The Mirrorverse
Chapter 53

Syrhahn

Suddenly bullets were raining down on Syrhahn’s party. They were coming from behind him, so he was fortunate enough to be protected by a tree. He watched his new friends get picked off by the automatic weapons that were being fired upon them.

He pulled his gun, the one that Xhisara had given him when they had awakened hours earlier. As for Xhisara, she was no longer there, having been engulfed as soon as a bullet hit her. Joe had struggled to hide behind a tree, but Ke was on the ground, a pool of blood coming from his chest.

The firing stopped as they reloaded, and he grabbed Ka, shouting “No!” as Ka moved towards Maya’s lifeless body. She had taken a shot to the head, and the beautiful girl was no more.

Taking his advantage, Syrhahn strode out to the side of his tree, shooting at the gunmen of whom he could see an elbow and a foot sticking out from behind their trees. As far as he could see there were two, but there might have been more.

He missed, the targets were too small and disappeared immediately. He ran from his tree to the one to his left, taking him closer to the cowards who had rained fire on a group of unarmed civilians.

He realised there was a third gunman behind a third tree, who was the nearest to him. The bullets started flying again, causing him to rest behind his tree, looking back at the devastation left behind in their circle.

Syrhahn counted the bullets they were emitting. They each had a standard rack of twenty two bullets, and when they stopped to reload this time, they hadn’t fired enough. They were waiting for him to come out from behind his tree so they could shoot him while he thought they were reloading.

Not wishing to join their game, Syrhahn stayed his position, and assessed the casualties of his allies. He couldn’t see Les, but Rob was down. Ke was down also with a left chest shot, but there was too much blood for it to be a heart shot.

Ka had the sense to stay behind his tree, while his dead girlfriend lay across his lap where he’d pulled her during the brief hiatus Syrhahn had caused by firing upon the enemy.

It was stalemate. They all had bullets and they all had cover. Syrhahn knew they would want absolute proof of his death, just as he knew he had to take the fire away from the survivors.

The furthest one, dressed as a soldier, moved to a tree nearer to Syrhahn under a hail of protective fire from his comrades. While his nearest enemy reloaded, in a tiniest fraction of a second, Syrhahn stuck out to his left and shot him down, returning to the safety of his tree in a hail of bullets.

One down, two to go.

Needing them to come to him and away from the others, Syrhahn took risks he might otherwise not have taken, like sticking his head and gun out and firing, knowing they were waiting for that opportunity. Thankfully they missed, but so did Syrhahn, and the nearest one hopped a tree closer.

Syrhahn needed not reload, Xhisara had assured him that the gun was not throwing out bullets, although it did appear to. It looked and felt like a normal gun, and there was no red laser or anything, but it needed recharging back where she got it from, not reloading. He hoped that it wouldn’t need recharging for a while.

He couldn’t understand what William was doing sending commandos with projectile launchers when there were weapons of the calibre he was holding, but his questions had to be put on hold. As did his rage.

Syrhahn could hear shooting elsewhere, and realised this scum wasn’t alone.

He fired at the farthest one, who ducked behind his tree. There were lots of shots fired, but they didn’t appear to be in his direction. Syrhahn realised there were no birds on Eden. It hadn’t occurred to him before.

He had his back to his tree, his gun ready for anything that could come at him. Apart from what actually did come.

Syrhahn was pinned. He had been too busy looking around the tree to realise he was becoming part of it. Strong roots had grown up from the ground and pinned him to the tree. The gun was still in his hand, and now he understood why the attackers had fired rounds off but not at their targets. They were either trying to free themselves, or panicking as they became captive.

He could hear the men shouting, but they weren’t speaking English. Their skin was very dark, almost black, from what he had noticed, they were also around Ka’s height. But there wasn’t time to wonder where they had come from, nor did he particularly care at that moment.

Syrhahn wondered if the roots were going to crush him to death, or just hold him there. He suddenly understood Josh’s words about the forest getting angry. He could have warned us properly. Like hey, watch out, the forest is carnivorous and likes nothing more than to have people for dinner, so don’t piss it off by firing guns at it. That would have sufficed. Whether it would have made any difference or not was another matter entirely.

The men were crying out in pain, which was odd as the roots were not actually hurting Syrhahn at all, though it was rather a snug fit. He felt the roots working around his left hand, the one with the gun in it. It didn’t like his gun. The forest was angry and it didn’t like the gun. He thought it was probably in his best interests to drop it. It was immediately swallowed by the ground, and he wondered for a brief moment if that was what Xhisara meant by recharging.

The roots around him loosened off as soon as the weapon was disposed of, although they didn’t let him go. It was more comfortable, certainly more so than the men were at that moment as they screamed out in pain. Couldn’t have happened to nicer folk, he thought before wondering how he was going to get out of there.

Suddenly April appeared with a tear streaked face.

“Get out of here, get to safety!” he shouted at her, but she came closer. “April, the forest will get you!”

“It only got the men with guns,” she sobbed while pulling futilely at the roots. “Why did it get you?”

“I had a gun. The ground ate it,” stated Syrhahn morosely, only wanting the child to get as far away as possible. “Please take the others to safety.”

“They won’t leave their dead and I can’t force them,” the sweet kid was still trying to free him, albeit unsuccessfully. She is too young for this, for any of this, he thought miserably.

“Go!” he would have shooed her but some organic prison warden had decided to seize control of his arms.

“It can’t be, I need you!” April cried, dropping to her knees.

“I’ll get out,” it was a good attempt at optimism as he sounded more optimistic than he felt.

“No you won’t, some woman just tried to pull the guy out so he could take her to his boss, but only his head and shoulders came out, the rest...” she broke down completely at that point, sobbing.

“What do you mean, the rest...”

“Oh Syrhahn, you don’t have a body any more, it’s eaten it!”

“I can wriggle my toes. And I’m not in pain. They are the only bits I can wriggle, but they are definitely there,” he assured her as best he could, hoping that the forest hadn’t started digesting him, or perhaps he was waiting in line to provide lunch.

“Well, that certainly explains how we can eat all the fruit but toilet off world while the forest still exists, dead bodies provide sustenance to the organisms.” It had been one of Syrhahn’s unanswered questions. “A carnivorous planet. Maybe it likes people fighting, gives them a chance to become dinner.”

He realised that his external musings were not helping the child at his feet, who did at least seem to be unaffected by the ravenous orchard.

“Look, you have your whole life ahead of you,” started Syrhahn, knowing they could be his last words before they were replaced with cries of pain. “Find my son, Viskra, he will take care of you. Hopefully Xhisara will be fine, she made if off the planet anyway. She can look after both of you.”

It was with a heavy heart that Syrhahn looked down at the little girl. This was not how he expected to die, and she didn’t need to watch it, but his hands were tied and April was not going anywhere.

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