Cyan Falling

Persephone's Garden

When it was time again to move, it was jarring to the senses. The world of the jungle was still drenched in darkness, barely a sliver of light passing through the thick coverage of overhanging leaves and branches. To have any glimpse of pure daylight, one of them would have most likely had to attempt to scale one of the tall trees in order to poke their head out at the very top.

They packed their things up, snuffing out what glowing embers were left of the fire and spread the leftover wood and ashes a bit to lessen the evidence of their presence. They would have to keep doing that every time they were required to stop and set up camp. It wouldn't be good news for either of them if something dangerous picked up on their trail. They already had their natural scents to worry about, let alone leaving a trail of metaphorical breadcrumbs for something to follow, something that would allow them to be hunted more easily.

In this situation, they needed to be the hunters, not the hunted.

Belvarrian Callus felt just within reach. If they managed to find him at his alleged base in the jungle, then Cyan would have a clear shot at ending the man for good. He had already managed to escape once and Cyan was determined not to allow it to happen again.

"If we keep on our way, we should be able to find the River Styx fairly soon. If you listen closely, you can hear the trickling of the river water in the distance." Jaesong said, breaking the silence.

"Yes, I hear it too. We're not too far from it now. I'm honestly surprised that we managed to cover this much ground in such a short time." Cyan replied.

"Well, it makes all the difference being part of a team. I know the terrain and you have a GPS strapped to your head." Jaesong joked, and Cyan could almost imagine a small half-smile behind that mask.

They looked to each other for what felt like long enough to be staring, but was probably only a few seconds. Cyan thought that it was mostly his own fault, that he was the one doing the staring and somehow it had become difficult to move his eyes away from the other's face. There was a curiosity within him, as he felt the desire bubble within him to see the whole of the face before him, without any masks in the way. Maybe that was just his history in the USF acting up though, an unquenchable need to know everything that he could, and to uncover all things that were hidden.

As the seconds stretched on, there was something unspoken and unnameable in the air around them, neither of them able to tell whether is was tense or relaxed, or in some weird area that existed in between. 

It was definitely weird though, they had made it weird.

"Lets get a move on then, we can't afford to waste time dawdling." Cyan said, effectively breaking whatever short moment had been occurring between them. 

"Of course." Jaesong agreed, unable to hide the perplexed furrow of his brow at the sudden change in the mood.

Without another word, Cyan made to fiddle with his visor, adjusting the settings and getting the GPS up and running, the sensors already working to pick up the location of the nearest water source, which just so happened to be the river.

They made their way through the thick foliage, Cyan cutting things from his path where necessary, with one of his moonblades. It was easier for him to concentrate with something to focus on. The hacking of the plants, the sounds of the flowing water getting louder as they approached its location.

He was sure that he had been on jobs that had proven to be more difficult than this one had so far, it was just that this one was in such unfamiliar territory. However, he just couldn't seem to press down the feelings of uncertainty that he had begun to harbour. He was generally confident in his skills, used to being able to take the lead and manage perfectly well on his own, but he had required so much help already so soon into his journey that he wondered if he should be feeling inadequate at all. 

He knew that it was silly, that he didn't have to work alone to be secure in his ability to handle himself and his own business, but he was so used to being on his own and having to fend for himself, having no one else to rely on, that it was hard to adjust to anything else.

He had no doubt that his mind would be reiterating these thoughts to him at the most inconvenient of moments (not that any moment in particular were to be considered "convenient" for thoughts like those ones).

As they travelled on, the distant babbling became louder and stronger, like rushing.

"How big is this river supposed to be, again?" Cyan asked at the noise coming from up ahead.

"I've never seen it in person, but it runs all the way through the jungle." Jaesong replied, sounding a little more cautious with his words. Perhaps the silence had made him feel little out of sorts.

