Excerpt from work in progress

This is a scene from my work in progress and I'm looking for any and all feedback!

50 years earlier.

Year 9,670,053 After the Fall o 2040 A.D.

Vel'Thim, Seeded Proto-Planet CXIII

The Empericium Refuge | Coven of Prime

"Behold perfection!"
A sickly looking man screamed out while slamming the fist of his left hand through another man's chest and gripping his spine. The sickly, screaming man was pale as moonstone, his skin stretched tight over sculpted muscles, veined in ghostly grey, as if life had long since drained from him. Embedded at the wrist of his right hand was a small piece of dark, silver-grey metal, shaped like a crescent moon. The jagged arc was fused to bone, protruding through split skin; black, necrotic veins crawled outward from the wound, as though the flesh itself had begun to die around it. "I AM THE MYRIAD MAN AND YOU WILL NOW SERVE ME!" His scream shattered glass all around the two of them.

This was his perfection: Lord Veshaeil, the Empericium commander and Vel'thari descendant. Prophecy of excellence. Genocidaire. Commander of the Celestial Serpent. The protruding metallic implant flashed sparks of brilliant white light upon shattered glass. The now dead man's spine slipped free of sinew, falling to the floor and Veshaeil's black eyes flashed with raven hunger--only to pulse electric blue the instant his skin absorbed the corpse's DNA, mirroring the dying man's last, borrowed gaze. His skin took on a healthier tan-olive hue as spine, now freed of the nameless man, was released from his grip.
The nameless corpse lay on the floor at his feet, its DNA now subsumed into Veshaeil, his perfection made more whole. His body, imbued with life-force. Veshaeil slicked his hand back through his sweaty mass of multitudinous-colored hair and smirked, the crescent-shaped implant catching the sparks from shattered glass.

"I am the destroyer, I am the fall of Atlantis, I am Vishnu, Hades, I am GOD here." He cried out to the lifeless body on the floor, before tilting his head towards the doorway.
An escaping gasp caught his attention. There was a nameless witness.

The nameless witness was frozen at the threshold, chest pounding so fiercely he was sure Veshaeil would hear it. His boot hovered above the shattered glass, fingers tight around the datapad as though it were a shield. He fought to smooth the tremor from his voice, to set his shoulders as if nothing he'd just witnessed could faze him. Yet the acrid stench of burnt ozone still clung to his nostrils, and his tongue felt thick and foreign in his mouth. He forced a casual tilt of his head, as though he'd merely been summoned to discuss supply quotas, not watch a man tear another's spine from his body. His heart hammered, but his face remained impassive--an actor reciting lines he dared not flub.

The nameless witness swallowed hard and entered the room."Your perfection, reports on Seeded proto-Planet CXXX: Terra or 'Earth' have arrived for you, His Most Excellent."
"Tell me the Quintuple-helix structure has been found, nameless. Tell me--or I will absorb your DNA as well." Veshaeil's voice was low, the pale flesh of his face drawn tight around cheekbones so sharp they looked carved. It had been nearly thirteen thousand years since he'd defeated the Atlanteans. They were able to do it with SCRAPS of my technology. MY TECHNOLOGY.

The nameless man trembled, glancing at the metal crescent on Veshaeil's wrist, as if its silent gleam threatened him as much as the commander himself. "Your Lord Prime--your Perfection--the genetic alterations have not achieved such a thing in our tests. Without that technology--outside of natural variation of the genetic code, we cannot create such a structure of DNA in your free-range humans. It will happen, give it time. We have seeded hundreds of planets; the statistical anomaly of its occurrence is cusping the edges of inevitability. It's rudimentary arithmetic for you, my greatest--"

"Tell me," Veshaeil snarled, leaning forward so close that the nameless man could see the fine cracks at the edges of those frozen, ice-blue eyes. "Would you serve me more purpose in continuing your tests on these seeded planets, or as an addition to my perfection? You tell me things I already know. I have answered my own question with my perfect, superior knowledge. Absorbing you would serve no further purpose at this point than additional answers to questions I already have. You have been granted my permission--and my consent--to perpetuate your existence."

"My lord, may I share the reports with you?"
"Begin." Veshaeil barked.

"Reports from CXXX: Terra show signs of chrono-temporal and spatial manipulation. These artifacts arise precisely where Atlantis fell, Your Perfection. Within these data are the fingerprints of a pocket dimension." "I beat the Atlanteans. Echoes of their weakness are going to ripple for more than thirteen thousand years, nameless. Tell me something I don't know.""Of course you are right, Your Perfection. Only these data suggest, if I may add, a life-form signature of Vel'thari descent--"
"SHOW ME, nameless. If you are incorrect, you will not be incorporated into my perfection. I will send you to the island, you pathetic and insolent disease."

