Page 35 of The Godhead Complex
By chewing at their own limbs.
It took his mind a moment to wrap around the situation in front of him. He had never feared the Cranks before, but the wound in his back made him weak. Vulnerable. In counting the Flare-ridden, bloodied bodies before him, he only counted six still attached to their wrist and ankle shackles. Two gaping holes in the link—loose chains dragged on the concrete. Two Cranks were loose in the bunker.
“Get to the armory room!” Mikhail shouted as he stumbled backwards, not able to take his eyes off the sight of their madness, their desperation to be free. Like caged animals, they would rather chew off every limb than stay enslaved. The armory room had a full supply of guns, knives, ammo, and hand grenades, but his right leg suddenly gave out from the spreading pain. Like something poked him from inside the wound. He screamed despite himself.
“Great Master!” one of them exclaimed, but the cloaked men didn’t have the instincts of Orphans who’d trained their whole lives. They were organizers and politicians, didn’t have the minds of soldiers. To guard. Protect. Kill. Mikhail spun around and within an inch of his face was a snarling Crank, ripe with rage.
Widened eyes with no soul behind them. Only bloodlust.
Such smells. Every bodily fluid combined into one. Spit. Bile. Blood. The Crank lifted his half-chewed wrist toward Mikhail but he grabbed it, held it back, held it tight. The Crank gargled a scream.
“Give me your pen!” Mikhail shouted. He reached for it, grabbed it from the hapless Grief Bearer,clickedit, then stabbed the Crank in the neck. Right in the artery.
The monster dropped to its knees, Mikhail still holding its wrist.
Detached from its body.
“Great Master, you’ve been hurt!” a Grief Bearer cried from behind, finally observing Mikhail’s wound. But he wouldn’t allow this to weaken his plan.
“Pack the Cranks into the Bergs. Now!” He forced himself to his feet and moved swiftly toward the armory.
“One time, Skinny found an Orphan all the way out in a field. Dead.”
Minho appreciated company while he steered the ship, but Orange was not going to convince him that one dead soldier in a field meant there was an army of Cranks. “He saw the Crank Army?”
“Well, no. The guy was dead. Skinny never reported it, he wasn’t supposed to be out there.”
“Then how does a dead soldier in a field equal a whole army of Cranks?”
“Because.” Orange took a deep breath. “Skinny said the body was hollowed out.”
Hollowed out? He shrugged. A single Crank could have done that, or a pack of Crank-wolves. Minho didn’t know if Crank-wolves existed but if they did, it would make more sense than an army of trained Cranks. “Don’t go telling her all these crazy stories, okay?” He nodded toward Roxy, approaching the two Orphans at the captain’s bench.
“Stories about what?” Roxy asked.
Orange shook her head. “Nothing . . .”
“Everything working okay?” Roxy asked as she looked over the controls. Minho nodded. He’d figured most of them out. Steering a ship on water was a hell of a lot easier than steering a Berg in the air, but still, being out in the ocean made him nervous. He kept theMaze Cutterwithin sight of the coastline so that he could anchor in at night. The Orphan found that being behind the captain’s wheel required only one thing: Focus. Like watching the distant tree line from the walls of the Remnant Nation. Patience. Balance. Watching the surface of the water. Listening for the sounds of the ship to change.
He tried to ignore the things he didn’t know, like why the rudder of the ship kept pulling to the left, but it was getting worse by the hour. “The alignment’s off. It wasn’t this bad when we started. Something’s making it pull.” He steered slightly to the right in order to go straight. “Think you can take over while I look at the mechanics?” Orange nodded.
“I can help, too,” Roxy said.
Minho scoffed. “No offense, Roxy, but I’ve seen you in a truck. I don’t need you finding every bad wave and hitting every whale.”
“Heyyy.” She almost sounded offended. “I’ll have you know my grandpa taught me how to canoe. Yeah, that’s right. It’s a little different, but his first rule,” she held a single finger in the air, “was to respect the water.”
“That’s a good rule,” Minho replied. “You can help Orange ‘respect the water’ by keeping watch for anything ahead of us.”
“Ain’t nothing in this water but water.” Roxy looked out at the gentle ocean waves. “No other ships, no whales, nothing to look at. Kinda boring, gotta be honest.”
“Wait.” Orange took over the captain’s wheel. “You knew your parents? And yourgrandparents?” Tiers of soldiers and generations of Grief Bearers were about as close to a family tree as Orphans from the Remnant Nation ever got. Minho wanted to hear the answer.
Roxy nodded with pride. “I knew my grandparents and my dad. Although I wouldn’t exactly say I knew him. I met him and we spent lots of time together, but I never got to reallyknowhim.” She stuffed her hands in her pockets. Minho thought about what that meant, for Roxy to have had someone like that in her life but still never really know them. “My mom, she died some horrible death that no one loved me enough to talk about.”
“Oh.” Orange turned the captain’s wheel to the left as she glanced at Roxy. “I’m sorry.”
Minho remembered Roxy telling him about her mom before, but it must have really bothered her. Never knowing the truth. “Maybe . . . they loved you alotand that’s why they didn’t tell you. You know, if it was horrible.” He stepped over and corrected Orange’s steering back to the right to overcompensate for the pull to the left. “Sometimes, what we know. . . it changes what weknew,and maybe they didn’t want that for you.” Heunderstoodthis by how much he’d kept from Roxy and the others about himself, histrueself—because he knew it would change what they thought about him.