Their question over the size of the Styx was answered for them when Cyan pulled back a low-hanging branch and there it was: the river in all it's glory, standing at least twenty feet wide and flowing further into the jungle. They would need to follow it downstream in order to find Persephone's Garden. 

They wasted no time in moving on, once they had taken in the view of the river. Back on Earth, there would have usually been a part in the trees where there was a river as large as that one. However, the Styx was still mostly shrouded by shadows. There was barely a flicker of light through the canopy as the branches covered the waters so thickly that whatever breeze there was up there only let tiny slivers of temporary golden light pass through.

Cyan felt himself gradually regaining his confidence as they travelled along the riverbank. This was terrain that he could manage, something that fell back in line with his experience and his training. It helped, too, that they were gaining on their target, that each step was taking him closer to his goal. They walked for what felt like hours, following the trail with determination. Navigating the river brought Cyan back to what he knew, eased his feeling of floundering about in unknown waters, no longer so out of his depth.

"Cyan?" Jaesong called from slightly further up the banks.

"What is it?" Cyan asked.

"I just caught sight of a curve in the river and I can hear the falls up ahead. It diverts into two streams." Jaesong replied, pointing out over the river.

Cyan walked over and peered past one of the hanging tree branches and saw what Jaesong was talking about. The river widened and turned off to the left by one half and then the main path of the river got smaller and there was the sound of rushing, falling water, a fine mist of its spray tossed up by the rocks at its edge.

The end was near, then, tangible.

Cyan hadn't felt this close to his goal since the night club. His hit would be waiting for him just beyond those waters and he would take great satisfaction in making sure that man never took another breath. This was one job that he could get enthusiastic for, and not just for the sizeable pay cheque at the end of it.

Belvarrian Callus was a complete scumbag, a scourge on the universe, a big ugly stain on its existence that was in serious need of removal. He spilled the blood of the innocent carelessly wherever he went, like red wine maliciously poured out over a white carpet. Cyan knew without a shadow of a doubt that Callus deserved what was coming, and maybe once it was done, he would split some of the reward money with Jaesong, for helping him.

But his time was running out.

"This is it, Jaesong. Soon, it will all be over for Callus and his mob. Without him to order them about, his whole operation will be in shambles." Cyan said.

"Okay... okay, but lets do this carefully, alright?" Jaesong requested.

"You scared?" Cyan asked, with a teasing lilt.

"I think that it would be weird if I wasn't, don't you?" Jaesong replied.

Cyan conceded to that. It would have been weird for Jaesong not to be scared. He wasn't used to this kind of mission, or any mission for that matter. This was all new for him and because he was so knowledgeable of the area and wildlife, Cyan had forgotten that. He wasn't on a mission with a fellow mercenary or some trained professional. 

Jaesong was just a normal man bound to being a victim of circumstance, who just so happened to gain similar powers a lot sooner, and had chosen to go with him to help him survive. By what he had been told and what he had seen of the way he was treated by others, he didn't have much stability in his life. Yet, he had given up what little stability that he had retained in order to accompany him and teach him how to control his abilities. 

He was a good man.

"I really do appreciate you coming to help me, Jaesong. Not many people would have gone to the trouble that you have. You didn't have to, but you did." Cyan thanked.

"You're the first person in a long time who hasn't treated me like I'm worthless for what I am. It feels good to be worth something." Jaesong said after a short pause.

"You've always been worth something." Cyan said, sounding offended on his companion's behalf.

"That's what I mean, that attitude. It's so strange to me, but it's a good strange." A soft look overtook Jaesong's eyes as he replied, freckles glittering in the dark. 

"Well, get used to it." Cyan said with finality and tried not to become distracted by the glittering. "We should keep moving. We'll scope the place out from the outskirts and then move in."

A short walk further downstream to the falls lead them to the brim of Persephone's Garden. It was something to behold. 

