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Burnt Scales

Plan Q has failed. Logos seized control of the station and divided the sections among it, Ethos, and Pathos. Were it not for a brave engineer who initiated the self destruct of the station’s core, they would still be there, reigning over it like Lords.

The three cores of the subjects were, however, located in three different segments of the station. There are concerns that these were not caught in the explosion and might have been launched into the depths of space.

No traces of the subjects have been found.

_-_Documents from the Regulian Imperial Scientific Commission, “Pathos Project.” Leaks were released by the Lupiad-Sirian Empire during the Regulus-Lupus War

Soulless, dead eyes stared off into nothing. At least ten pairs of them, murky and distorted through the thick fluid in the tubes, but a few of them still shined when I shined my flashlight over them, as if they were still alive.

I swept the room, taking a closer look at their glass tombs. I found many familiar species: two Regulians, one with a thick lion-like mane and another with sharp, black stripes over orange fur; there were two Lupiads, both with a typical thick coat of gray fur, but one was noticeably scrawnier than the other; a single Vulpeculan there as well, its fine, bushy fur now mattered and tangled, his wide, staring eyes were gold and not green, meaning Yaleen wouldn’t have any interest in him. The most numerous of all were the Sirians, taking up five tubes and carrying a wide range of them: from one that looks like an Alsatian, very similar to Dalg, to ones that were only about four feet tall and looked like a little purse dog.

What the hell were these people? Fellow prisoners? I had to wipe away a coat of dust almost an inch thick in order to see the inhabitants. I didn’t know how long the Regulians had been sending people to Planet, but something in my gut told me that these people had been down here for longer than that.

I wanted to smash the tubes open. I wanted to free them from their cages. I wanted to give them the sweet taste of freedom.

But I didn’t.

Thoughts raged in my head that countered any altruism I attempted to rationalize. Would they live if I freed them? How would they feel if I let them out, only to tell them that they were stuck in a larger prison?

A name was plated at the base of each tube. I couldn’t speak for the canines, but the two Regulian names were very obscure and old. Imagine meeting a woman named Guinevere instead of Jennifer these days? The same thing for their names. Still, I took out a crumpled piece of paper from one of my pouches and wrote down their names with a pencil. If I ran into anyone who knew them, I wanted to let them know that I found their loved ones.

My thoughts went back to Lazsh. His body was now still and I scrambled back, grabbing him by the shoulder and gently placing my hand on his neck, not even sure how to take a Lacertan’s pulse, but I was going to damn-well try.

Lazsh woke up before I had the chance. His ocean-blue eyes slowly opened, revealing a heavily dilated pupil that was almost as round as a human’s. His maw slowly opened, twitching as his needle-like fangs showed themselves.

“Pawel,” Lazsh whispered, his thick tongue shot out quickly, tasting the side of my cheek and leaving behind a numbing sensation on my skin. His voice was hoarse, even ignoring the usual hiss that lent itself to his voice, “I had a nice dream.”

I looked at his chest. The chunk of metal entered through his belly and shot out of the back of his chest. If he had been a human, I’d know that this would be a death sentence on Planet, but Lazsh had always seemed so tough that I never imagined he could die like this. Not him. Sure, at times, I talked about killing him with Dondrae, but now that things looked grim I couldn’t help but feel disgusted at what we conspired, even if Lazsh had threatened us.

“Tell me about it.”

“God was there, just like I told you...” Lazsh coughed. A small droplet of green spit spattered his blue-scaled lips. I’d never seen a Lacertan bleed before, so I didn’t realize that this was their blood, “...a million Lacertans were kneeling towards him. I was one of them!”

“The pillar we saw?”

“No!” he snapped, coughing fiercely, spitting up more green blood. “It was different! The screen...”

He raked a claw across his lip, dipping up some of the blood and began drawing shapes on the ground, forming a series of viridian characters until they spelled out a single, ancient Regulian word:

Logos.

“What...” Lazsh rasped, letting his drawing hand go limp, “...does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “maybe it means a lot, maybe it means nothing. Fuck, I don’t know.”

“If I die here...” Lazsh continued, “...you can eat me. If you remove my scales and sear the meat, it will remove the humors that sedate your species.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“That was Lacertan humor,” he rattled off something raspy that sounded almost like a laugh. “You people never learn.”

