Cyn

By Mark Carver

CJ Mills is on the verge of a mental breakdown.

After a miscarriage and a bar brawl resulting in a dishonorable discharge from the military, CJ wonders how things could get any worse. When her well-meaning but naive husband volunteers both of them for a mission of goodwill to a distant planetary colony infamous for its debauchery and lawlessness, CJ finds out just how deep the darkness can be.

Tragedy throws her into a nightmare beyond her wildest imagination. Stranded on a far-flung planet with little hope of survival, CJ makes her choice: she will not be a victim. She sets out to find answers and to punish those responsible, but what she discovers is too terrifying to even imagine.

As she blasts through blood and bone and steel, CJ finds herself inexorably drawn into the vortex that she came to confront, and she realizes the darkness she fights has been growing in her own soul. Blinded by rage and praying for a miracle, CJ comes face-to-face with a question that all of us fear to answer:

HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Carver
• Release date: Aug 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311830432

Mark Carver

Mark Carver writes dark, edgy books that tackle tough spiritual issues. He is currently working on his seventh novel. Besides writing, he is passionate about art, tattoos, heavy metal, and medieval architecture.After living in China for more than eight years, he now lives in Atlanta, GA with his wife and two children.

Book preview

CYN

By Mark Carver

Books by Mark Carver:

THE AGE OF APOLLYON

BLACK SUN

SCORN

INDELIBLE

CYN

BEAST (with Michael Anatra) – coming Fall 2015

THE JERUSALEM CHRONICLES (short story series)

COLONY ZERO (multi-author short story series)

Copyright 2015 Mark Carver. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All names, places, locations, and corporate entities are either the product of the writer’s imagination or are used in a satirical and/or non-literal manner. Any resemblance to any persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For my mother

I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.

– Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

PROLOGUE

CJ's throat burned, as if hot oil was being poured down her windpipe. She gagged and sputtered, then froze in a panic.

It wasn’t oil. It was blood.

The thickest, blackest darkness she had ever experienced pressed down on her eyes like a hand clamped down over her face. The putrid smell of smoke, ozone, and burning flesh rushed into her nostrils and harsh noises snapped and popped next to her ears like birds pecking at her skull. She felt something wrapped around her body – dozens of wires squeezing her muscles, slicing into her skin.

Her confusion and terror was almost palatable, but one thought pierced the chaos.

I need to breathe!

Clenching the muscles in her core, she heaved with all her might and vomited blood and bile like a shotgun blast. It splattered against something very close and dripped back onto her face in large sticky droplets.

Despite her disgust, CJ greedily gulped foul-smelling air, then turned her attention to whatever was constricting her like a snake. Ignoring her blindness, the vicious sounds gnashing next to her ears, and the gobs of blood falling onto her face, she slowly slid her right hand out of its confinement, inch by inch. The first thing she did was lash out with her fist and then roar with pain as her knuckles collided with something cold and solid. But it moved a few inches.

CJ sucked in a deep breath and cold horror crept over her skin.

She was inside the stasis pod. Something had gone wrong and now she was trapped in an ergonomic coffin on an inter-dimensional jump ship. Paralyzing thoughts raced through her mind.

Did the ship crash? Was it being torn apart in another dimension? How badly was she hurt?

David...

She snarled like an animal as she lashed out with her free hand again and again. A sliver of flickering light flashed across her face with each blow as the lid covering the pod lifted up an inch or two, then slammed back down, making more bloody drops rain down on her face. She gagged and fought the urge to vomit again, slamming the palm of her hand against the pod lid with all her strength.

It popped open and a shower of sparks exploded above her. CJ screamed and turned away as scorching bits of metal and glass rained down. Panting like a rabid animal, she writhed and bucked and twisted. She didn’t care about the web of wires wrapped around her, slicing through her suit and drawing blood.

She just wanted to get out.

Her right hand ached and throbbed but she commanded the pain to be silent. Bellowing like a bull, she grabbed a fistful of wires and yanked them from their sockets, freeing her torso. She bolted upright and quickly shimmied her legs out of the horrific cocoon. Circuits and electronics popped and hissed in and around the pod.

She was free. Now she had to get to David.

Gripping the side of the pod, she leaped over the edge and collapsed to the ground. Only then did she realize that her body was covered with bruises and lacerations. Blood poured into her left eye from a gash high on her forehead, her right pinky was probably broken, and her right thigh felt like a red-hot poker had been rammed through the muscle tissue. Spasms of pain and panic raced through her nerves like electric pulses. Her vision began to swim and for a moment, she thought she was going to pass out.

Then something like an iron fist seized the spirit inside of her and hoisted her to her feet.