The brim of the area ran in the shape of a crescent moon and the falls ran down in three layers, ending in a large lake that was filled with giant lily pads and all manner of bizarre and beautiful plant life.  There were colourful frogs on the banks that were bigger than a human head and creatures that looked like mutated dragonflies hovering around, brightly coloured and patterned with intricate dots and stripes, some of which were definitely longer than Cyan's forearms. Their wings were like galaxies, mainly transparent, but covered in sparse, flickering bioluminescent speckles and veins.

Up ahead and around the lake there were bioluminescent reeds with bulbous flowers that glowed in blues, turquoise, oranges and shades of yellow. It was almost bright enough in some areas to be akin to daylight. There were rocks smattered across the edges of the lake that were coated in some kind of gently luminous moss.

They stayed hidden behind a cluster of tall leaves and reeds as they slowly crept around the border, until they reached a point near the edge where they realised that they would have to attempt to climb down without being seen.

From their position, they could see that there was a building in the middle of the lake that was propped up on wooden stilts that kept it and its foundations above the water's surface. There was a small path running around the edge of the place that lead off into a short docking area to the left. There was what looked to be some kind of air boat tied to one of the posts. 

Looking around the side and zooming in with his visor, Cyan could make out a swamp behind the building that blended in with the lake. There was thick foliage and reeds around the area going into a space of sparse trees poking out of the deep waters and towering up into the air. They were shorter than the majority of the trees in the jungle, and there was light from the moons poking through them that increased the further back they went into the distance. At least they could tell that it was night time again.

There were a few lights on inside the building, but not many. The panes of glass were covered in moss and dirt on the outside, blocking them from being able to make out anything within.

"We'll have to make our way down and get closer. The windows are too dirty to see inside." Cyan said, resetting the zoom on his visor.

"We'll have to try and climb down the rocks here and make our way out to the middle of the lake using the lily pads." Jaesong replied.

"Will that work? Are they stable enough to support our weight?" Cyan asked, not looking entirely convinced.

"They should be, but we'll have to be careful when we jump from one to another, we don't want any of them to go beneath the surface or we'll be swimming the rest of the way across." Jaesong answered, fastening the straps of his bag a little tighter to stop them from slipping off of his shoulders.

Carefully, Cyan lead the way climbing down the face of the short cliff. It was about fifteen feet above the small bank and the surface of the lake. There were a few rocks jutting out from around the falls, which he was able to use as leverage. It was slippery and the soaking moss growing on the rocks made the attempt exceedingly dangerous. The chance of falling was a daunting one. 

Jaesong followed shortly after, climbing down the side of the rock face at an alarming speed. Cyan watched in awe as he jumped the last couple of feet onto the bank without even an ounce of caution. Cyan cautiously went the rest of the way, almost slipping on the moss a couple of times before reaching the bottom.

"What on Earth was that?" Cyan asked, aghast. 

"I don't know what it is on Earth, but on Yandraven it's called climbing." Jaesong said, looking a little smug.

"Oh, you're so funny. You went down that so quickly, I'm shocked that you didn't slip." Cyan replied.

"I told you that I'm accustomed to the terrain here, that includes slippery surfaces and knowing how to climb them." Jaesong explained himself with a shrug. "Let's hurry up and get across these lily pads." 

Cyan watched him walk over to the nearest lily pad and jump onto it with ease. He shook his head in absolute astonishment as he followed. 

The way over was precarious as one could expect. The lily pads were surprisingly stable, but they required a fair amount of balance to prevent the edges from dipping downwards. 

Beneath the surface of the water, tiny little fish could been seen darting around in large groups, some of the frogs also swam near the surface, occasionally congregating on the lily pads to rest. They were even bigger up close, definitely bigger than a normal human head and maybe closer to twenty-four inches in length and about twelve inches wide. They were a multitude of different colours, but the most common seemed to be green, yellow, turquoise or blue with black legs and bright orange dashed lines running unevenly down their backs.

