My stomach churns. “I haven’t heard much about the Division of Silence. That’s not something that’s been passed down through our generations,” I admit.
“Because humans didn’t know about monsters until it was too late to organize and properly weaponize themselves,” Notto says.
“Believe it or not, monsters are still debating whether notifying the humans sooner would have made a difference,” Keary says. “I’m of the mind that it wouldn’t have. No offense, but you’re a genetically weaker species, something I’m sure you understand personally as having lived in this world for a while.”
I nod. Humans aren’t exactly physically equipped for survival in this environment the way monsters are. That’s as obvious as the ocean is vast.
“Crash course on monster history,” Keary says as he leans back on his hands. “Eons ago, a group of relatively weak monsters got together and agreed that they believed some monster species were ‘too dangerous to live.’ They decided that, in secret, they were going to begin exterminating them while recruiting other idiots to their cause. Following?”
I incline my head. Kaida rests her face on my leg, her eyes locked on Keary as if waiting for story time, too. I scratch behind her ears and turn my attention back to Keary.
“Eventually, they gathered enough strength and intelligence and grew so confident in their mission that they stoppedworking in secret. They chose a dozen species that they deemed shouldn’t exist and began hunting them in the open.”
“Everyone just let that happen?” I ask, my face scrunching.
“I think, as you figured out, when it doesn’t directly affect you or you have your own battles to face, what’s happening to someone else is easy to write off. Keep your head down and mind your business, and it’ll pass you by. You’ll be left alone.”
“That’s shit,” I mutter. That’s the response I got when I asked for help after my parents died. The most other humans were willing to help was take in the kids I had tagging along with me.
“It is,” Keary says, shrugging. “This carried on for generations within the world of monsters. Meaning, it didn’t carry over onto this… planet, I guess, until much later. We’re talking nearly a thousand years of Silence gaining strength, succeeding in killing off entire species, and generally causing mass fear within the monster world. However, the true extent of the threat they posed was still largely hidden from the world while they worked toward the goal. When monsters finally put their foot down and said they’d had enough, that it was time to fight back, the odds were not in our favor. Especially not when we saw what they were actually doing behind closed doors.”
“I probably don’t want to know, but I’m morbidly curious.” My eyes flicker to Drystan because I know he’s one of those things.
“To start with, their foray into creating weapons of mass destruction was eons beyond what we had available to us since the general population wasn’t looking to take out billions of individuals. We found monsters trapped within their hybrid forms—those that you saw attacking your family were likely in their hybrid form—and controlled like robots thanks to chips in their minds. No volition. No thoughts. They were simply bodies. Mindless, endless armies that were entirely disposable as far as Silence was concerned. They were also using them as living labrats, trying to physically stitch species together. Then we found their captive humans who were carrying what we thought, at the time, were just monsters. We found out shortly after that experiments were created in the lab through the manipulation of monster DNA. Humans were simply a womb to grow them in.”
Bile rose in my throat. Try as I may, I couldn’tnotglance at Drystan again.
“At that point, along with some other extenuating circumstances that we’ll save for another day when you want to be further horrified, we notified the humans of what was going on. Unsurprisingly, many governments chose not to believe us. Shocking, right? Many governmentsdidbelieve us, but… there wasn’t anything we could do at this point. Within a number of years, Silence decided that their best bet for reaching their end goal was to destroy the human world. They released air-borne viruses that were deadly. They released the beasts—the things that roam today—which were based on the innocent drawings of a child’s imagination. It was ugly—and deadly, as you can guess.”
“They won,” I say.
“I wouldn’t call it a win, exactly. At that point, some of the details I left out happened—including the gatherings of the strongest monstrous families who all had collective targets on their backs from Silence, which strengthened our numbers. We organized. Long, bloody story short, a massively powerful witch literally transported our entire base to each individual Silence facility, and we killed everything in sight—monsters, beasts, and anyone involved.”
“But the world was left silent all on its own,” Drystan says. “Silence had already managed to destroy more than 95% of the human race and more than 60% of the monster population at that time. That doesn’t take into account the species that they exterminated into extinction.”
“Obviously, there were survivors. Not everyone works every day, after all. The pods are the remnants of Silence,” Keary says. “Yes, they’re hunted, but there are more of them in the world than we thought. However, they’re basically starting from scratch since we’d destroyed their facilities and all their technology.”
“Don’t mistake what we’re saying. We know they’re a threat, and we, monsters as a whole, will not let them gain the strength and power they once had. It’s an ongoing project that’s actively being policed,” Notto says.
I stare into the fire for a minute and wonder why this pod, the sick monsters, bothered to kill my colony to begin with. I have a feeling that these three monsters sitting with me have that answer, but I don’t ask because I’m not sure I’m going to like it.
I’m also not sure what to do with this information. It sounds like a nightmare, the kind you tell your friends late at night to see who can give you the worst monster horror story before you go to sleep.
That’s what it is, right? Just a story.
How much of it really happened? How much am I willing to believe?
KEARY
Bad joke incoming—Mother Nature looks at a dog, a deer, a bird, and a dinosaur and thinks, let me see what happens when I combine all these creatures into one. I know they’re supposed to walk into a bar, but bars are few and far between these days. The outcome of that animal orgy is… What the fuck isthat?
It takes me an embarrassing three days to realize that Rainer isn’t completely healed. It takes me another day to figure out how to keep him from limping by mid-afternoon by slowing our progress and stopping earlier than I normally would have.
I miss the days when travel portals were a thing. We passed the shell of a truck an hour ago, and it made me nostalgic for the days of quick travel. I’m not even going to think about the planes and helicopters that used to dominate the skies.
The last time I traveled by sunbeam and tried to bring someone with me, they were sliced in half. Thankfully, they were a ghost, so they managed to split apart before it utterly destroyedthem. They’re still alive, though with some nasty-looking scars across their chest.
There’s a chance I should have listened to my parents on how to move through sunlight back in the day when my so-called magic was expanding. I can probably figure it out now, but I’m not willing to risk the life of anyone I’m close to. There would be collateral damage, and nah. I’ll have to live with walking.
