Greg Hanks

Greg Hanks – THE RECUSANT - 1 CHAPTER 1—PAINTED GRAY Even then, against the water-logged bark, she peeled, she plucked, and carved images into the soft timber underneath. A stick girl with nail-scored spikes for hair. An arc around her head—a sun, maybe? Two pricks for eyes. No mouth. Without any corn juice, without any walnut paste and old oil, why would this one matter? Splinter pierced the tip of her finger as she scraped. Smear of blood underneath the stick girl, osmosed by water. She bit the sliver out and pressed her bloody finger on the face of the carving. Breathing only survived in this musky forest when it rained. No light reached the ground where damp leaves and pine gristle made a stew. Darkness at foot-level contained by shrub and the weight of heat. Her hands gripped wet branches. Fresh dew from cold rain. She inhaled the soaked vegetation, the smokiness, the intoxicating moistness. A twig snapped. Below, a Preen’ch turned on his heel. Preen’ch. Armored children grown by artifact, indoctrinated by war speech, unmade and made by the hand of their Savior, the Lo’Zon. Her Savior, once. This Preen’ch was the shadow of the lower forest, primal and soundless. Gold of the canopy lights flashed his glazed black helmet as it morphed around his head like dry sand. He inspected the boughs with eyes only a child soldier would have— eyes made for finding targets. Black-green leaves immobile like acrylic counterparts sighing against each other. The baleful melodies of the forest made him lower his submachine gun, a weapon with the sheen of wet porcelain and the toughness of iron. He held it close to his chest, at the ready. Tapping leaves. A sweep of fog breath over his sharp obsidian suit. If only the Lo’Zon had made heat signatures a priority for the common Preen’ch visor; Calcitra weren’t supposed to last this long. None of this was supposed to last this long. Greg Hanks – THE RECUSANT - 2 She fell from the boughs as a glitch in the air, landing on his shoulders, crushing him. Her invisible arm slammed his head into the dirt. The head was lifted by nothing. And the deft snap of his neck left him limp and discarded. Ornament of the soupy forest floors. Her footsteps crunched away from the body, running through a series of dense bushes and gloomy, dripping limbs. A seemingly endless forest. She gained speed. Fluttering leaves and grass in her wake. She stopped at the edge of the forest. Through the twitching foliage, an ancient concrete prison under a gray overcast sky loomed in the center of a clearing the size of a football field. Like worn carpenter’s hands holding the remnants of precious pottery. Twenty years bereft of care. A crumbling, infested collection of windowless tombstones. Flattened outer fences, smashed security gates, glass sprinkled like sugar crystals over a burnt chocolate cake, and a hell of a lot of patrolling Preen’ch. A few miles away, black clouds moved along an accelerated current. Drums beating in the distance. The arm of the dark Gods was reaching out to claim the prison. Another summer storm. The invisible entity removed her hood, revealing a head of hair whiter than it was pink, pulled into a low ponytail. Damp and wavy. V’delle l’Coureaux stood comfortably confident. Her corrosive green eyes scrutinized the fields. Pale skin enriched by three months of sunlight. A hint of olive, giving way to more natural freckles. Her slicker materialized into a faded gray frock; Rain—her smarmy friend whose real name remained a mystery—had gifted it to her. She fingered one of the fraying sleeves. It was due for repair—she smelled her arm—or incineration. She marked the Preen’ch in the fields. “Perfect day to break people out of prison,” she whispered, shoving her gun-metal gray prosthetic hand into her pocket to get a piece of licorice she’d snagged before leaving the Beliveilles compound that morning. A squashed square of red jelly. Tasted like cherry cough medicine. Just how she liked it. Greg Hanks – THE RECUSANT - 3 Instead of chewing, she sucked all the sinus-flaring juices from the cube like a vampire to a packet of blood. The sugar shock helped her think. Someone spoke inside her ear. “Why they chose such a place . . . so petty.” A light, female voice with a slight rasp to the tone. Friendliness baked in sarcasm. Farin de Corde, the same blonde companion who’d escaped the Chalis with V’delle three months ago. “A lot of Preen’ch here, Farin,” said V’delle, fishing. She swallowed the licorice. “C’mon,” said Farin, impatiently. “I think I liked it better when you didn’t worry about