Chapter 11: Chapter 10 - Duty is Heaver than a Mountain

General Amanda Warner plants a bronze fist against the wall behind her bed. A bad dream. Interrupting her two hours of sleep. More than the last night. She throws the covers to one side, sweat drenching the sheets, she showers in cold water, dons her uniform, ironed and on a coffee table, washes her face, brushes her grey curls, it’s the duty of a representative of the Prochrecian military to look perfect in crisis.

She puts a heavy hand against a television. Dread in her heart.

PBG on channels 12 and 72, a man in a revealing outfit with his pecs out, waggles a pointer at a graph, “With the methane crisis well on it’s way, we as citizens of this Kyros can cut back on our methane footprint through eating less meat.” Channel 13, Owl News, an interview, a grey-skinned Limbuster sat coyly behind Curta Bickerell who barks, “Now tell me, Misterrrr… Ahhum-whatever, this whole hokey pokey methane really benefits a person like…”

She flips to Gotenga on channel 14, Pictures of grey-skinned folks walking in crowds through bombed out buildings, “With the hostages returning, and the bombing ceasing, thousands of Limbusters return to their families, for the first time in 12 years, free to leave Limbus reservations. With the Onekan administration’s 180 shift in the Limbuster war, some experts suggest there may be repercussions, welcome Professor Carrington, from the university of Prophrecia for Limbuster studies.” A black-skinned prophrecian woman in a suit.

Warner turns off the television. Sighing. Anxious. Flips open her phone

“Juj” Images from thousand-year old textbooks and a Wadipedia page for pre-troubles mythology.

“Juj sighting.” AI generated slop accompanied by impressive photoshop.

“Juj sighting in Prophret Limbus reservation.” Nothing.

“Juj sighting Prophret Limbus reservation.”

“Juj in sky.” more AI garbage.

“Limbus reservation attack.” Videos of soldiers doing what soldiers do.

“Limbus reservation Juj.” Just drawings and Limbuster propaganda.

Amanda puts her head back against the cream wallpaper. Wanting to have felt relieved, but now just…

She searches again, “Prophrecia water supply contamination.” and finds a few reports, nothing from any actually credible station, and all drowned out by superficial discourse about fluoride.

She sighs.

“Monster sighting.” And she finds one report, from yesterday, something in a forest, like an enormous sinewy serpent with twenty two legs, like a velvet worm, with its top pair of legs raised up into some sort of torso with a head of tendrils and lips. She laughs to herself, it scared her for a moment, given the timestamp, but it was a photoshop or a very refined AI generated photo. Nothing to worry about.

Amanda Warner dons her cape, with all her medals on it, in this heatwave such a thing feels ridiculous to wear, already sweat falls down her back, but she storms out into the red-carpeted corridor of the safe house where she lives.

A woman in a suit walks past, “Supreme general, the artillery has lost function.” Warner shushes her. Another bureacrat. It has not lost function, ‘lost function’ merely means it’s stopped firing. And what, is she going to tell this bitch that they’ve ran out of ammunition? Who is this bitch anyway.

Warner storms past her, a midnight window shining orange haze through raindrops. She leaves pushes open a metal door besides two wooden ceremonial ones. Entering the warm wet night air. Takes a breath. There’s someone else here, yellow light glowing off the sweat on their forehead. The supreme general’s fingers put a lit cigarillo to their lips. They take a drag.

“There’s a storm coming.” The other one says.

“You have no idea.” She laughs. Blowing plumes of smoke stained yellow by the light. She watches out at the iron fence 11 feet tall, penned in like animals.

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The other person walks into the lamplight, a face like an owl, a bush of blonde hair sprouting from a head of skin white as milk.

“Supreme General, High Councillor, Admiral, Judge. Am I missing any more names?”

The boy looks Warner right in the eye. She puts a hand in a pistol-carrying pocket.

“Don’t you just love transparency in politics?” He grinned. Ivory face full of ivory teeth, sharp as fangs. And he turns, walks away. A paper falling out of his pocket.

