A Manifold of Bindings (The Scrolls of Azbel Book 2)

by John Mangold

  Once inside, she found herself standing on a steel catwalk, skirting a shaft that flowed from the topmost floors to its base. Along this expanse ran an uncountable number of cable bundles connecting the work stations above with the sensor arrays attached to the outside of the structure. She was confident that there had to be ladders connecting the tower's levels, but something told her it would be best to avoid these in case devices were installed to detect intruders. Instead, she elected to use the cable arrays to continue her climb. This was much easier than she first thought as she found the bundles to be encrusted with arcane runes decorating their elastic casings. This made the surface easy to grip.

  As she approached the underside of the lowest observation deck, she noticed that the floor had gaping holes through it, most likely due to rust and rot brought on by years of neglect. She began working her way towards the closest gap, but she pondered something that had been bothering her as she did so. There had been no secondary explosion when those artillery strikes hit, no thunderous roar as the warheads detonated. They could have been duds, but three in a row seemed very unlikely. She knew there was a second possibility, that the shells had been employed to deliver something other than explosives to their target. Something that could prove far more deadly.

  Pulling herself through a gap in the floor, Cruentus scanned the expanse around her even as she moved to exploit a conveniently cast shadow. Looking across the floor, her eye caught a slight shift in the darkness, accompanied by barely audible clicking. They were very subtle clues, ones that human perceptions would have missed, even if they had been watchful for them. But for her, it was all she needed to confirm what those phantom memories suggested. Those artillery shells held no explosives. They delivered assassins, ones designed by her old masters, ones built just like her.

  Unbidden, a new surge of information poured into her mind. Her old occupation's tactics and movements became plain to her once more, like well-studied lessons from her childhood schoolbooks. There would be three, they would be in dispersed formation, and they would be working to clear their landing zone before continuing to their assigned target.

  Weapons loadout would be dicey, each assigned toolsets per their individual style of combat. If Cruentus could single out the assault expert, she would be able to acquire some suitable weapons for herself, but it was unlikely she would get to pick and choose who she would engage first. It went without saying that they would attack her on sight, just as it also stood to reason that all three would have to die before she could proceed.

  To better understand their formation, allowing for a more effective assault, Cruentus elected to leave the nearest assassin for later. Looking above, she found a hole leading to the upper level that she could reach by climbing the machinery piled on the floor behind her. In a matter of breaths, she moved silently up the old refuse and lifted her body up through the ragged breach. It worked precisely as she had planned, apart from one detail; she had managed to come up some twenty feet behind the second assassin. Fortune was with her. The heavily augmented man was not yet aware of her presence. This would not last, however. There was no time to find the third member of their team; she would have to attack now.

  Studying his moves like a hawk on a mortog, Cruentus began closing the distance between her and her target. She moved with exact precision, timing her steps to land precisely as his boots did. At the same time, she constantly altered her path so that she continued to stay behind him. This was only possible because the assassin was not yet alerted. Should she make a false step, or if he executed a sudden turn, she would have no choice but to charge, and the heavy rifle of his would likely end things in his favor.

  However, if she could continue this slow dance of deception until she was within arm’s reach, the odds shifted decidedly in her favor. The large-caliber rifle would prove more of an encumbrance than an asset at such close range. To this end, Cruentus used the shadows as well as the ruined inner walls of the structure to camouflage her presence until she had drawn close enough to hear his synthetic muscles shift in his legs as he walked.

  Closing with her target, Cruentus’s mind filled with attack solutions and their most probable counters. With each possibility, there was a multitude of vulnerabilities, depending on the skill of her target. In this case, she could assume that his abilities were relatively high. Noticing his weapon was held in his left hand, she moved to his right rear to exploit a possible blind spot and struck.

  She was right to assess his abilities so highly, as he intercepted the swing with his rifle before her blow could land. Flowing with his block's force, Cruentus quickly bound his arm and wrenched the weapon from his grasp. Her target was disarmed, but she was now in an awkward position to strike, allowing her opponent time to unsheath a combat blade. The assassin was disarmed no longer.

  Cruentus flowed away from her target just enough to avoid the main arc of his blade swing, but not enough to prevent a slashing cut across her cheek. She ignored the blood spilling down her chin as she knew the assassin would now be overextended, granting her an opening for a counterstrike. Redirecting her momentum, she stepped in deep on her opponent and brought her right elbow hard into his ribs while entrapping his extended left arm with her own left.

  The assassin likely sported subdermal armor, but if she struck hard enough, she could wind him for a micro. Not pausing to witness the effect of her assault, she stepped behind him, grasping his trapped arm with both hands, wrenching his limb up to the middle of his back. She applied a brutal upward thrust popping the shoulder joint free of its socket as she did this. The meaty crack, combined with the sudden loss of resistance in the trapped arm, confirmed that the joint was now unhinged.

  To any organic human, this would have been the end of the fight, but the assassin’s pain nullifiers had filtered out the effects of what should have been a debilitating wound. Her opponent pulled a second knife from his belt and stabbed backward without missing a beat, sinking the blade deep into Cruentus’ right flank. Cruentus dropped her right arm to coil around his and hold him as he tried to pull the knife free. In a lightning strike, Cruentus thumped the back of his neck with her left fist, using all her strength.