me.” “You liked it when I used to constantly curse at you? I can start again if you want.” “You stopped? Guess I just got used to it. Are you in position?” “Looking at the prison. Are you?” “How many Preen’ch exactly?” “Ten. That’s just on my side.” “Should be a breeze.” “First one there gets two cans of soda. And not the shit kind either. The good ones Rain finds.” “Oh, right, I’ll just pop over to the Beliveilles mall and get a handful,” Farin said, sarcastically. “Beliveilles is gutted clean.” “Then where does Rain find ‘em?” “Where does Rain find any of his weird stuff?” “Fine, no goddamn sodas.” “Laundry. Two loads.” “There’s no way in hell you’d do my laundry. Your whole life’s work has been to make me wash my clothes.” “That’s why it’s the perfect bet. I’m gonna make you wash mine.” Greg Hanks – THE RECUSANT - 4 “Fine. Deal. Better start moving.” “You think I’ve been standing still this whole time?” V’delle threw her hood forward. Her upper body vanished into liquid air. “You needed the head start anyways.” The slicker had one design flaw: visible legs. Dense brush kept them hidden as she slithered toward the prison. Muscles flexed with confidence. Prowess had borne her. Through the spires of grass blades, she planned. Plotting the trajectory of her dagger. The spin of her blade. A relentless perception rattled her brain, dozens of orientations playing like augmented reality upon each patrol. Though she’d lost some of her Preen’ch proclivities—a word she’d stolen from Piers, as were most of her big words— her mind was still bristling with tactical acumen. Damn, Piers would’ve been proud if telepathy was a thing. The breaths of her opponents bated her like blood to a shark. Her fin coursed through the brush. She stopped in a full crouch. An inner fence line guarded the prison. Bent chain-link and corroded poles next to Preen’ch in their bulky, ballistic Yex armor. Planes of sharp obsidian molded to their bodies. V’delle remembered that feeling. The pull of the armor against her tendons. The armor’s unique surgical weave. Implants under the skin. Yex armor was the final stage of Preen’ch gear— V’delle’s current suit being the pre-requisite Khor, the lighter, more agile version she’d worn the last three months. While Yex wasn’t completely rigid, the lighter Khor armor offered complete mastery of finesse and lacked wires under the skin, thank God. Though every time she encountered Yex in the field, she felt that same intrigue and temptation to get her own. Yex was practically indestructible after all, so long as Calcitra didn’t get their grubby hands on Khor’Zon tech. She crouched to hide her knees and skulked around the soldier. The synthetic soles of her stealth suit “socks” muffled her steps. Bloodlust reached her fingertips as they closed upon her dagger Greg Hanks – THE RECUSANT - 5 underneath her cloak. The lust dripped from her teeth, but she licked it away and left her dagger alone. The less corpses the better. It was the whole point of bringing the Chameleon cloaks. The prison was U-shaped with both ends being entrances to first floor hallways. A recreation courtyard in the negative space. Infected by grass and tree. Haunted by rancorous vines the color of spinach, their coverage across walls now rippling against the wind. V’delle reached the south entrance and opened the door. A strong odor of moldy cardboard. Sticky grip on her soles. Gales of soured milk blew through the hall. “I just breached cell block A,” came Farin’s voice in V’delle’s ear. “Two Preen’ch down. I had no choice. Where are you?” “Ahead of you,” V’delle whispered, barely audible. “I saw some thorns floating around one of the Khor’Zon as I snuck in. Be careful.” “You too.” Thorns. Knife-tipped, baseball-sized drones that hovered in trios. Made for pinning, distracting, or mutilating. V’delle had felt their blade two weeks ago during an Outpost raid. Hot, numbing piercer against her upper arm. Now a dull ache. The long southern hallway stretched before her, curving at the end. Grimy checkered tile. Barred windows. Chipped paint baseboard heating. Scattered office furniture. Paperwork marked in Polish tacked to broken cork. A staircase halfway down the corridor, and a collection of rooms following the U-shaped curve. V’delle crept along the left wall, her knees desperately tried to reveal her legs under the cloak. Three Preen’ch turned the corner directly in front of her without helmets. Noiseless soles. Clinking weaponry. One soldier, a skinny male, walked ahead of the others. He turned to face them while walking backward. V’delle