these creatures, but It does know that the tone of their vocalizations indicates approval.

They stand above It, communicating with one another in their way. They do not appear displeased with It, so It rests while It can. It is only relieved that the pain is less.

Sensation slowly returns. The Masters urge It off the ground. Finding Itself capable, It complies. With returning ability comes the unknown airborne thing that nearly unmade It. The numbness recedes slowly enough that It is not so overwhelmed. As physical awareness grows, so, too, does another awareness.

Hate.

It hates these Masters, these overlords that took It and hurt It and have done all these things to It. Given the smallest opportunity, It will destroy them. Even if It dies, It will make some strike, some blow for all this suffering.

The gases move again into Its respiration, igniting the blaze. When another snarled scream breaks loose, so does Its body. It is free!

It leaps forward, hardly registering how different this movement is from before they changed It, and grasps a writhing form. Tearing, ripping, screaming, bleeding, eating. Devouring.

Ah, this tastes so good. This satisfies It. Slashing another screaming figure, It savors the shrieks before It ends the thing's miserable existence. In a spray of viscera, It laps up something so exquisitely delicious that It knows no way to describe the taste. How mighty are these Masters now? How powerful can they be when It kills them so easily?

It pauses for an instant to loose a triumphant howl. It is the Master now. This battle is Its killing field. Hearing sounds afar, It turns to use Its optical senses, much sharper now than before It was taken.

The other army is still there, seeming to offer approval and encouragement. It needs none, but It takes Its due.

Confusion sprouts a small leaf in Its mind. Should not the other army be larger? Their appearance does not match the memory It has from a short while ago. The air changes direction, bringing fresh pain. It dives into the fray once more, desperately hunting that element which offers relief from the searing pain.

When It is too weary to continue, It halts. Its victims lie scattered beneath It, unrecognizable now that It has destroyed them. There are few remaining, and these make stumbling haste away from Its position. Let them go; other opportunities will come. They cannot cage It now.

The air changes again, stirring that budding confusion from before. The other army is still there, watching. It can hear the voices across the expanse, along with the softer sounds of movement and calm. Released from the distraction of pain, It focuses on them. Shock freezes It in place.

That is not the other army. That is not the enemy. That is the camp of Its Masters! Stunned, It looks again to where It stands.

The bodies lying on the ground are not those of the Masters but of the enemy. The twisted forms are smaller, weaker. They look even more different now. With growing horror, she recognizes faces amid the rubble and blood.

Mummy, on the kitchen floor. Poppa, in his study. Mr. Stisam and little Yashe, at the conservatory. Twanne, in the Temple.

Mosin.

Their shriek echoes across the wastes, mingling with the laughter of the Ancients.

Chapter 1

Sylenn Jenfsen heard the approaching footsteps and knew who it was. Only one man in the Temple stomped like that. His sharp voice lashed out at her. Have you been here all night, girl?

Nearly. She spared one glance for Dr. Lief Demney, who oversaw all medical and scientific research for the Temple. The fair-complexioned Tautonan man was average defined until one took his demeanor into account.

Doing what? he snapped, marching over to her spot on the floor.

Sylenn returned her gaze to the massive machine she'd spent the night studying. Thinking.

Now is not the time to be coy, girl! What have you been doing in my laboratory? Eating up my test subjects again, I suppose. He crossed his arms and glared down at her, as if her shabbiness somehow contaminated his pristine laboratory. As if it mattered that she preferred loose trousers, men's shirts, and a baggy old army coat to a traditionally feminine outfit. She wasn't filthy or covered with lice, so who cared?

She shook her curl-thatched head, keeping most of her face hidden under the brim of the old hat she wore. Actually, I've been trying to figure a way to get more information from them. It's been giving me more glimpses lately.

"Glimpses? And you haven't come in to record them? Mein Gott, girl! Get over here so that we can do things properly. Yvenn! Get that recorder going!"

Sylenn rose from the tiles and slouched over to the table Demney's assistants, Doctors Yvenn Douyon and Long Kropff, hastily prepared. Demney irritated her every time they crossed paths, but today, she had other concerns. The greatest was keeping the Hunter in a cooperative mood.

Demney watched her more closely than he watched any other Descendant, but not from any concern for her well-being. What fascinated him was the alien thing that lived in her body, in her head, alongside her own consciousness. The Descendants called It the Hunter, and It had never bothered to correct them. The Ancients had used It to ravage the Gontozenel ranks, a task It had done with vicious efficiency.

However, the Hunter could not find Its victims when they burrowed into the bones of humans, so the Gontozenels stole the bodies of men and women and became known as Sukkers. At some point before the Ancients had vanished, the Sukkers had destroyed the body of the Hunter, though they couldn't get rid of It completely. They managed to drive It from Alluvia as a disembodied spirit, but It had returned almost ten years past. The Hunter had copied Its enemies' tactics, and Sylenn had been the fool who'd gotten too close.