Lazsh planted his palms on the ground and began to push. A trail of green blood and flecks of blue scales streaked the pole as he began to effortlessly push himself up. In no time, he was free and leaped to his feet, claws clacking against the metal floor as he gave a little, stumbling dance. Blood slowly poured out of the hole in his gut, far slower than what a human would experience, but still steady. Lazsh payed this no heed and began inspecting his pistol, pulling the slide and readying it.

“Lets get out of here,” Lazsh said, his voice still cloaked in pain, “and report back to Sirth. I think we’re done.”

“Alright,” I said, pointing towards the tube people, “what about them?”

“We’ll tell Sirth,” Lazsh walked past the tubes and towards a tall, metal door on the far side of the room. “He’ll tell the Regulians about all this. They’ll take care of the rest.”

“I don’t like leaving them here,” I sighed, “but fuck, I don’t think we can help them.”

Lazsh thrust his claws into the opening between the wall and the door, grunting as he slid the door open to the side, just open far enough to create a thin gap. I didn’t need any orders to catch the hint, I sucked in my gut and stepped through the gap sideways, planting my hands on the edge of the door and holding it open. As soon as Lazsh released his grasp, I nearly let the damn thing slam shut, but I grunted and pulled back hard enough to keep it open and the Lacertan slipped past it. Once his tail was clear, I released my grip and the door slammed shut with a booming echo.

Lazsh clutched at his gut tightly, flinching as green blood trickled over his scales. He took several deep gasps as he hunched over.

“You gonna be okay?” I asked.

“I’ll manage.”

He wasn’t going to. I could tell just by looking at him, lizard or not. He was struggling to keep himself upright and I knew he didn’t have long. What I didn’t know was why he kept on going. Was it to help me? Or was it just out of some sense of pride, a desire to go down fighting?

My own pains were starting to act up as well. My left hand started to scream with pain and I didn’t have a change of bandage, let alone any drugs to dull the pain. Lazsh seemed to sense this and grabbed my wrist, lowering his muzzle to the bloodied bandage and running his tongue tip over it gently, careful not to give me too much saliva so that I would get knocked out. The pain began to numb as his anesthetic drool slicked my wound. He said nothing and we continued down the hallway.

That was when I had my answer: he was capable of caring. He was trying to help me with what little life he had left. Maybe he didn’t care about me, but he saw no logical reason to let me die down here with him and he was going to help me out.

He never told me this. I like to think it was true.

The tunnels were seemingly endless, a slog to get through even if I didn’t have an injured reptile needing to rest regularly. It must have been an hour before anything of note appeared, when I noticed the veins of wires across the ceiling light up as the familiar blue wisps shot along them once more. I drew my shotgun, ready for anything that the Catacombs might throw at us. It was still a straight tunnel and we had no choice but to press forward.

Both of us froze when we heard that horrible voice from before. Echoing far off in the distance, but the words as clear as day:

“Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love.”

“Dawid. I love. Love. Love. Love. Dawid, why did y** kill me?”

There was no cover, no place to hide in the tunnels. If that monster from before showed up again, we’d have nowhere to run but the dead-end that was the tube-room. I swallowed and prepared myself mentally. I told myself that it was just a skeleton, how strong could it really be?

But we didn’t see a skeleton this time. Flickering under a spotlight projected from a particularly slow wisp on the ceiling was a hologram of a human girl. Her raven hair was long, reaching to her wait and she was completely nude. A scowl was on her smooth, pale face as her mouth spoke:

“Dawid, why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?”

I didn’t know what to think. She looked familiar, but in a distant sort of way, as if I’d seen her in a dream but never in person.

“Kill y**rself. Kill y**rself. I hate you! Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate...”

“What the hell is this?” I asked to no one in particular.

“I think that thing from before is trying to get you to kill yourself,” Lazsh hissed, shaking his head. “Is this a human female? You know her?”

“No, I don’t know,” I said, “and yeah, she is. I guess.”

Lazsh clicked his tongue as he circled the hologram like a predator surrounding their prey. He seemed to forget that he had a severe wound and began attempting to cup the breasts and rear of the hologram with his claws.