Get a grip, soldier. You have been trained to handle situations like this. Now take a deep breath, get your emotions under control, and find out what the hell is going on.

A bolt of blue electricity snapped overhead, raining down a veil of sparks. She closed her eyes, blocking out the chaos and destruction around her and concentrated.

Deep breath. One more. Check the body’s vital systems, like a computer doing a diagnostics check. Several painful areas, some needing attention, but nothing life-threatening. Put pressure on each leg and foot. Flex fingers and wrists, rotate shoulders, then neck. No damage to joints and bones.

She opened her eyes. She was functional and intact, which meant she could move on to the next step: finding David.

CHAPTER ONE

Three weeks earlier

Washington, D.C.

October 8, 2085

Cynthia Jeanne Mills.

CJ.

The man behind the desk looked up with a disinterested expression.

Mrs. Mills. Would you like to make any final statement or declaration?

CJ stared at a point just above the man’s balding head. The genetic magicians could clone a newborn baby’s heart in less than an hour but they still couldn’t get men’s follicles to behave.

No, she answered, her voice as rigid as her spine.

The man nodded, looking slightly disappointed. Print here.

He spun what looked like a simple sheet of paper towards her. CJ waited for a moment before glancing down at the white glowing sheet. It wasn’t actually paper; she rarely saw real paper outside of a museum. Every flat surface these days was a computer, and she remembered how funny it sounded when her grandfather had referred to this as smart paper. It didn’t seem particularly smart to her. It could do anything that a normal computer could do, but you could also wad it up and throw it in the trash. That didn’t make it smart; without a user it was just an inert sheet of electronics half a millimeter thick.

And this particular piece of smart paper was awaiting her thumbprint. CJ tried not to read the words on the page but they seemed to jump out at her and claw their way into her eyeballs.

Misconduct... Flagrant disregard... Personal neglect...

And the words that she never imagined would share the same page as her name: Dishonorable Discharge.

She felt it again – that white-hot ball of heat blossoming in her stomach, followed by the curious pain behind her eyes where her retinal implants were embedded. She glanced up, saw the light reflecting off the crown of the man’s skull and suddenly wanted to seize him by the throat, slam him up against the wall, and calmly explain how the whole situation wasn’t her fault and that she was being unfairly singled out.

Violence wouldn’t have helped her case. Besides, the hammer had already fallen. She was being kicked out whether she printed the page or not. This place was a nuthouse anyway. With the monkeys they let loose, running around playing soldier, it was a wonder the Chinese or the African Coalition hadn’t already invaded and conquered the nation.

CJ rammed her thumb down on the page, pressing hard and hoping she was ruining some sensitive electronics inside. Again, she knew it was foolish to even try – the only thing that ruined smart paper tearing it up like regular paper. But she wanted to damage something. Anything.

Thank you, Mrs. Mills. The shiny-domed keeper of the desk glanced up at her with glassy eyes. You will now be escorted from the premises.

Every muscle in her body quivered with some strange energy, but all she could do was bite her lip and close her eyes. A surge of panic spread through her nerves like wildfire as she felt a tear try to squeeze through her eyelids.

Don’t you dare…!

Come with us, Mrs. Mills.

Drawing in a deep breath, she spun on her heel, marching forward without waiting for her boulder-jawed escorts to keep up.

She knew where the exit was.

Ten minutes later, she was heading towards home, hurtling through the underground tubes that snaked beneath D.C. like steel veins. She hated the subtrams; she didn’t know why the powers-that-were didn’t use tunneling technology to instantly zap people to their doorsteps.

Actually she did know: only the ultra-rich had access to it. The rest of the human vermin had to content themselves with underground trains that ran at a paltry three hundred kilometers an hour.

CJ kept her head bowed during the six-minute trip to her station. There was no point in people-watching; everyone had more or less the same ideal figure encased in environmentally-adaptive skinsuits. Those who thought it was their life’s mission to distinguish themselves from the crowd had downloaded eye-catching modifications for their outfits, but computer-generated tongues of fire or undulating schools of fish flickering through fabric had lost its appeal long ago.

Her head still bowed, she looked at her military-grade leggings. Basic training had purged every trivial inclination from her then-nineteen-year-old mind and spirit in less than a week. She quickly grew to appreciate efficiency and functionality over appearance, especially when appearances cost two weeks’ salary.

She was certainly not ashamed of her body, and in this age when every figure was lithe and trim, she was still a cut above the average civilian. But she knew she raised eyebrows with the numerous pockets that bulged from nearly every part of her bodysuit. She didn’t know why, but her time in the military had instilled a deep affection for pockets, despite the fact that they marred her eye-popping silhouette.

