THE VEIL PROTOCOL

The Village That Was

Eilan stared at the monstrous appendage that had replaced his right hand. The jagged bone blade pulsed with a faint, sickly red light, dripping the yellowish blood of the Warped onto the rusted metal grating of the platform. The voice of Veltis echoed in his mind, calm and rational, instructing him on how to retract the biological weapon. Eilan focused on the command, feeling the alien muscles in his forearm shift and contract. The bone blade dissolved, the chitinous armor receding beneath his skin, until his hand was once again a normal, albeit pale and scarred, human hand. He quickly wrapped his right arm in the torn remnants of his leather glove, binding it tightly with a strip of cloth he ripped from his jacket. He could not stay on Platform Seven. The fight had been loud, and the upper atmosphere was no longer silent. Distant, echoing shrieks carried on the wind, the unmistakable sound of a full swarm on the move. He ran to the cargo cage, slammed the ascent lever, and began the long, agonizing climb back up through the fog toward the village of Nebul. Every second of the ascent was torture. He listened to the sounds of destruction growing louder. The mechanical hum of the winch was drowned out by the crashing of stone and the terrified screams of his people.

The cage rose through the thick, churning white mist, but the fog was no longer just white. It was tainted with streaks of gray ash and the sharp, acrid smell of burning ozone. The temperature in the cage dropped, but Eilan was sweating profusely, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. The second heartbeat in his right palm kept a steady, mocking rhythm, completely unfazed by the panic gripping his mind. Veltis remained silent, merely observing the elevated stress levels of its host. Eilan gripped the iron bars of the cage, his knuckles white. He prayed to whatever gods watched over the Sky Archipelago that the swarm had moved on, that the Vanguard had arrived in time, that Nebul was still standing. But as the cage climbed higher, the distant sounds of roaring and shattering crystal grew into a deafening cacophony. The swarm had not moved on. It had dug in.

When the cage finally broke through the top of the fog bank, Eilan stepped out onto the main crystal bridge and froze. The sky above was no longer the peaceful twilight of the twin suns. It was choked with thick, black smoke and illuminated by the erratic, violent flashes of aetheric explosions. Smoke rose in massive, billowing columns from the residential sector of Nebul. Specifically, a thick plume of gray smoke rose from the crystal bridge that once led to his own front door. The beautiful, glowing blue bridges that connected the floating islands of the village were cracked and dark, their aetheric light extinguished. Eilan broke into a sprint. His lungs burned in the thin, smoke-filled air, but he pushed himself harder than he ever had in his life. He ran past the main sorting yards, which were completely obliterated. The massive iron winches were twisted into unrecognizable shapes of scrap metal. The ground was littered with the shattered bodies of aether-scrap and the torn, pale flesh of dead Warped, but there were no human bodies. There were only scorch marks and piles of fine, gray ash.

He reached the residential terraces. Half of Nebul was in ruins. The sturdy stone buildings, built to withstand the harsh winds of the upper atmosphere, had been torn open like paper. The roofs were caved in, and the walls were scorched black by the corrosive saliva of the parasites. Eilan navigated the treacherous, rubble-choked streets, his boots slipping on the slick ash and shattered crystal. He called out for Kaelen, for Corin, for anyone, but his voice was swallowed by the crackle of burning timber and the distant, fading roars of the retreating swarm. He reached the narrow crystal bridge that connected to his small, modest home. The bridge was fractured, hanging by a single, sparking aether-tether. He carefully crossed the gap, his heart hammering against his ribs. His front door was gone. The entire front wall of his house had been blown outward. He stepped into the wreckage of his living room. It was unrecognizable. His small bed, his meager possessions, the framed picture of his parents, everything was reduced to smoldering debris.

He moved to the adjoining wall, which shared a partition with his mother's old neighbor, a kind elderly woman named Martha who always sneaked him extra rations when he was a child. He tore at the heavy stone blocks with his left hand, his fingers bleeding as he shifted the rubble. He called her name, his voice cracking with desperation. He found the center of her small living room. There was no body. There was only a perfect, circular scorch mark on the floor, and a small pile of fine, gray ash. He fell to his knees, staring at the ash. The people he had known his entire life, the only family he had left in this cold, floating world, were gone. They had been incinerated by the warped aether of the swarm. The grief hit him like a physical blow, driving the air from his lungs. He had failed them. He had hidden his infection, hidden his terror, and in doing so, he had been entirely useless when the monsters came.

A sudden, sharp crack echoed through the ruins, snapping Eilan out of his grief. The sound came from the large, central gathering plaza at the heart of the residential sector. He scrambled out of his ruined home and ran toward the plaza. The ground here was heavily fractured, the crystal foundation groaning under the immense stress of the battle damage. Huddled in the center of the plaza, trapped behind a collapsed wall of heavy stone, was a small group of survivors. There were about six of them, including Corin, the young sweeper who had questioned him about his glove earlier that day. They were terrified, covered in dust and blood, pressing themselves against the remaining stone wall. Above them, the massive stone archway that supported the plaza's ceiling was failing. The aetheric tethers holding the massive structure together were snapping one by one, sending showers of blue sparks raining down on the trapped civilians. A massive slab of the ceiling, easily weighing several tons, was tilting dangerously, ready to crush the entire group.

Eilan ran toward them, his mind calculating the distance. He was too far away to pull them out manually. He had no heavy lifting equipment. The stone slab gave a final, sickening groan and began to fall. There was no time to think. There was no time to hide. If he did nothing, six more people would be reduced to ash. Eilan sprinted into the plaza, sliding under the falling stone slab just as it dropped. He planted his feet firmly on the cracked crystal floor. He raised his right arm. He stopped fighting the parasite. He surrendered control to Veltis. The voice in his head noted the tactical necessity and immediately complied. The flesh of his right arm split open with a sickening tear. The pale, hardened tissue erupted from his skin, calcifying instantly into dense, chitinous armor. His fingers fused and elongated, the bone extruding to form the three-foot-long, jagged blade. The transformation took less than two seconds. The massive stone slab slammed down onto the blade. The bone weapon did not shatter. It held. The corrupted aether within the blade flared with a blinding red light, the high-frequency vibration of the weapon absorbing and dispersing the immense kinetic energy of the falling rock. Eilan grunted, his boots sliding backward across the crystal floor, carving deep grooves into the stone, but he held the slab. The survivors stared at him in absolute, paralyzed horror. They did not see their fellow sweeper. They saw a monster. They saw the pale, translucent flesh, the pulsing red veins, and the jagged bone blade holding up the ceiling. Corin's eyes were wide with terror, his mouth open in a silent scream. Eilan held the weight of the stone, his muscles screaming in agony, the second heartbeat in his arm pounding a frantic rhythm. He looked at the survivors, his face pale and covered in sweat, the glowing red blade illuminating the sheer terror in their eyes. He had saved their lives, but as he looked at their horrified faces, he knew his life as a human in Nebul was over.