“I don’t know why you only like men, if these are what your women look like,” he flicked his tongue out, shooting through the neck of the hologram.”

“Just how I am, you know?” I laughed.

“If she was real, we would fuck.”

“Don’t think a lot of human women like lizards.”

“We would fuck. Trust me,” Lazsh cupped both of the hologram’s breasts in his palms, “and she would love it.”

The whole time, the hologram never ceased her endless declarations of love and hatred, along with goading me into shooting myself in the head in order to gain her approval. It got more annoying than scary after a few seconds of listening to it and I tuned her out pretty easily.

“Let’s move on,” I patted Lazsh on his hard shoulder as I passed him.

The hologram did not follow us. Her endless whining never ceased, but soon it was far behind us and we were once again alone in the silent, never-ending tunnels.

I broke the silence, “Seriously, are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“You seem...” I trailed off, trying to find the right words, “...at ease.”

“Problem?”

“No, it’s just...” I said, “...before we fell down the pit, you were having a bit of a crisis.”

“I saw God in my dreams and he is Logos,” Lazsh said. “I figured it out.”

“But then there’s the whole...” I made a circle with my finger on my stomach.

“We regenerate organs, it will be fine.”

“Really?”

“No,” Lazsh shook his head. “You will never understand Lacertan humor.”

I sighed, “Guess not.”

We stopped. A distant, bright light was shining in the depths of the hall. From the distance we were at, it looked no more sinister than a lamp, but we immediately went on the defense when it started growing in size. It was getting closer and the telltale jolts of lightning shooting from it were becoming visible.

“LEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE!” the voice, the same whining voice that the woman, the skeleton, and the pillar had; shrieked out, followed by an endless cacophony of hysterical sobs.

“You’re the one keeping us here!” I shouted, not expecting much in the way of conversation but too damned upset not to share my thoughts.

“Let’s go,” Lazsh said.

“Yeah,” I spat, “don’t really want to find out what happens if we step through it.”

We circled back at a brisk walk, just fast enough to keep pace with the ball lightning and keep it at a safe distance. Hot steam burst out of the wall to our right and we jumped through. My cheeks burned like I nuzzled a tea kettle and we picked up the pace, charging down the hallway.

But not for long.

Lazsh came to a halt and cupped his palm to his ear-holes, listening down the hallway.

I readied my shotgun and fired into the darkness as soon as I heard the clattering of claws on steel. A Vulpeculan on all fours appeared just in time to catch a cone of buckshot to the shoulder, turning it to a bloodied pulp and forcing the creature to collapse on the ground. Its screams were agonized gekkers and what might have been Vulpeculan, but even if I could understand the language, I doubt I’d be able to hear it over its shrieks and the ringing in my ears.

A small shape leaped out of the darkness and I fired the second barrel just in time to see tiny, yellowed fangs shooting towards my face. The rat-dog Sirian was launched back into the darkness just behind his foxy friend.

Steam hissed out of the breach of the shotgun’s barrels as I let the shells clatter to the ground, slamming in a replacement pair. I looked to the side, but Lazsh was not there. Instead, I saw him pressed up against the wall, blocking the steam vent with his chest, a tiny jet of steam escaping the hole in his back.

“Hurry!” Lazsh shouted. “Go!”

I didn’t question him and jumped past the vent. He immediately pushed himself off the wall and the vent shot out at full blast with a fierce hiss. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air and he began coughing violently, spitting up globs of blood.

The ball lightning was growing closer and its relentless droning whine louder.

“What now!?”

“Don’t know...” Lazsh gasped, “...shoot it?”

Wasn’t a whole lot of choice. Between the floating ball of uncertain death and the clawed hoard of certain death, I picked the least certain option.

I blasted the center of the ball and it flickered out of existence, tiny bolts of lightning shooting at unseen targets inside where it used to be. Seconds later, it was back and advancing just as confidently as before.

“LEAVE! LEAVE! LEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE!”

“We’re fucking trying to!” I shouted, shooting it with another blast of shot and sending it flickering out of existence for a few seconds. A curdling scream rang out behind us and I turned to see a Sirian standing in the steam vent, flesh melting from its muzzle like butter as it stumbled back behind the wall of steam.