Sylenn levered herself onto the metal table and waited for the assistants to finish their frantic preparations. The Hunter paced in the back of her mind.

It continued Its hunt by whatever means It could, without regard for human life. Sylenn had been Its puppet, tearing apart the Drones with her own hands so the beast inside her could feast on the alien essence buried within the bones. She'd been nearly mindless when she'd finally crossed paths with a Descendant.

More than a year had passed since she'd been Awakened and turned into Fulenthen Sonelion. The Hunter had retreated then, cowering before the representative of Its long-departed Masters. They had created an agreement: she retrieved the pure essence of the Gontozenels, and It did not force her to eat people. With the Hunter no longer driving her, Sylenn began to remember what being human felt like. Even so, there were still nights when she awoke drenched with sweat and screaming. At least she no longer awoke covered in blood.

Her gaze drifted back to the machinery against the far wall, a mass of technology holding the energy of thousands of Gontozenels. Until the Hunter had returned from Its exile, the Descendants hadn't remembered that the purpose of the device was to store that energy for the Hunter to consume. After untold centuries of absence, the Hunter had an enormous selection of essence to feast on.

When Demney allowed It to, of course.

That waiting feast was only part of the reason Sylenn had spent the night staring at the collector. The Hunter wasn't hungry at this moment; she had been out each of the four days previous, tracking down and containing twenty-seven Sukkers. Only two of those had been added to the collection, two that might have information worth their lives. The trick was getting that information out of them now that they no longer had bodies.

Finally! Demney's sharpness no longer startled Sylenn. Alright, girl. Let us begin. Yvenn! Begin recording! Subject: Sylenn Jenfsen, also Descendant Fulenthen Sonelion, recording new information acquired from Subject: Symbiont designated 'Hunter'. Go on, girl.

Sylenn did not begin immediately. Much as she enjoyed seeing Demney confounded, she wasn't delaying on purpose this time. "I've had dreams that aren't my dreams. I think they're the memories of the Hunter from before It lost Its body. Most of the dreams are too brief to remember. I don't understand them, so I can't describe them.

But last night-- Her mouth pressed into a line.

Well, go on!

Demney, if you want to be the next host, we can do that, she growled, whipping her gaze over to him. But until then, you have no idea how hard this is, so leave off!

The doctor almost snarled back, but something enabled him to hold back his retort. He would tell anyone that he was an educated man and above petty arguments, but Sylenn knew better.

He'd seen It in her eyes. He knew that It hated him, and, like the educated man he was, he really didn't want to give It a reason to come after him again. Nobody wanted to bring the Hunter out.

Sylenn dragged It back to the section of her mind where It was supposed to stay. Most of the time It obeyed her, and in return she fed It well. The arrangement usually worked. But not always.

Especially when she wanted the same thing It did.

Sylenn took a deep breath. "Last night, I dreamed of a battle. The details didn't make much sense. It's not because it was a dream and dreams seldom make sense, but because I lived the dream from the Hunter's perspective. The way Its eyes worked-- that still makes my head hurt. It doesn't experience things like we do.

I think this was the first battle the Hunter ever fought in. I think that before the Tesselëans-- saying the Ancients' name made the Hunter howl inside her mind--"captured It and changed Its body, It didn't have a sense of smell. Smelling things feels like a burning to It. I already told you the Gontozenels stink. You don't understand how much the smell hurts the Hunter. They smell sharp and rotten and make me want to vomit.

In the dream, the Hunter smelled the Gontozenels and went mad. It thought It had attacked the Ancients, but It was really slaughtering the Gontozenels. And-- and then I saw myself in the dream, with the Hunter. We had just killed my family and those children from the observatory. I woke up then.

Yvenn wrung her hands. Demney shot her a glance that made her fold her arms and look away.

Sylenn didn't acknowledge the by-play. "I couldn't sleep after that, so I wandered the halls. Eventually I ended up here, in front of the collection machine. I wasn't thinking anything in particular. Staring at it seemed to shut up the Hunter, so I stayed. After a while, though, I noticed something.

"I sat down in here because I thought that maybe if I sat still, I could relax enough to go back to my quarters and sleep. I don't know how long I sat there, maybe a minute, maybe an hour. But I felt something from the Hunter.

"It wasn't trying to tell me anything. It wasn't showing me anything or even trying to act on Its own. We were both still. But I could feel things, almost see them in my mind. Snatches of this and that. It was as if I was seeing some of Its thoughts. Not understanding them, but ... seeing them.

The Hunter started thinking about the Gontozenels inside. It looked at the machine like It could see past the metal and wires and tubes. We already know It can tell them apart even in the containment balls, so I didn't think anything was strange until It singled out just one Gontozenel.

What-- Demney cut short his outburst, chopping his hand.

"As far as any of you know, they're all mixed up inside that thing, right? There's no way to tell the energy of one Sukker from another. But the Hunter-- for a moment there, It found a single Gontozenel in all that mess, and pulled it towards the edge of the