The nameless man stepped forward, throat tight, and pressed the datapad into Veshaeil's waiting palm. His fingers shook so violently he feared they'd betray him. He watched in mute horror as the commander's crescent-shaped implant flared, then snapped the device like a brittle twig. A shower of sparks danced over Veshaeil's pale face as he spoke, voice icy calm:

"A Vel'thari descendant. A skyborn. An Atlantean. My old enemy. Know this, nameless: you are worthless to me still, scum. Begone."

The words slashed through the nameless man's chest with the force of a knife. He had laid before Veshaeil the fruit of years--data he'd sacrificed sleep and sanity to compile--only to have it dismissed in a single breath. His heart thundered. He could taste bile as tears of frustration stung behind his eyelids. For a moment, he stood frozen, unwilling to dare a final plea. Then, bending to retrieve the fragments of his shattered report, he felt the weight of every failed experiment press on him like a tombstone.

He bolted from the chamber, every step echoing down the corridor, until the blackout door hissed shut behind him and he collapsed against the cold steel wall. Only then did the tremors in his body catch up, wracking him with sobs he could not stifle.

If an Atlantean had survived, perhaps Bebnum Mentorious was still alive. The Zirkanic Contrivance would be an easy thing to acquire, if so. The two missing components would be harder to gather, being guarded by the two most powerful kingdoms on planet Vel'Thim. If he could get all the missing pieces back together, he wouldn't have to wait for Quintuple-helix DNA to appear as an anomaly in the universe. That could take millenia. Millenia that he didn't want to wait for any longer. His perfection would no longer be bound by the limitations of man. He will create a new host body with the Quintuple Helix, and his pure perfection will be actualized to its highest potential. He knew it would be so, lest time itself seized its perpetuation.

Lord Veshaeil looked out of the now-missing windows over the acid ocean, the ghost-white skin of his face now wreathed by the brightness of twin suns and for the first time in 13,000 years, he smiled.

The Nameless Island

The boat arrived just before dusk, its hull corroded in twisted obsidian black, bristling with gun barrels and silvery plating that shimmered faintly over the toxic waters. The nameless watched from the ridge above the crystal pits of the island--Ghastly apparitions, shadow residues of man, against the scorched horizon. Hellish savages, of which no ounce of humanity or dignity had remained.

They had once been minds to the Empericium--scientists, geneticists, radio astronomers stripped of identity. But when their intellects ceased to produce or add value to the Empericium, their designations were deleted, and they were sent here. To the island. The nameless island.

It was a place as barren and cruel as the tyrant whose lordship raped it of all that it was. No trees. No fruit. No animals, save for rats that devoured flesh faster than fire. The ground cracked and bled salt. Even the rain, when it fell, came down caustic and thick as jellied blood. The only color on the island, save for those of corpses, came from the crystals they mined--green the color of bile. No one knew what they were, the crystals. Only that they mattered to the Empericium. The also nameless boat guards would pick them up by the satchel-load before departing, never explaining why.

A fresh load of prisoners stumbled off the boat, shackled in threes. Blood soaked the iron bonds over festering wounds already grown putrid. The commander of the boat, faceless behind his mirrored helm, would toss a single key onto the blood and ash of the barbaric island before sailing off for the next batch of nameless exiles. No speeches. No warnings. No explanation, barring the directive to mine crystals.

The nameless already knew the rules: unlock yourselves. Start mining. Survive if you can.

As the armored vessel reversed, the shore stirred. The older nameless--emaciated, wild-eyed, brutalized by years of exposure, subsisted by others' flesh--descended as swarms of locusts, not to welcome but to strip. They tore rags from the clothes of newcomers, scavenged the bones of the dead for resources, and offered no kindness nor welcome. The strong survived by carving distorted order from savagery, and tools from the remains of the deceased.

Every man here held some defiance, however faint. They whispered of escape in fever dreams, clung to memories of the stars. In their scraps of free time--if such a thing existed in hell--they built rafts. It took months to make one. Years, even. Bones had to be cleaned and bleached, lashed with sinew cured under furnace sun. Human skin, scraped and stretched, became abhorrent patchwork sails. Bladders were sewn and inflated by the dozens, to keep the godless things afloat.

Every raft would vanish into the acid sea beyond the reefs, broken by storm or swallowed by something deeper. Most didn't last a day. Some didn't even make it out of sight of the island, capsizing under the weight of the warring men that clung to it. The sea was as cruel as the island itself. Bones would come back sometimes, on the waves of the shore, clung to bloated body parts. The fate of the nameless who had once attempted piloting their flesh-worked creations lost to the sea.

But still they built.

Only one man had ever made the crossing of the acid sea, or so the legend was. His name, a forbidden echo passed in hushed reverence on the island and in fear and repugnance around the sands of the desert Thimithoth, the nameless who had borne the idea of the first raft. The only nameless to defy his fate, the island, and the so-called god-emperor Veshaeil. One who had reclaimed identity.

His bones never returned.

And that, it was thought, was proof enough that he had lived.

His name is Blair Gibbs.