  As her fist hit the synthetic muscles, she could feel the Deadblow system in her forearm slam home, pulverizing the reinforced bones of his spine. She then kicked out with her left leg while releasing his right arm, sending his body sprawling forward and out of one of the craters in the side of the tower. As she watched his body vanish into the night shadows, it occurred to her that the assassin below would most likely see his body plummet past their position. She would not be alone for long.

  Her own pain nullifiers worked to restrain the agony of her stab wound, but she could still feel the shadows of the pain as she slowly drew the blade out of her side. Trusting the Nanites would be quick with the repairs, she moved silently to scale a nearby corner, concealing her body in a remaining portion of a false ceiling. It wasn’t the best cover, but it did not need to hide her for long.

  Scanning the darkened floor below, she waited for the arrival of the second target, but her suspense was not long-lived. In the span of three breaths, Cruentus watched the shadows below her shift subtly as the assassin moved below her, searching for his teammate’s murderer. This one was alert, expecting violence at any moment, inspecting every hiding spot for an imminent assault. There would be no opportunity for sly approaches this time.

  With a quick jab, Cruentus struck the lone surviving support holding her perch in place. The subassembly broke free with a metallic crack, allowing her and a considerable amount of debris to plunge onto her target below. The assassin executed a flawless combat roll, avoiding the incoming avalanche altogether. Even in this, his hands were not idle, bringing his weapon to the ready as he regained his feet, letting loose with a stream of fire in Cruentus’s direction. His aim was a bit short of a killing shot, but not by much.

  Cruentus hit the floor in a roll and rebounded towards her target. As she
lunged, Cruentus knew she was vulnerable to panic fire; a lucky hit could kill her just as surely as an aimed shot. But, as she closed in, she realized the assassin had dropped his rifle, choosing to meet her charge with his own. She had found their close combat master.

  The pair struck each other in mid-stride, each maneuvering their arms, grappling for a superior grip on the other. Short strikes flew and were blocked with such speed and ferocity they blended into each other. At one point, the assassin managed a brutal jab, sending Cruentus sprawling backward. Not wanting to give him the distance to land a critical strike, Cruentus latched on to his arm, pulling him with her, then shifted her weight to sling him into an inner wall. She then redirected her own momentum to shoulder slam into him.

  The wall behind her target split, the pair falling through the break onto a hard, tiled floor. She had no time to look about, but she reasoned that they must have stumbled into a lavatory of some sort. Her opponent landed a knee strike to her side combined with a double hand shove to her chest, sending her flying into a nearby metal partition. The sound of shattering porcelain on the other side, combined with a wash of cold water around her ankles, confirmed their location. Combat options blossomed in her mind.

  Sparing only a micro to take a breath, Cruentus regained her feet just as the assassin did the same. She charged into him once more, driving him back into the wall behind him, but this barrier was stouter, lined with metal sinks as it was. The assassin quickly grabbed the side of her face, slamming her head against a wall-mounted mirror. Fortunately, the surface proved to be polished metal instead of mirrored glass, so the damage was strictly blunt force. Not that she could appreciate the difference at that moment.

  Cruentus wedged her leg up against the wall and thrust with all her might, sending the pair hurtling backward into the remaining stall. As they landed, Cruentus managed to maneuver behind her target and slam his head home into the shattered trunk of a toilet. The shattered base cracked as their weight landed upon it, but the device still held enough water to drown him. She could only hope that he had not been prepped for aquatic assaults.

  As she forced her bodyweight upon him, struggling to defeat whatever foothold he could gain, all while keeping his head submerged, Cruentus became aware of a distant whine, building quite suddenly. It was so very distant, nearly impossible to hear with the gurgling noises of her flailing victim filling the room, but it was certainly there. It seemed to be coming from somewhere above her, possibly on the next floor.

  With a savage lung, Cruentus threw herself off the struggling assassin, just before the ruined stall exploded in a shower of water, porcelain, and gore. Not pausing to seek the origin of the attack, Cruentus continued her roll, regaining her feet and diving out through the hole in the wall they had made on their way in. The whine vanished amongst the ceiling and floor tiles' explosions as round after round passed through from above. Cruentus knew instinctively what was happening. The final assassin had triangulated her. Here was their long-range specialist. Clearly, stealth was no longer a concern.

  Cruentus silently cursed as she bounded forward in a random, serpentine pattern. Those rounds were armor-piercing; they would make short work of her if she slowed even for a micro. Her only hope would be to move up underneath her attacker, mess up her attack angle, force the assassin to displace to a more favorable position. But the shooter above had other ideas, sidestepping, tracking Cruentus’s flight with inhuman accuracy and prediction. Every passing round was getting closer, forcing Cruentus to abandon flight and attempt a more aggressive solution.

  Maneuvering in an increasingly tight circle, Cruentus danced around the remaining portions of the tower’s floor until she pinpointed the assassin above. All the time, a trail of devastation dogged her every step, lethal rounds shredding everything she left in her path. She knew it was only a matter of micros before the assassin would achieve a killing shot. Sensing the crosshairs on her forehead, Cruentus attempted to lead her attacker, convincing the shooter to shift towards a hole in the patchwork ceiling.

