The Lightbreakers of Orpheus [11]
A Sci-fi flash fiction
Previously [10]
[11]
The light is your enemy. Don’t trust the light. Mark shook his head, keeping his eyes shut tight.
“Are you okay? We can rest if this is too much for you,” said Anouk. She had taken Mark out for a gentle walk. His recovery was unnaturally fast.
“I want to go back,” he replied. Mark refused to believe the light. He saw it. Miraculously, his brain was recovering after Doc took out the biomechanics. Mark’s vision was returning. Slowly the light crept toward him, he saw a light blob floating in the darkness. Yet, he defied it. The voice, his only connection to reality in the previous years wheezed through his memory. “The light is you enemy,” it had said again and again.
Mark rather relied on his hearing. The sound of the wind brushing the surface of the Orpheus’s sands, the low rumble of a storm in the distance. Anouk’s melodious voice.
“Oh, hey, dad!” She called Derek who usually came home at this hour. Mark recognised the sound of Derek’s tired footsteps, coming home from another long Gravedigger’s workday.
“You better come back inside. A storm is coming,” Sophie yelled, observing them from the porch of their house. She never let Anouk spend any time alone with Mark. Not after his attempt to self-destruct.
“It won’t get here for ages, mom!” Anouk rolled her eyes.
Low crimson clouds rolled over the bright red sands of Orpheus, and along came the red mists; a fine veil of blood-red particles, shimmering from a strange chemical reaction. Anouk stood staring at the magnificence of the approaching storm, while Mark listened. A subtle sizzling in the air drew his attention. A familiar metallic scent; blood and a mix of chemicals, both disgusting and delicious. He remembered it all too well.
“We gotta get back inside the house!” Mark exclaimed to everybody’s surprise. He never yelled. “Get inside, to the basement! Now!”
The assertiveness of his voice was more than convincing. Derek ran onward, both he and Anouk supported Mark to stumble his way into the house. Sophie followed the three into the basement.
They had barely locked the door when a giant thump shook the ground. Not long after they heard somebody ramming the front door of the house. Heavy footsteps stomping all around, trashing, breaking, searching for them.
“Don’t make a sound. Don’t move,” Mark whispered. He made them retreat further from the door. Sophie and Derek pulled out their guns, and stood waiting, although they knew it would be pointless against so many.
They listened as the silent soldiers destroyed every inch of the house above them, searching mercilessly. Anouk held onto Mark, barely suppressing tears.
They were in luck; the basement door was well hidden from outside. Maybe normal soldiers would’ve spotted it, if they searched carefully, but not Lightbreakers.
They left just as sudden as they arrived.
“We must stay here,” Mark said sternly. An explosion made them fall to the floor along with dust and pieces of concrete falling from the ceiling. It all went dark.
“Daddy, they blew up our home!” Anouk cried out like a child. Derek found her in the darkness, and embraced Anouk, while she shook crying. He had no words of comfort to give her. The Captain of the Gravediggers was buried alive in the grave of his own house.