Warner kneels to pick up the paper. Warm from printing, A6, screenshotted emails between Duolin Oneka, High Counsellor, Prime Minister, Face of the State; and Citric Djelbah, a nobody. When she looked up, the boy with the owl-face was gone, she picked up the letter and read it.

“You must understand. We took 232 testing kits, me and my crew, to the meat processing plant, at the behest of Sian.Co. We would use a testing kit for every crate from the latest shipment, all fifty, and they read at 1250 Eccents, individually, each crate, one after another, each slice of ham, 1250, exactly. We asked the company for another fifty crates, the batch after this one. 1250 Eccents. That is as much as Theological waste stored safely only in 50cm thick steel drums. We cut open another fifty crates, no ham inside, just theological byproduct. We asked the company if they had a younger set of goods, they said it’s too late, it’s been shipped, we asked if they could recall it, they said no. Every box. Empty of ham, theological byproduct. We went home and we had another 132 testing kits lying around, me and Sydn Bursha went to the market, tested the meat on sale, out of curiosity. It wasn’t meat, it was theological byproduct, 1250 Eccents. My Zusha she went into her child’s nursery, tested the sand in the sand pit, it wasn’t sand, it was theological byproduct. I left a testing kit in a jug of breast milk, it wasn’t breast milk, it was theological byproduct. This is not a matter of environmental mismanagement, this is a matter of national security, the lives of every member of the country are at stake.” Another email was splayed out in full view.

“Dear, Madam WarnerI am writing to propose a solution, to our Limbuster problem…”

Citric Djelbah stopped rubbing the ropes around his wrists, the hanging lamp moved out of his face and onto the images, the owl-faced boy pointed the lamp over himself, revealing an inhuman grin. “Keep reading.”

“Draw the military out of the city. Blockade the E16 and the M82. Let the remaining Juj come into the city...”

“What is this? Where am I?” The ecologist asked, again. The white boy rolled his eyes. “Have you finished reading?”

“Where am… where am I?”

“Don’t you worry your little head, hm? It’ll all be okay. Now,” a hand on the ecologist’s face, “have you finished reading?”

Djelbah looked down at the words “total depopulation of the Theius valley..” before nodding shakily. “What is all this. What is- What – Where am I?”

“You’re free to go. EDWARD!” A grey serpent or tentacle, no, a tail moved and slid over Citric’s lap its scaled bottom coiling across his wrists, prying itself between them, over the rope, and into the thick knot, popping it open. The ecologist rubbed his wrist and couldn’t help looking over his shoulder.

The long grey tail slathered into the darkness from where thick and heavy trilling emerged like the clicking of an enormous gear.

“See what they’ve done to us, deary. He’s human, you know, Edward. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“What’s happened to… to him…” Djelbah fell back into his chair.

“He’s just another limbuster. What, you only ever see them grey skinned don’tcha, on the news, on the telebision, take a good look, now, why don’t you.”

Edward stepped into the light, wearing a red admiral’s uniform, with medals of honour and gold-tasseled pauldrons, and a snapping jaw full of eel-teeth, lips of scales, hairless, two hands peaking from sleeves, their fingers so long, and tipped with half-metre claws, so that the ‘man’ could presumably touch the floor standing up. The worst was the eyes, the kind of eyes you’d never want staring at you from under those layers of peeling scales, thorny osteoderms, they were entirely human eyes, bright white with golden brown irises.

“This is what Prophecia does, Citric. This is what godfall coal and godfall oil do to the human body.” A white hand on his shoulder. “Limbusters aren’t a race. They’re not born. They’re made. We need your help. How many ‘jellyfish-births’ are we going to have until we do something, how many mothers will hold newborn sacks of organs with minutes to live, how many more will have children like Edward, or me. Hm? We can have your help, you know, we need your help.”

Sebastian looked into the ecologist’s eyes, his irises were so deep and black.

“Doctor, can I call you doctor? We need to know where the Prophret city g-oil reservoirs are. We can stop this.