  Achieving this, Cruentus bounded from one ruined relic to another, leaping for a handhold on a ceiling support. No sooner had her fingers wrapped around the heavily corroded beam, Cruentus swung her body upwards, punching her fist through the debris above, clutching onto an ankle on the other side. Planting her feet on the rotted subflooring of the level above, Cruentus pushed off with all her might, pulling the assassin through to plummet downwards with her. It was only then that Cruentus realized she had been dangling over a more massive breach in the floor below her, the tower’s open core yawning beyond that.

  As the pair plummeted into the tower’s hollow core, the assassin struggled to bring her close-quarters weapon to bear on Cruentus, letting loose a wild barrage, one round creasing Cruentus’s left shoulder. Pain radiated from the wound, then faded, her system struggling to dampen the wound’s aching. What seeped through, adrenalin more than made up for.

  Striking out blindly, Cruentus slammed the side of the assassin’s ribcage with her right fist, shattering bone and rupturing organs with the Deadblow strike. She then grappled with her attacker, pushing her opponent underneath her. This ensured that, whatever they landed on, the assassin would hit first and hardest. Cruentus wanted to be assured that if she did not survive the fall, neither would her opponent.

  With a thunderous crash and a mind-destroying avalanche of agony, their fall came to a brutal halt. For the first time in quite a while, Cruentus knew genuine anguish, her pain nullifiers reaching overload point. For a timeless moment, her world was pure torment, filled with the agonized groans of the two combatants as they lay broken on an unforgiving, steel grate.

  Cruentus’s body begged for mercy, filling her mind with a flowing report of grievous wounds. All she wanted to do was let the blackness swarm in and take reality away. But, even in her pain-induced stupor, she could feel Maluem, somewhere above her, trapped, awaiting death. Cruentus had to reach that woman or lose her only lead to her past. At that moment, all her life focused on freeing that woman. No matter what, she had to reach her target.

  Cruentus pushed herself up off the assassin’s unmoving form, peering around to see where they had landed. They had been lucky. One of the maintenance gantries ringing the central shaft’s inner structure had protruded enough to catch them. Looking upwards, she realized they had only fallen seven floors, but the impact had been sufficient to critically wound her opponent. Looking down at the highly augmented woman, Cruentus could not help but see a mirror image of herself, slowly dying on the fractured walkway.

  The assassin’s mouth was slack. Either the fall or the battle along the way had managed to break her jaw. But this mattered little; her eyes carried a much deeper message than her voice could ever convey. The severity of her wounds' pain had given the woman a level of clarity she would never experience again, allowing her mind to reach out to her adversary with one desperate request. It was a call for release, from one assassin to another. A desire only one such as they could understand, a blessing only a freed slave could grant one in chains. With a grim nod of agreement, Cruentus planted the flat of her foot in the woman’s side, shoving her over the edge, initiating her final journey to the tower’s base.

  “Find peace, sister,” Cruentus murmured.

  Watching the Assassin’s body plummet into oblivion, Cruentus found herself filled with an odd feeling of Déjà vu. Something about the way the body fell into the darkness tickled a memory, tickled a series of memories. As the images in her mind started to come into focus, Cruentus quickly shook her head. Something told her those recollections would not be welcome, not now. There would be time to knit together her broken mind later. Much later.

  As those phantom images diffused into Cruentus’ mind, she grasped onto the bent railing above her, pulling her body upwards onto her knees. Her legs were not yet cooperating, but she could feel the Nanites doing their jobs, repairing the damage to muscle and bones. She should be able to walk soon, but would it
be quick enough? She could hear harsh shouts drifting down from above. Guards had overheard the struggle, and she doubted they were coming to thank her for doing their jobs. One way or another, she would have to make herself scarce before those soldiers finished what the assassins started.

  35.

  Command Appearance

  Impenetrable darkness surrounded her, a far too familiar predicament for Maluem. As she scanned the void, she looked for some detail that might give her a clue as to her location. Had she been buried when the chamber collapsed, left undiscovered to suffocate slowly? Was she in a cell, locked deep underground, shut out from all hope of ever seeing the light again? Was she now dead, her soul trapped in some containment device, not unlike Volo or Taelir?

  As she struggled to find some point of reference in the never-ending ink around her, she slowly became aware of pinpoints of light far off in the distance. Gradually their intensity increased, yet they remained aloof, drifting in that void like stars in the sky. As this revelation struck her, she became aware of large masses to her right and left. They were closer than the stars, yet still quite far away. In turn, each of them bore a striking resemblance to one of the moons in the Azbel sky. If that was true, then below her should be, and was, the planet of Azbel.

  It was a view she could never have imagined seeing, as she was certain no one had ever witnessed it before. She was looking upon her own home planet as if she rested in the unknowable, immaterial emptiness that comprised the heavens. As she gawked in amazement, she slowly became aware that she was falling towards the surface. It was not a quick descent, so she felt no fear of it, but Maluem knew she was growing ever closer to the planet surface, nonetheless.