Who did she need to impress, anyway? She wasn’t a slapped-up mod chick like the group of giggling teens in the far corner of the tram car, their retro hairstyles and voluptuous bodies wrapped in shimmering fabric practically screaming for attention with a bullhorn. CJ gave them a passing glance, nothing more. She was only seven or eight years older than they were but she felt like she was from a different century.

Even more irritating were the wolfish grins plastered on the faces of several male occupants of the car. CJ let her eyes drop to the floor. Nothing she hadn’t seen a thousand times before. It seemed like sex was the only real currency of the human race.

So did that mean everyone was just an animal trying to get laid?

CJ thought of David. She suddenly found herself wishing that he looked at her like those libidinous hound dogs looked at the girls. He used to look at her that way, before –

Station 15, the intercom chirped. Units 100 through 120 West.

CJ stood up, glaring at the nearest hound dog before exiting the tram car. He didn’t notice.

As she stepped out onto the platform, she instinctively steeled her senses against the assault of sights and sounds and smells that waited for her like predators in the jungle. She took a breath, and they pounced.

The street vibrated with staccato chatter of numerous languages, most of which sounded Asian. The discordant symphony of aromatic foods, again primarily Asian, though there were scents from every inhabited continent, swirled through the humid air. Projected three-dimensional holographic signs shimmered and twirled, and in some cases flickered due to poor maintenance. English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Japanese, Arabic… Every night the streets that snaked around Station 15 were like a midnight orgy after a UN assembly.

CJ hardly noticed anyone’s race anymore, having lived in D.C. for so long, where skin colors swirled together like Neapolitan ice cream. CJ’s genes were even sprinkled with a bit of Chinese and Moroccan flavor, according to her grandmother. This was a bit puzzling considering that everyone in the family photos looked completely Caucasian, but she hadn’t pressed the issue.

She had an inkling it was true when she looked in the mirror. Her eyes were just the slightest bit sharper at the edges than the other white women she knew, and her hair was darker than brown but not quite black. Of course, it was rare to find anyone who didn’t carry mixed blood in their veins, aside from the Puritans - fanatical Nazi enthusiasts who had nothing to do with the Puritans who came to America and celebrated the first Thanksgiving and gave the natives the gift of civilization and all that nonsense.

CJ glided through the human sea, wrinkling her nose at smells that years ago might have made her gag but now were just part of the kaleidoscope. Her nose picked a few delicious scents out of the chaos and her stomach grumbled. She hoped David was home early, and since she was praying for miracles, she hoped he had dinner sizzling on the grill in the kitchenette.

And maybe the army would call her up and apologize and beg her to come back to the ranks, and give her a promotion to show there were no hard feelings.

CJ clenched her teeth and lowered her eyes. Her retinal implants were itching again. She made a mental note to see what kind of medical coverage she retained after losing her…well, everything.

She emerged onto a relatively clear street, and she felt like she could breathe for the first time since exiting the station. It didn’t matter that she had been living in D.C. for the better part of ten years – she would never get used to the human crush that seemed to strangle this city like a ferocious weed. She had never been to Mexico City or New Delhi or Hong Kong, but she imagined that those places that were legendary for their human cattle problem would lose their ignoble titles in the next few years if things continued they way they were here. She remembered seeing a news report that there were now more than fifteen American cities with populations of more than ten million people, and that urban and suburban areas swelled with more than five hundred million souls.

That wasn’t counting the country bumpkins who were breeding like rabbits. The family planning patrols stayed away from the mountains and the swamps; they valued their heads more than enforcing the laws that more than half the country insisted were unjust anyway.

One of the few memories CJ had of her father was staring at him as he lay sprawled out in front of the wall screen, empty slapper flasks crowded around his feet like despondent children. His glazed eyes were focused on the vivid, ultra-high definition images of the latest war du jour.

"You know what the problem is?" he had grumbled to no one in particular, his voice sounding like stones tumbling down a mountain. "They broke their promise. We were supposed to get a big one and clean this place out, start fresh. Spray on a little World War Three and wipe the slate clean. All those nukes and H-bombs and even the damn warp bombs, and then nothin.’ Just a cock tease, gettin’ folks all riled up, thinkin’ that any day now, the sky is gonna burn bright as the sun and all this human waste will burn away, and those that survive will be the cream of the crop and will build a new world from the ashes, like the Wild West turning into Beverly Hills. But what do we have? Eleven billion open mouths. A man can’t even take a piss without gettin’ someone’s shoes wet. Someone shoulda dropped a big one just to get the ball rollin.’ Don't need any provocation, just take one for the team. Hell, I’d’ve done it if it was me sitting at the desk with the big red button that said ‘Do Not Push Unless Absolutely Necessary!’ Well, what in the hell do you call that?"

He had thrown his hands towards the wall screen, then passed out.