waited, breathless, a mirage against the wall. Greg Hanks – THE RECUSANT - 6 “Two bats,” he was saying, “three angels, and the Lich! It’s a goddamn atrocity.” The other two Preen’ch, a male lurch and a broad-shouldered female, kept walking. “You play like garbage,” the woman said, who turned into the room just before the stairs. “You also bet too much,” the lurch said, following the woman. “Bullshit,” the first Preen’ch said, “nobody gets that lucky. A Lich on the last draw—just bullshit.” V’delle readied her breath for expulsion. The skinny Preen’ch stopped before entering the room. “Hey,” came Farin’s small voice in V’delle’s ear. “All this dirt’s gonna be really tough to wash out. Just sayin’.” “What’s wrong?” asked the broad-shouldered Preen’ch from inside the room. “Thought something moved . . .” the skinny Preen’ch mumbled. He squinted in silence for a few more seconds, then turned into the room. “Don’t think I’m gonna let this go. You either cheated or looked at Renka’s cards.” He disappeared into the room. V’delle exhaled, knees about to pop. “Your timing is always impeccable,” V’delle whispered, annoyed. “Oops. Preen’ch?” V’delle let Farin hang as she moved for the staircase. The second level evoked eeriness. A fume of grunge organized in the hall. Through window light, particles of sarcophagi. Cold breath of a leftover world. Filing cabinets and piled furniture and cobwebs stuffed in the dead-end corner. To her right, a single sentry post installed in the broken tile just before the curve. They had known sentry posts would be an issue. She reached into her lumbar pouch and pulled out a beetle-shaped device. A courtesy of Ketterhagan, the German weapons scientist she’d both given back and taken from the Calcitra three months ago. Twenty feet from the post, she threw the device. The inner magnet pulled the beetle onto the metal. She waited three Greg Hanks – THE RECUSANT - 7 seconds. No drone. Silence meant deactivation. Trusting Ketterhagan’s genius, she crept past the post untouched. Something out the window stopped her. Dirty glass made a mirage of cerulean skin. A vapor of black armor and purple lights. Flickering red pupils leaving trails of fear. Then a deep voice. Rec’tora! Her shin hurt. Finger marks formed around her throat. The pull of his leash. The heft of his body. The hallway became tight, the air almost gone. Not again. Not now. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Just like Rosalie taught. V’delle let the sensation take her, and she breathed in through her nose with strain. Once she found her lungs, she looked outside again. Nothing. Her teeth chattered as an electric wave tickled her body. Altrus, the boy she watched die in Flonneburg, wasn’t far behind. He always came next. The sound of his snapping neck. Naon’s hollow eyes. These images, these powerful tastes and smells, these horrors. They always sought to overthrow her self-image and sense of equilibrium. She didn’t know how much longer Rosalie’s breathing techniques could hold her rampant mind at bay. A few more seconds of silent inhales and exhales. Then a moment to herself, a quiet reflection where she felt the weight of her mental issues, before sucking up her nerves like a vacuum. The warden’s office was just around the corner. She opened the door to crunchy glass. A large antechamber with fallen cabinets and overturned desks. Two Preen’ch lay dead. Slit throat and a thrown knife. V’delle felt a sense of discomfort at the sight. She had always felt a vague sense of pride knowing she would kill Preen’ch and Farin wouldn’t. Though V’delle had once nearly killed Farin for her pacifism, it was now a piece of her that if indulged somehow ripped apart V’delle’s image of Farin like a root out of earth. Greg Hanks – THE RECUSANT - 8 Selfish, V’delle thought. She resolved to try and be better than that, forcing herself to remember that she’d lost the bet. The idea of Farin’s dirty laundry made her annoyed, amused, and feeling normal again. A shadow of a person walked on the other side of the warden’s foggy glass door. V’delle entered, her two legs stepping into the room. “Finally,” said Farin de Corde, standing next to a man tied to a chair. “Remember to separate my whites please.” “We never shook on it,” V’delle said, pulling her hood back. “And my suit’ll need hand-washing. Sweat’s pretty baked-in.” A gaunt Farin stood before V’delle. Dark under the eyes. Short blonde hair a little longer, curling at the edges. Unkempt. Greasy. A tissue-white scar across her cheek. Raw, bloody knuckles remained gloveless; she hated the restriction. She