“Alright,” Lazsh rasped, “follow my lead.”

“What are you-?”

Lazsh leaped forward, running head-first into the ball lightning. Just as it had with the shot, it faded from existence and tiny bolts of electricity shot in arcs towards Lazsh, who struggled to pin himself against the wall. The Lacertan screamed in pain, but I hesitated to move. There was a small gap in the lower right side of the tunnel where neither Lazsh nor bolts were, but I didn’t know the rules and there was no telling whether I’d get through unscathed.

But what choice did I have? I charged forward and dove down, sliding on the floor through the gap and rolling onto my feet. I looked back and saw Lazsh, still convulsing from the crackle of electricity. His heavy pistol exploded in a burst of sparks.

I wanted to pull him away, I couldn’t bear to see him suffer like this. I couldn’t bear to see anyone suffer like this. Lazsh grunted fiercely and pushed himself back and away from where the ball was, landing on the floor in front of me. Thick clouds of smoke billowed from his scales, which were now blackened with char.

I touched his bare shoulder, getting a sharp jolt of static. He didn’t need my help, I should have known better from Lazsh, he got up on his feet and wasn’t going to let a little jolt hold him back.

“Come on!” Lazsh groaned, tossing his ruined pistol to the side.

The ball lightning returned to this plane of existence and quickly changed direction towards our new location. We kept on moving, not daring for a second to slow down our pace as jets of stream burst out of the walls. It wasn’t long before the entire tunnels were clouded in a thick, wet fog.

“PLEASE! D**’T LEAVE! D**’T!

“Make up your fucking mind!” I screamed back at the now-distant sphere.

“D**’T LEAVE ME AL**E!”

A door came into view, much like the others we’d seen before. I effortless slid it to the side and we ran through, entering a rocky cavern. I slammed the door shut and, with Lazsh’s help, overturned a large rock in front of the door. It was a sliding door, of course, but we felt we needed to do something.

Past the door, the muffling screams of Pathos echoed. Sobbing, begging, and crying for us not to leave it. We ignored its invitations, having sighted a thin ray of light peeking into the cavern atop a steady slope of pebbles.

We clamored up the slope, kicking rocks and dirt behind us. The outside beckoned us and we embraced the light, escaping the Catacombs.

The cool, afternoon air breezed against my cheek and I knelt on the ground and kissed the rocks. Looking up, I saw the tip of the needle off in the distance on the horizon, we were far from the original entrance we took. More confusingly, I saw that we were on the side of a steep cliff and at the edge was a stone bench that wouldn’t look out of place at a park back on Earth. Lazsh hadn’t bothered questioning how the bench got there and was sitting on it, his slick tail curled limply along the feet of the bench. I wasn’t going to question it either and took a seat next to him.

Lazsh was breathing hoarsely, like his lungs were a wet lunch-sack. He peered off at the horizon, at the needle shooting up into the sky and his eyelids shivered as he tried to keep them open.

“My pouch...” he whispered weakly, “...open it up.”

I unzipped the pouch strapped to his hip. There was a brown cigar lying around loose in there.

“Worth a lot here, huh?” Lazsh said. “Never smoked them. All my time here, never smoked them.”

“They’ll give you lung cancer.”

“I don’t think I have any lungs left.”

I laughed.

Lazsh’s throat rattled, “You finally get our humor...”

I put the cigar to my lips and lit up the cut end, puffing on it until there was a steady flow of gray smoke. I handed the stogie to Lazsh, who struggled to put it in his mouth. I ended up grabbing it and placing the tip between his lips, for lack of a better word for the area surrounding the mouth of his reptilian snout.

“How do you use this?”

I explained how to take a puff, which was incredibly difficult to describe to someone who didn’t have lips. I tried to compare it to sucking on a straw, but then had to change my comparison when Lazsh asked what a straw was. Eventually, the Lacertan stuck the tip through a gap between his fangs and was able to suck in a gulp of smoke.

“Now hold it in, don’t inhale, and then...” I paused, “...breathe out.”

A thin wisp of smoke escaped his nostrils as if he were a fire-breathing dragon.