Wiping a streak of D.C. grime across her sweaty forehead, CJ pursed her lips as she stepped around a mound of clothes curled up outside her building. She wasn’t sure if the person underneath the dirty pile of fabric was still alive, or if there was even a person under there at all. Not that she really cared.

She was thinking about how it would be nice if David wasn’t home yet after all.

Her dishonorable discharge was no secret. He had been the one that had advised her to make the plea agreement and avoid a court martial and possible jail time. The problem wasn’t that she had broken the jaws of two well-connected lieutenants at the bar when they wouldn’t take get lost for an answer. The problem was that she had been phased out of her mind after binging on slap shots for nearly two hours. After staying clean for more than six months, the potent cocktail of adrenaline, endorphins, testosterone, and other assorted enhancers had sent her brain into overdrive, and what was supposed to have been an insistent shove turned into a full-scale bar brawl.

A shadow passed over her face as she recalled that night. The terror and bliss of losing her self-control had been almost as intoxicating as the endless parade of slappers, and every day since, she wondered if she would have reacted the same way if she had been in control of herself.

Then again, if she had been in her right mind, she wouldn’t have found herself in a sleazy bar in the Bronze District. Though when something like a miscarriage happens, it’s hard for a woman to keep her emotional balance.

She remembered her shame as she had crept out of the apartment, even though David wasn’t at home. He was dealing with the loss of their child in a different way: taking double shifts at the plant and spending his spare time at the cathedral downtown. CJ felt repulsed by his sudden religious fervor, but she soon realized that everyone had their own altar when life threw them a curve.

Hers was the firing range. She had been winding down her drills and overall involvement in the military in preparation for her maternity leave, and had switched from combustion-projectile guns in favor of pulse weapons on doctor's orders. She did go against the doctor's orders, however, by refusing to request reduced active status, which would effectively demote her to the Reserves, giving her the option to live off-base. It would also trim her medical benefits down to pennies. She knew her days in active duty were numbered anyway and she was hardly useful as a soldier since she had to be so cautious. But aside from the economic considerations, she couldn't bear the thought of becoming another military has-been. She still had too much to prove, to herself and to the world.

After the miscarriage, David had been very gentle and supportive, even though he was clearly hurting too. CJ sensed something lurking below the surface, something he wouldn’t say out loud. Sometimes she would catch him staring at her with a strange look on his face.

She knew what it was. He blamed her for what happened. He could never come out and say it but she could feel it, could sense it when he would lock eyes with her and then look away. He was just putting up a front, being the loving and supportive husband, the rock that could weather any storm. She remembered their conversations in the days leading up to the tragedy, and the hints that he dropped were all too obvious in hindsight. He had clearly been uncomfortable with her staying in the service during the early stages of her pregnancy, and when they lost the baby, every sideways glance said I told you so. CJ had insisted that she wanted to have the baby naturally which, despite all the medical advances, was still safer and healthier than growing the baby in a laboratory. Their child wasn’t a plant, she had argued, and David acquiesced. But now the shadow of what if… hovered over them, a question that could never be answered.

She wished she had a best friend, someone who wouldn’t judge her for being irrational, who would tell her that she was imagining things and she was being unfair to David, that he was a good man who was just trying to help her deal with the pain in spite of his own heartache. There was no one she could confide in, to help her build that bridge back to him.

So she had turned to the one friend that she had left. There were a dozen theories why the acidic drinks were called slap shots but all she knew was that the pain and loneliness grew smaller and smaller with each glass. And then she saw the two men strutting towards her, wearing hungry smiles like the men on the subtram...

Now she stood in front of Unit 114, staring up at the steel and concrete monolith that she and ten thousand other people called home.

If I had been the one sitting at the desk with the bright red button, I would have pushed it.

CJ realized that she didn’t want to go home. She wanted to turn around and dash through the crowded streets and vanish into a shady bar or even a neural sim depot and plug in for a few hours. Anything to take her away from right here, right now…

Over her left shoulder, she heard a voice speaking in perfect advertisement pitch. She didn’t have to turn around to imagine the perfect face and perfect body that went along with it.

"Are you looking for a new beginning?" the sunny voice cooed. "Searching for meaning and purpose beyond the daily grind? Reach for the stars! The TAP worlds are just what you’ve been looking for…"

CJ smirked as she stepped into the mag lift. The elevator car rocketed upwards at more than seven Gs but the magnetic dampers made the acceleration barely noticeable.

The TAP worlds are just what you’ve been looking for…

What a load of crap. Yeah, they were just what you were looking for…if you were a disgustingly rich religious fanatic. Or if you were an obsessive pervert who wasn’t titillated enough by the neural sims.

The technology that opened the