Frigid wind tears at my tattered clothing; it bites deep into my flesh and I’m hounded by the cries of creatures in the twilight. I’ve been awake for two days, my body is starved, the architects have given me nothing since they spat me from a cocoon and into a raging storm of snow and ice.

  The shadows move and I press on with a cry. I can’t feel my feet and I know this is bad. Our tribe was once caught in a storm years before and the cold blackened the limbs of too many of us; it even took the life of one poor soul. I want to throw my clothes off; I’m baking and freezing all at once and the wind is unabating.

  I see something, ahead and above. A black mouth against the white of snow. I have no weapon with which to drive away the creatures that pursue me but if I can reach shelter then maybe their numbers will mean less. Maybe I can fend them off until the storm passes and I can see the segment walls. Blazing sun, I’m hungry.

  I curse my vision as I fall again and cut my knees. Oran did more than beat me and leave me to bleed, alone in the dark. He struck me so hard that my left eye sees nothing, not blackness, a lack of anything that is so acute that my mind conjures falsehoods in its absence and the world is flattened.

  I force myself upright again and the newly burning anger that has driven me for days is renewed. I curse him. I curse the Marked. I curse the architect. I curse the blazing sun that I’ll never see and I curse myself for being a weak fool.

  I slide three more times before I make it up the slop to the cave mouth and tumble in, panting with exertion. My reason returns with a crash as my vision adapts to the deeper dark of my shelter. It smells musty and heavy. It is too warm after the biting wind and my limbs tingle as they recover their feeling. I don’t know how long I stand there; the howls have receded and yet I am not alone in the cave.

  Fur rises and falls with each breath taken into the great chest. Six limbs curl about a round body and nestle a stubby snout filled with teeth as long as my fingers. It’s not a creature that I’ve seen before; it’s larger than I am, even with most of its body pulled inwards. The heat I’m feeling comes from the beast in great waves and I regret once more that my hands are empty of weapons.

  The storm rages still; as I listen I imagine that it has increased intensity. I’m shaking. I won’t survive another null cycle out in the wind. I’m stuck between the teeth of a monster and the bite of frost.

  If you’d asked any of my tribe they would tell you without hesitation that I’m a coward. I’m fearful of everything even as I try to prove myself in battle. They see my weakness and my trembling limbs and call me craven, the worst of it is that I know I am. I see it when I look into still waters and peer into my own dark eyes. They are Heightened. They are Marked. They are strong and I am weak. I am afraid and I always have been. But I act, too. I push aside my cowardice and fear and I try to by more than I am. I have to be brave and now…I will be.

  The stone is heavy and rough in my hands as I lift it above my head. I almost stumble as I close in on the beast and it rumbles in its slumber. I worry that my vision is so poor that I will miss when I need my aim to be unerring.

  I send a prayer to the sun and ask the architects for their blessing; I realise my contradiction in cursing them in one moment and calling on their help the next, but I’m in a moment that asks for ego to be set aside and succor sought from all quarters.

  My first blow crushes the beast’s skull and it thrashes in blind pain. My second cracks it and the insides leak from the gaps. My third stills the random spasmodic jerking of its limbs and I collapse back. My heart is thumping hard in my ears and my hands tremble so much that grasp them together to stymie their motion.

  It is a long moment before my body is my own again. I laugh. It is a small and bitter thing, that laugh, it is cruel. I lay my head into my hands and blood that I hadn’t realised had coated them marks my cheeks. It is iron. It is hot and I turn. I wretch dryly as my stomach is empty of sustenance; all I’ve imbibed in days are handfuls of snow.

  The cave is warm and I am scared. It is too much for me, after the wind; my body is heavy and my mind thick. I’m not sure if I sleep or faint, but I fall from the world for a time, my dreams haunted by great furred creatures and eyes peering from the dark.

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  My hunger wakes me, bleary eyed and gritty with dried blood. It is still dark outside; I don’t think it has been truly light since I entered this segment. Perhaps it is one the architects keep in perpetual twilight. I stumble around the cave for a few minutes, picking at the walls and testing for places an obelisk might sprout from and with it food. No matter how it pains me, I am hungry.

  With the monster dead at my hands its heat no longer spreads throughout the cave, giving way to the cold of the storm. My stomach gurgles and a memory comes to me, unbidden but not unwelcome. A searing orange flame sparkling to blue as something drips from a…spit. These memories are not my own and bring their own ache to my mind.