Jaesong hauled himself up the small ladder at the side of the decking and quickly looked around to check for any movement inside the building. Turning back, he grabbed a hold of Cyan's arm to help him up when one of the rungs snapped off under his weight, the wood fragile from rot and what was most likely long-term water damage. 

"Are you okay?" Jaesong asked as Cyan came to a stand on the decking. 

"I'm fine, didn't even manage to get wet." Cyan replied, looking over his trouser legs and boots. "Though with the wood snapping, I'm surprised the noise didn't alert any guards. This is... weird to say the least. No we're right outside, I'm getting a very strange vibe."

"It is... a bit too quiet." Jaesong agreed.

Quietly, they made their way around the edge of the decking, keeping close to the wall and ducking down so that they could pass under the windows without detection. One of the few lights inside was flickering mutedly from behind the grime-coated windows. 

As they made quiet steps, the dragonflies flittered around them, the air was filled with ambient sound: the rapid beating of the dragonflies' wings, the croaking of the frogs and the gentle rushing of the tiered waterfall back on the other side of the lake, sending almost silent ripples across its surface. Persephone's Garden really was beautiful to behold, but they hadn't the luxury not time to sit and admire the scenery.

Cyan stopped at the corner and peered around to make sure that the coast was clear. The entrance, lit by two spotlight lamps above the door, was eerily clear with no sign of any guards having been there recently. The atmosphere was getting more and more unsettling and neither Cyan nor Jaesong could quell the feeling that something was off, not quite right.

"I don't like this." Cyan said lowly.

Without waiting, he rounded the corner and approached the door. Once he was in front of it, he realised that it was hanging open by just a couple of centimetres. That was not a good sign.

Tentatively, he reached out and then gave the door a shove, staying back as the door swung open. He waited for a moment, unsure if anything would happen, but he quickly realised that there was no one there. If there had been, they would have been alerted to his presence already and likely would have come out to subdue him. But there was nothing. Just the creaking of the door on its hinges.

Cyan frowned and unsheathed one of his moonblades. He gestured for Jaesong to follow him and cautiously stepped over the threshold. Looking around in the dark, it seemed to be completely empty inside.

Cyan moved further into the room and Jaesong followed, flicking on the lights via a switch that had been on the wall behind the door. As they flickered to life, it was hauntingly obvious that there was no one around and that they had likely left in a scramble. There were desk lamps tipped over, papers scattered across the floor, a couple of the computers had blue-screened or were still in the process of deleting files.

"Jaesong, stop as many of those deletion processes as you can! They might be trying to get rid of something important." Cyan said in a hurry, rushing to the nearest monitor to cancel the process before gong to the next one.

"Right, on it!" Jaesong replied with an equal amount of urgency as he hopped into action.

They managed to stop about five computers between them and began looking through the files, clicking into anything that looked as though it may contain useful information.

"Cyan! Come look at this!" Jaesong called and Cyan was at his side in a second, peering at the screen. 

"Holy shit." Cyan exclaimed in a whisper.

"It's list of their other main locations and a drop schedule. Even if we lost them here, we know where to look next. They think that all of this has been deleted, so they probably won't have gone far." Jaesong said. 

"This is... this is awesome, Jae! We can follow them now! I'll quickly look for Callus' office and then we should try to follow them. We might even be able to catch onto their trail since they obviously left quite recently." Cyan replied.

"Right, I'll download this info while you look around, and transfer the times and locations to you when we're done." Jaesong responded and with that confirmation, Cyan went looking.

He walked over to a door at the far end of the room hat was cracked open, scuffed up along the edges and had dents and scratched all over the handle. It made him even more curious about what had been going on before they got there. Why exactly was this base of operations so important? What were they all working on? 

It was possible that it was just a centre of intelligence, somewhere where they went over logistics and worked out trade routes, but something was wrong about the place that went beyond its disrepair. 

Cyan took calculated steps down the corridor on the other side, the hall lights flickering and he silently hoped that whatever generator kept the place going wouldn't just suddenly cut out. There were only two doors in the hall, one was leading off to the right and one was at the end and had a red light above its frame. It looked newer or at least better kept than the rest of the building.

