Chameleon Heart

Declan hated travelling to the Outer Reaches. Especially for work. The ride was arduous and long, with few established trails to many Sectors. Cain, his horse, was overheated and struggling. As was he. The sun beat a relentless tattoo upon the canopy, causing the air below to become dense and close. Soft, green light oozed through the treetops, bringing with it a thick, sludgy heat. Through chinks in the canopy’s armour, shards of golden sunlight penetrated through; these air holes providing the only available relief from the choking heat. Lush and overgrown, the beauty of the forest was lost upon Declan, his mind fixed firmly in annoyance with his Commissioner. It’s not that Gronk was an unreasonable man, he just seemed to hold a particular hatred for Declan. It was unusual to have to travel to the outer reaches, yet even more so when a reccy team had already been through. They should have brought the photo back with them, but Gronk’s thinking was that the Cryo had continued further out toward The Wastes after visiting his old home. This was in the opposite direction from The Interior, where Declan had travelled from. Right now though, in the oppressively sweltering heat, it was hard to think cleanly. He just wanted to get there.

With just his Sector Map, and a few cursory words from Gronk to go by, finding the old house was his next task. Sector 7 was one of his least favourite areas of the Outer reaches. Having been far out from ‘Cities’ during the First Epoch, it had remained relatively un-looted after Ragnarok. As a result, many artefacts and ways of life from the First Epoch had been preserved. It gave Declan the chills to explicitly see how humans had lived before. Breaching the treeline of the jungle, Declan found himself trotting down the remnants of what was once a road. Now snaking through undergrowth like the shed skin of a forgotten leviathan, the tarmac was pockmarked and ripped. Nature had come to reclaim what was hers, and had come with heavy hands. Lining the forgotten road, lay large houses, their walls and foundations pulled apart by branches and roots. Bright patches of flora were studded against the faded wood and stone of the ancient homes. It would have been beautiful had the circumstances been different, the scene now seeming only foreboding to Declan. The spaces between the houses increased, as the gaps in his courage widened. Put him in a firefight with Raiders any day over the empty eeriness of this forgotten place. The chatter of birdsong seemed to dwindle as he drew closer to his destination, Cain’s snorts punctuating the increasing silence.

A white house, with blue double doors. Surrounded by magnolia trees. This made up the bulk of the helpful description from Gronk. Yet sure enough, there it was. Sat where the houses were the largest, near the end of this long, ancient street. The heavily faded blue of the doors was barely discernible, but the magnolia trees were an easy marker. Like an explosion of almost iridescent pink, they framed the features of the once grand house. Peeling white paint peered at him through a spiderweb of vines and foliage. This was the right place.

He dismounted Cain, tying him to a nearby stump. As he drew closer to the house, the smell of decaying wood permeated the air, clawing at his senses. The faded wooden doors loomed large, impressing their presence upon him. With an air of awkward reverence, Declan gingerly pushed his way through. The doors gave a heavy sigh, as though the sadness of being forgotten had weighed upon them for the last millennium. There was no need for silence, yet with the birdsong gone, and stood alone in this empty relic, he felt compelled. In the large room, at the back of the house. The kitchen, the one with all the pans in. That’s what Gronk had said about where to find the picture. The flooring of the house had long since rotted through, and Declan walked softly though the grass covered hallway, a sense of unease tugging at the nape of his neck. Still hanging in the hallway, shade having preserved its colour to the best of its ability, hung a painting. It was of a woman in a blue dress as pale as the doors, delicately balancing a dragonfly upon her finger. Except this was unlike any dragonfly Declan had ever seen. Far smaller, and clearly not larva, Declan wondered at the suggestion of a dragonfly being this small. What a safe world it must have been. Declan thought to himself. Finding his way through to the back of the house, his sense of discomfort was heightening. Everywhere he looked, the house seemed to be overflowing with ‘stuff’. Objects wrought from metal and glass that he did not recognise, though some he did. Tiny models of animals from the First Epoch lined a large standing wooden box with glass shelves. Deeply perplexed, Declan couldn’t fathom what utility these figurines held, or why they deserved their own storage box. Perhaps they were their gods. Declan mused to himself, as he inspected a tiny glass cow. The light infiltrating the house’s cracked shell shot through the model, refracting brilliant dots of rainbow-tinged light against his chest. It was one of the few animals he recognised from the collection, as they had cows in The Interior. Rare and highly coveted, but they had them, nonetheless. Elsewhere through the house were objects Declan had little concept of – strange flat squares made of glass and plastic, large metal boxes with tendrils of plastic and metal hanging from the back of them. All these remnants of an antediluvian world. He assumed they must have had something to do with, or worked with, ‘electricity’. This particular art had been lost from humanity since Ragnarok. With all of the gods having abandoned them, including the God that was Technology, the world had been plunged into darkness.