  There is a flash outside. I jump, holding up my hands as though I will fight whatever has made the dreadful noise that has shaken my bones. “Blazing sun.” I curse beneath my breath and slink towards the opening. Just outside burns a bush that had been hidden beneath snow as I made my way into the cave. It crackles with fire, the same that haunts my memories and makes my stomach growl without understanding why.

  I search again for a tube and find nothing. I venture out into the wind and it increases intensity until I am forced back towards the cave. Through the howling gate, the bush burns and it toys with my mind and my architect gifted memories.

  I sit beside the creature at the back of the cave and more memories assault me. One feeling, one intent, one word overwhelms me. Food. My mouth waters. Food? This is a monster, not food. Food comes from obelisks, dispensed by tubes. This is the way. The architects provide all nourishment that we could need; how then could a beast be food?

  My hands shake with hunger, the though rebounding until it consumed every part of me. It’s foolish. I clench my teeth against my stupidity as I pull and tug one of the creature’s claws until it comes free with a sickening crunch. I have nothing with which to cut into its flesh except its own weapons. I hesitate, unknowing where to strike. Food. The thought crushes me. I cut at the shoulder of one of its six legs until the furry skin parts and so too does the muscle beneath.

  The smell is sweet and cloying, heavy and tangy, all at once. I gag as blood oozes from my cuts but I slice deeper. It is hard work to tug and tear at the…meat. That word bursts into my mind like a pricked bubble. The meat is tough, I saw at it with its claw until I pull away a piece of it the size of my hand.

  I admire my prize; it’s heavy, still retaining some of the warmth of the creature’s life but it is rapidly cooling in the frigid air. I bring it to my nose and it smells metallic, clean, like copper on a spring day. My stomach drive me and I bite into it. The meat is tough, I worry at it with my teeth until I break a piece off and I can chew.

  It is sweet and savoury to me, pleasant, filling, completely unlike anything the architects have ever dispensed from their tubes. My mouth waters and I chew until I’ve turned it to mush and it slides down my throat. It is ambrosia after my starvation. I bite another piece and worry it with my teeth as I think.

  Its the lurking light of the flaming bush that triggers the memory of dripping meat over flame. I take another bite of the meat and move towards the entrance of the cave as I chew. The wind has died down to a low howl, enough that I am not brutalised as I crouch in near the bush. I eye it warily. The meat is good raw, I glance back inside. “There’s plenty more…Fine. I’ll try.”

  My hand closes over a stick that I will use for a spit and new memories come to me. Cooking. That is what I’m doing. Cooking. It is what was done before…not before. There is no before, there is only the sun and the architecture. Strive. We strive to the sun and — my head splits with an ache that cuts through the centre of me. It passes in a moment and my hunger takes over my thoughts once more.

  I don’t understand this cooking, but the images emblazoned on my mind are clear. I thrust the stick through the hunk of meat and hold it over the flame. I turn it, the meat darkening, then dripping, a hissing mess that smells like heaven itself.

  The architects have not deigned to grant me a feeding tube or water, but this seems not without design. I glare into the dark snow. “You want this? You want me to cook? To eat the flesh of monsters?” I sigh. The architects don’t speak back. I wiggle the stick in the flame and smile at the spitting. “This had best be good.” I know it will be. If the flesh itself, raw and ready, filled me with such lust then cooked meat must be divine.

  I don’t know how long to leave the meat in the fire, so when I take it out again the outside it blackened. I bring it to my lips and hiss as I burn myself. A few moments in the cold wind and it has cooled enough to bite again, this time I tear a chunk, black and hard on the outside but cooler and filled with juice on the inside. The taste is bitter, at first, then rich, then the juices drop down my chin as I grip the meat with both hands and bite and eat and rip and tear until there is nothing but grease on my chin and a satisfied ache in my belly.

  I scramble back inside to wait for the ache to turn to the agony that follows a feeding, but there is nothing. I am sated. My stomach is full and I feel…good.

  The architects must be watching over me, for as I take a second hunk of the beast, cook it over the flame, this time with less charring, and I sit with my stomach full and replete, they take me. The warmth of the cocoon is welcome and frustrating in equal measure. I fall into it, hoping the world is different once I awaken.