The Price Of Ascendance

CHAPTER ONE

ELIZABETH FINLEA

I was facing an imposing wall of stiff-backed, silent individuals. My hand was clutching the metal railing by my side with a fierce determination, my knuckles turning white and the muscles in my arms burning from the strain. Mum stood next to me, that half stern, half sympathetic look adorning her face.

“C’mon sweetie, you need to let go. It’s for the best, you know,” she pleaded.

I tried to refuse, tried to coax some excuse, some reasoning out of my mouth but it was glued shut. Every time I tried to speak some invisible force pushed back, preventing anything but a tiny squeak from escaping. Frantically, I began hyperventilating, and Mum took advantage of my distraction to manoeuvre me into the line that had formed in front of us. I swung my hands furiously, pointing to my throat, but Mum just smiled and nodded, leading me forward as if nothing was amiss. I glanced around wildly but the press of bodies hid everything besides the dark concrete roof and the metal grating floor beneath our feet. I swept my eyes over the crowd, trying to find someone I knew, someone who could help me, someone who wasn’t brainwashed like Mum seemed to be. But every time I tried to look at their faces my vision went haywire, their features distorting into an indistinct silver blur that I could not focus on no matter how hard I tried. Even so, I was inexplicably certain that we were all of the same age. Mum was the only exception. 

Up ahead I could just see a bright light streaming in from outside. We were approaching the end of the tunnel. As we stepped out into a sea of shuffling bodies, each and every head craned up to look upon the monstrosity in front of us. I followed their gazes, struck frozen and dumb by the obscure shape of the enormous silver ship docked at the end of the platform. It resembled a giant medical syringe, with fat engines at the rear, a long transparent cylinder for its body, and an elongated proboscis extending from the cockpit. The ship towered above us, scaled as if to accommodate giants twenty-feet tall.  Through the transparent walls I could see dozens of amorphous blobs rushing to and fro, occasional sparks of rainbow light bursting into and out of fleeting existence.

As I gazed in awe at the incredible sight, Mum continued to drag me along with the rest of the crowd. A large steel gangway bridged the gap between us and the ship, and we were ushered upwards by cloaked figures mumbling incoherently under their breath. I turned once again to Mum, hoping for her to see the desperation in my eyes and to come to her senses, but she had disappeared, swallowed whole by the blurred-face crowd. I tried to retreat but it was like swimming against the waves, an endless sea of bodies crushing me backwards every step I took. I was swept along with the current, victim to the will of the masses. Finally, when there were only a few people left between me and the top of the gangway, I was able to see above the crest of the horde, and I managed to locate Mum. She was being escorted from the edge of the swarm by a pair of the cloaked figures. The trio stepped onto a small, raised plinth in the corner of the platform and turned around. I threw my hands into the air and started waving and jumping furiously, doing everything I could to attract Mum’s attention. I opened my jaw wide and pushed hard, struggling to force something, anything out of my mouth.

“Rlllggagghh!” I managed to growl.

 Mum appeared completely oblivious to my efforts and continued to smile blankly. As I gestured hopelessly the two figures beside her sprouted hideous wings, grotesque throbbing veins woven across a tapestry of sickly translucent skin. One of the abominations leaned in towards Mum and scooped her into its arms before launching into the sky, carrying her off so impossibly fast that in the span of a few seconds all that was left was a dot in the sky, no bigger than a grain of salt. I stood with my mouth agape, my hands limp at my side, confusion and horror battling it out in the pit of my stomach with no qualms about collateral damage. An icy chill washed over me from head to toe and my knees turned to jelly, no longer willing or able to support my weight. My vision turned to haze and I started to spin, around and around, down and down, a slow-motion dance, its climax a full body embrace with the floor. I spiralled at half-speed, watching as the platform below me transformed into a grotesque grey mass, its slimy bulk pulsating with a gloomy, unnatural light. I closed my eyes and braced for impact.