refused Preen’ch armor. Underneath her grubby white Chameleon slicker, a skin-tight Calcitra uniform. Stretchy gray synthetic fiber. Angular chest guard, set of bracers, greaves—all stolen and repurposed from a dead Warlord. Four lumbar pouches. A balaclava around her neck. The thing that bothered V’delle the most—which she’d made vocally clear—was the white scarf hanging from Farin’s collar, its tail reaching her lower back, sticking out from her slicker. A souvenir from a girl they’d saved in an Outpost raid. V’delle thought the scarf would compromise the muted tones of the Calcitra leathers. Farin countered by telling V’delle to wash her Preen’ch uniform for once. “S’about time I got flittin’,” said the man in the chair, his voice a thick Scottish brogue. “This it, though? Couple a wee burds?” The man sitting in the chair was Chait Peavey, one of their objectives. V’delle knew because he fit the description perfectly. Mid-forties. Glittering orange stubble matching his wild mane of reddishbrown hair, bed-ridden and directionless. Tall and broad. Drunken red-ringed eyes. An acute face Greg Hanks – THE RECUSANT - 9 layered in blood and dirt. Ripped and sweat-stained clothing hung off his muscular body, lacking much of a purpose. But Peavey was not the only objective. “What was Breckenridge thinkin’?” Peavey sneered. “Couple a peely wally girls no bigger’n a pair a cabbage.” “Where’s the rest of them?” V’delle asked Farin, though she recognized immediately that this Peavey was going to be a handful. Farin shook her head in defeat. “They’re gone,” Peavey said, in an accusatory tone. “Yer too late.” “All of them?” V’delle exclaimed. “You’re positive they’re all dead?” Farin asked Peavey, desperate. “Didn’t think Breck’d fall for the bait,” he said. “Only reason I’m still alive. They wanted you here. They expected an army. With guns.” V’delle and Farin shared a common sense of urgency, their silent mental gears turning, linking from across the room. “Good thing they don’t know we’re here then,” V’delle said. Farin took out a white cube device and touched it to Chait’s glossy restraining bands. They released and fell to the floor. “Breckenridge mentioned you two are close. Guess we won’t leave here empty handed.” V’delle frowned, trying to adjust to their new circumstances. So many Calcitra captured. One left? Peavey stood tall and rubbed his wrists. “Where yer weapons? What kinda rescue party is this?” “The only one you’re getting,” said V’delle. She threw on her hood. Invisibility peeled down her body like a light-bending waterfall. “Sometimes blowing up the place doesn’t work,” Farin added. “Move.” Greg Hanks – THE RECUSANT - 10 Peavey looked unimpressed as they walked through the door. He took a submachine gun from one of the dead Preen’ch in the antechamber. Miraculously, he didn’t complain about having to follow invisible allies. Farin would knock on walls to keep him aware. He kept low and tight. A rabid rooster, eyes wide and twitchy. Cell block A was an open square chamber with four levels of ringed narrow walkways barred by railings. Prison cells lined the walls. Skeletons inside, clinging to chads of moldy skin and clothing. A chunk of collapsed roof hung overhead. Diamond-shaped opening where natural light entered as an opaque column. Vines dangled from the crevice and had grown down the walls like spider legs. Peavey and his two aqueous mirages appeared on the second level. A severed staircase at the end of the walkway descended to the bottom floor. A dark maw of sparse grass and broken concrete. V’delle heard footsteps above. With a fluid traversal, she jumped and grabbed the third level’s bars above. She hung there, rust misting away from her grip as she peeked above. Right in front of her, two Preen’ch. One soldier saw Peavey and aimed down. “What the hell?” he yelled. “The prisoner—” V’delle climbed the rungs, reached up, and grabbed underneath his helmet. She yanked him over the railing. His neck smashed into concrete. Spine up-ended over his body. Stuck the landing. The second soldier called out in surprise. He fired an inaccurate burst at the half invisible being. V’delle had already let go of the railing and caught herself on the second level’s bars like a monkey. Peavey and Farin were behind concrete pillars. Farin pulled a pistol from her hip. “So yeh did bring weapons,” Peavey said. “We’re not idiots,” said Farin, turning to shoot. By now the Preen’ch had communicated to each other. More soldiers crowded the third level entrance, no doubt others would arrive on the second and first levels soon.