Declan hated seeing these things. They felt awkward and alien to him. There was little fascination, as anything from the First Epoch was tainted with the deepest sadness. He had nothing to thank these people for, they’d brought humanity to its knees. It was only thanks to the New Blood that he was stood here at all. The forefathers of the Second Epoch, the only ancestors Declan had reverence for. Along with the inherent dislike of the peoples of the First Epoch that all humans had, Declan felt a particular scorn for them. Why did they need so many ‘things’ that had such little practical use? It seemed to him that their lives were adorned with noise. Distractions from the core of the reality of existence. Consumed by so many periphery distortions of reality, how did they feel connected to the earth? To the machinations of nature, the constant struggle of life and death? Probably why they ran it into the ground. Declan thought. Shaking these webbed thoughts from his mind, he stepped through into the kitchen.

The room itself looked more chaotic than the previous ones he’d passed along the hall. With pans and other unidentifiable electrical objects having been upturned and strewn about, it was odd. One of the larger metal containers was on its side, some sort of strange cave drawings scrawled upon it. Peering closer, Declan could see they were of stick figure humans; a smaller one being guarded by two larger ones on either side. Behind that was what looked like a large cupboard you could walk into, reminding him somewhat of a cave. Clearly, he was not the only one, as some kind of animal had dragged mud and sticks in there to form a den of sorts. However, Declan’s focus was swiftly drawn elsewhere. What he was looking for was laying on the table, where the reccy team had left it. A necklace with a picture in it. That was what Gronk had said. Declan hadn’t been entirely sure what this meant, though now it was apparent. Resting at the bottom of a fine, gossamer-like chain, lay a strangely shaped metal lump. The lump itself had been cut in two, the outline of each half resembling the necks of two swans kissing. Though it was not of a geometry Declan recognised, he found it somehow pleasing. Slotted into one half of the bisected pendant, was the photo Declan sought. As he picked it up to look closer, an unexpected lump formed his throat. Overwhelmed by an emotion he didn’t fully understand, Declan dropped the pendant back to the table as though it were too hot to touch. He stood for a moment, his head swimming in confusion, roiling emotions fighting each other for air. After gathering himself, he cautiously picked locket back up. Inside was a photo of a man and a woman, smiling happily in the sun. From the relaxed looking cotton garments they were wearing, to the unadulterated joy in their beaming faces, there was a freeness to the photo that he hadn’t anticipated. They looked truly unencumbered by hardship, and for the first time in his life, rather than disdain, Declan felt sorrow for these people. Perhaps those of the First Epoch had lived far easier lives than his – did that truly mean they had less value? Looking upon this picture, he felt a longing that he’d not felt before. Though it may have been somewhat tinted by jealousy, it was still a novel feeling for Declan. He hadn’t expected his TIP (Target Identification Picture) to include his target’s wife, nor to pull at his heartstrings in such a manner. He suddenly drew the connection to the scrawled drawings on the metal container. They were of a family, maybe drawn by this man’s son. The photo suddenly felt too real to him, and he dropped the locket once more. Often their TIP would be a sketch rather than an actual photo, which had added to the impact. This was because his target, the man in the picture, was a Cryo.

Morality had never been his strong suit – The Academy told him who to kill, and he did it. It really was that simple. Many, many people lusted after the relatively easy life of a Bounty Hunter, so Declan considered himself lucky. Though usually tracking down murderers and rapists did not force him to confront what little morality he had. He’d not given it much thought until now, but this was his first Cryo. At the time of Ragnarok, some of wealthiest members of society cryogenically froze themselves in state-of-the-art pods and had themselves hidden across the globe. This was done with the hope of surviving what was to come. And against all odds, it worked.

The issue was that now, a millennium later, these pods were opening, and their freshly awoken inhabitants were causing issues. Humanity, as they knew it, no longer existed. No languages they knew, no technologies. Because of who they were in their past life, their natural inclination is to take control, to take over and rule as they once did before. They would run the planet back into oblivion. Leastways, that’s what Declan had always been told. Yet standing here now, looking at this smiling man surrounded by his child’s drawings, it was hard to imagine.

Clack. Clack.

Declan froze. So engrossed in his reverie, he’d heard nothing until now. Turning slowly whilst moving his hand down to his revolver, Declan faced the creature behind him. Standing squarely in the doorway, glaring at him, was a Kuba. Once thought by humans of the First Epoch to be extinct, Kubanochoerus was a large and vicious member of the Suidae family. He was now stood between this horned hell-boar and what was evidently its home in the walk-in cupboard behind him. Its razor-haired back rose and fell in line with his chest, he was facing the animal eye to eye. Its eyes were darting over him, flushed with anger. This hog had the strength of three men and could gore a shotgun blast hole in him with little to no effort. Therefore, with a decided lack of hesitation, Declan promptly pulled out his revolver and shot the beast square between the eyes. With a low thump the animal hit the floor. Declan watched grimly as the rich crimson of the Kuba’s blood swirled into the dirt below. The animal had simply been defending its home, or trying to get back to it. How different was that from the Cryo who’d tried to return to his home, and was now fleeing hunters he could not understand. Perhaps all that separated the Cryo from him was comprehension, the same dissonance that separated him from the Kuba. Even though his orders were what they were, slowly the nectar of morality began to seep into his corrupted mind. As the empty eye of the lifeless Kuba stared back at him, mirroring his soul, he wondered if he would be so quick to pull the trigger when he caught the Cryo. Or if indeed, he would at all.