He approached it and examined the handle and lock, looking for anything that could set off an alarm or security system. It wouldn't be unlike Callus to leave a trap or two in his wake. When there was nothing beyond a keypad and an ID scanner, he was a little bit relieved, if not still on edge with suspicion at the tame security measures of the place. Perhaps they were over-confident due to the remote location and thought that the wildlife and flora would be enough of a barrier to prevent anyone from getting to them alive. 

To be fair, anyone travelling there without sufficient knowledge of the jungle would have likely died, as Cyan himself almost had several times. 

He walked back down the hall and peered back out into the main room.

"Hey, Jaesong, you think you could manage to hack into a security pad without setting off the alarm?" He asked.

"Well, I can certainly try." Jaesong replied as he rose from his seat. He took the little device he's used to modify Cyan's visor and walked down the hallway with Cyan.

"So.. can you do it?" He asked again.

"It looks like a pretty advanced keypad lock compared to the rest of the building. However, I should be able to get through. Just give me a minute." Jaesong said and quickly got to work.

He felt around the sides of the panel before something clicked and he plugged the device into a slot that had opened up on the keypad. He fiddled around with the device for a moment, typing furiously before a beep sounded, the red light above the door flashed once and the door popped open.

"That was... quick." Cyan said, looking a little impressed.

"Once I got plugged in, I could see that the door had an override code that would bypass the locking system, you better hurry. I have most of the information downloaded and forwarded, but there could still be some files left worth looking at." Jaesong explained.

"Go, I'll check this out and let you know if I find anything worthwhile." Cyan agreed and headed through the door without waiting for a response.

The hall before him was short and lead straight to a staircase, which was lit by red fluorescent fixtures that ran along the middle of the ceiling. They weren't all that bright, casing everything in their red hue, shadows pronounced and it left Cyan with an ominous feeling.

He hadn't remembered seeing any kind of tunnel or construction that would have allowed for a staircase. From the outside, the building was held aloft over the lake on elevated foundations, you could see right through from one side to the other underneath the platform that it was built on.

This didn't make any sense.

Cyan carried on down the stairs, the hairs on the back of his neck raised.

He came to a door, one that was closed shut, but not locked like the one at the top of the hall had been. He turned the knob and pushed it open.

Inside the room was a desk, a fancy chair and a few filing cabinets and bookshelves. The lights were already switched on, including an old fashioned desk lamp that had been plugged into a small one-socket wall outlet. On the floor there was what looked like an expensive Turkish rug, it was red and blue and gold and seemed to be well taken care of, much like the polished desk and the old lamp. However, all together, it gave Cyan pause, because these items were all collected in Callus' office. 

That shouldn't have been possible unless Callus had been to Earth before its destruction. 

Cyan moved around the desk and started opening the drawers. He started at the sides, finding not much kept there, at least, not much of consequence. It was strange. It was all far too strange. Daily schedule, blank notebook, stack of post-it notes, old calendar, stapler, an unopened pack of 2B pencils, some loose rubber bands, a paperclip, a few random pieces of various foreign currency from different planets, and, in the main drawer in the middle of the desk, that he had to open with the click of a button, hidden within a false bottom...

A stack of papers, papers with highlighted subtitles and dates, diagrams, charts and... schematics... schematics for...

"for a weapon." Cyan finished aloud.

The more he looked through it, the more he read, the more he learned, the more horrified he became. Callus and his henchmen had built something beyond comprehension, something so evil and greedy and cold that Cyan found his breath getting caught in his throat as he tried to breathe through the onslaught of tumultuous emotions flowing through him.

What happened to Earth... it hadn't been an accident, or some freak natural disaster, it had been... it had been deliberate, it had been purposeful. They had been used, their entire planet and all of its inhabitants.

They had been used as a testing site.