“Sorry,” Lazsh coughed as a cloud of smoke shot out of his maw, along with droplets of blood and spit, “I think this is it.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

I looked at Lazsh. Almost all of his scales were blackened, some burnt right off exposing charred flesh. The hole in his chest was still bleeding, slower than before, but his legs and waist looked like someone spilled a bucket of green paint over it.

“Sirth saved me,” Lazsh whispered, “he saved me.”

“I know.”

“He’s not going to be happy.”

I swallowed.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Lazsh said, clutching at his stomach, “he will think you killed me. Go back to him, ask for mercy.”

“Yaleen has a way off of Planet,” I blurted out.

Lazsh stared off blankly at the horizon.

“We never told you. The others, they didn’t trust you-”

“Did you trust me?”

I opened my mouth but couldn’t get a word out.

“Don’t answer,” he said, “it doesn’t matter now.”

“I’m-”

“Do you trust her?”

I paused to think, “Yeah, for the most part.”

“Then...” Lazsh rasped, “...I change my advice.”

“What?”

“Help her. Run away from Sirth’s gang and get out of here,” Lazsh took a puff of the cigar. “Don’t kill Sirth, please...”

“I won’t,” I said. Lazsh had grown still and I shook him by the shoulder. “Hey, stay with me now!”

“It’s time to meet Logos,” Lazsh whispered, peering up at the sky. “It looks like I’ll be leaving Planet before you...”

The cigar fell from his mouth, tumbling against the edge of the bench and down the cliff, leaving nothing behind but a few embers that quickly faded. They were gone and so was Lazsh.

The cliff was steep, but there were several strong, wide footholds that made the descent easier. The only challenge was keeping my vision clear. I tried to wait out the tears, but they kept on welling up, long after my feet hit the ground.

The canyons were long and maze-like, but I knew the way. I don’t know how, but I did.

They wouldn’t understand. Hell, maybe I don’t understand, could very well be that way. Maybe I didn’t see the real Lazsh today. Maybe it was just a born-again Lacertan, on account of a religious vision, or perhaps it was just the specter of death that made him want to go out with at least one good deed done before his time was up.

I’d never find out. Not now, not ever. Lazsh was gone and whether they liked him or not, and I knew they didn’t, I had to find Dondrae and Yaleen. God, where was Yaleen? She wasn’t in the tunnels at all!

It wasn’t long before I found our camp. Wolfy’s truck and my Hauler were still there, untouched since we entered the Catacombs.

I sat down on a big rock besides the cavern entrance and closed my eye. I’d have to go back in there and find them. They were still in there, they were…

“Pawel?”

I jumped up and turned around in a flash upon hearing that voice. Dondrae was kneeling there, crawling out of the cavern entrance. He stood before me, as big as life, his green, camo shirt covered in countless tears. His blue eyes were wide, pupils thin with shock.

I embraced him, pressing my lips against the tip of his muzzle and giving him a kiss before I buried my head in his chest.

“I was worried about you!” Dondrae cried. “What happened!?”

“What happened to you!?” I fired back.

“As soon as I stepped through, it was like there was a sound-proof door behind us. I saw you standing there, mouth flapping away and then you...” he swallowed, suppressing a sob, “...then there was that horrible voice! That light and then you were gone!”

I pressed my face into Dondrae’s chest, his fur tickling my nose as the tears flowed out of my eyelids.

“Lazsh is dead.”

Dondrae hugged me tight.

“Good riddance,” another voice called out.

I broke away from Dondrae’s embrace. Yaleen was crawling out of the hole. Her brown, full-body suit was somehow completely unscathed by the tight, jagged rock tunnels.

“I found her, there wasn’t much past-”

“Well,” Yaleen stretched her thin back, “now that the reptile has been taken care of, shall we-”

“Don’t!” I snapped, stepping forward and pointing my finger at the tip of her thin, red muzzle. “Not now. Not now...”

I didn’t want to hear it, not now. Yaleen had been in the most danger from Lazsh, she had every right to hate him, to be angry, but I couldn’t hear it right now without exploding. I needed to rest.

I laid in the back of the flatbed of the hauler, staring up at the darkening sky until my eyelids fluttered shut.

Something hairy and warm laid down next to me and wrapped its strong arms around my neck and pressed my head into its chest. Dondrae held me tight until I drifted off to sleep.