by Dan O'Brien
“Because you haven’t,” spoke Armon as he stepped out from the shadows of the stairwell.
Marlowe pushed Dana behind him.
Armon eyed the man, circling away cautiously.
The thin blade eased from its sheath.
“You do not seem surprised to see me.”
Marlowe drew the axe from around his back smoothly, holding it at his side. “What is it that you want? We aren’t going back. I put you down once. I will not hesitate to kill you this time. I promised you as much.”
The assassin smiled viciously. “I fear that the time for such pleasantries has passed. You have reached the Tower, disturbing the business of this world greatly in your endeavors. Your life is forfeit, Marlowe. You are already dead.”
He lunged forward, striking out with his needle-like weapon. Marlowe parried, pushing Dana to the ground. Grabbing the inside of the assassin’s forearm with his right hand, he drove the axe down with tremendous force on the blade.
It shattered, sending glassy shards down through the mesh of the floors. Armon grunted, bringing up his reinforced left arm in defense. Another swing of the axe rebounded off it, sending Marlowe back a step.
The assassin circled away, blocking the stairwell. “That was only one of many, Marlowe, one of many ways that I could end your life.”
Dana stood. “Stop this.”
Armon looked at her, standing slightly taller. Her silver eyes were fading, her smooth features placid and pale. “What has happened to you? You look like death.”
Marlowe took a step forward, drawing his blade and switching the axe to his left hand. “She is sick,” he growled menacingly.
Dana moved between the two men. “You came for me. This has always been about me. If you promise to let Marlowe live his life, then I will go with you.”
“No, Dana,” whispered Marlowe.
She wheeled on him, her eyes a hot flash. “My choice, Marlowe. Remember? I can choose on my own. I do not think he wants to hurt me. He needs…”
Marlowe couldn’t move forward fast enough. His world slowed. He saw the blade emerge from her chest, piercing her heart. Her mouth opened slightly, a silent murmur escaping her lips. The blood stained her faded tunic, filling in like paint splashed on a canvas.
Armon stood behind her, his eyes teary as he pulled the blade free. “Sick. You can’t return home if you are sick, child. You would be the death of us all.”
His voice trailed off.
The roar was indefinable. The force with which Marlowe drove his blade through the chest of Armon was incredible.
Dana fell slowly.
Her thin body collapsed to the floor. Hair tossed gently as she plummeted. Marlowe caught her body before it touched the ground.
She was so light in his hands––so small.
“Dana,” he whispered.
Her eyes were open, tears running free. Vacant and distant, it was the stare of death. There was no goodbye, no last words. He had promised her that wherever she went, so would he.
Marlowe had broken his promise.
His eyes filled with tears.
Looking at the heap that was Armon, he stood.
Marlowe placed her head carefully on the ground before starting forward. Armon coughed hard. He had felt the blade go through. Reaching down as he lay half-kneeling on the floor, Armon saw that the blade was still bulging through his chest, above and to the right of his heart.
The assassin tried to grab it, but his arm wouldn’t respond. Armon felt pain as he was lifted. He smelled the heat on Marlowe’s breath. “Why?” roared Marlowe as he threw Armon’s thin body across the room, bouncing him onto the catwalk.
The assassin cried out as the blade maneuvered sideways. Marlowe reached down and pulled the blade free, the pain redoubling for Armon. Blood poured, pooled, and slunk into the chambers below. Armon opened his mouth, but grimaced, the pain unbearable.
Marlowe drove his foot into Armon’s face.
“You tell me.”
Bones broke.
Teeth shattered.
Blood swam in Armon’s mouth, the hot copper nauseating. Marlowe hit him again and again. Reaching down, he lifted the assassin to his feet.
Their faces were inches apart. “Why did you follow us? What have I done? What did I do to you and your people? Why did she have to die?”
Tears streamed down Marlowe’s face.
He let the assassin slip through his hands. Armon reached up to the railing, hooking an arm through so that he could lean. “What do you want to know?”
“I want the truth.”
“The truth is that you are not saving humanity. I am.”
Marlowe looked at Armon, shaking his head. A manic laugh came to his lips as he spoke. “You are a monster. How could you save humanity?”
Armon wheezed.
The wound in the assassin’s chest thudded painfully in his skull. “Our world was destroyed, everything that we had known burned to ashes. We didn’t survive, you did,” he replied, his voice ragged.
“What are you talking about? What new revelation are you trying to confuse me with? You killed Dana, you monster. You killed her in cold blood.”
Armon’s eyes filled with tears. “I did that for her benefit, Marlowe. You must understand that. She was one of us. That sickness would have rotted her from the inside. It would have gutted her entire being.”
Marlowe swung his arm out angrily.
“I will not hear this.”
Armon grunted as he tried to move closer to Marlowe.
“You need to hear this before you allow yourself to do something that you cannot come back from. Before you destroy what binds Orion.”
Marlowe shook his head, burying his face in his hands. The mechanisms of the tower thundered. Turbines grated. Smoke filled the air, steam rising all about them.
Armon felt the humidity, the uncomfortable air. “We built Orion because Earth was no longer capable of sustaining our life. Our clones, you and your kind, survived the fallout of our idiocy. Orion was, is a construct, a way of making life suitable for us again. It was not the first.”
Marlowe felt the oppressive heat of the Tower.
The voices were overwhelming.
He saw their crawling bodies, felt their touch as if they covered him completely. He roared, the sound in his mind like a thousand voices imploding upon themselves. Reaching out, he grasped Armon by his wound, digging his fingers deep into his bloody hole.
His eyes were bloodshot.
His breath reeked of hate.
“Your lies will not save this madness.”
The circular catwalk on which they stood groaned under the weight of the two men. Armon winced. He brought his unencumbered arm down toward Marlowe’s face, as if to strike. The Orionian grabbed the assassin’s arm. Smashing the holographic armguard, he wrested away Armon’s arm easily.
Armon hissed.
His countenance faded. “We need Orion. There are only a few thousand of us left. Dana was another in a long line who could not handle the atmosphere. Cerulean Dreams is the conduit through which we return. Roth, myself, and a few others in Orion were Babylonians, the last of the human race.”
Marlowe let him fall into a heap. “Babylonians?”
Armon let out a sharp breath and took another in, his face bloodied. “The Water Wars were part of a cataclysm. It wasn’t just the world’s resources that were depleted. Oceanic waves destroyed our countries, our cities. The seas boiled, game faltered, all that was once green and beautiful transformed into sand and death.”
Marlowe laughed, his head thrown back, sweat and soot covering his drawn face. “Where is Babylon?”
Armon tried to stand, but he knew that too much blood had been lost. Steam scorched his face. He saw that Marlowe’s body was shrouded in a veil of gray clouds.
“We launched Babylon in the 25th century and there it hovered for some time, watching in vain as the world imploded. A self-sustaining space station created for permanent space colo
nization. However, we never thought it would serve as our last fertile garden. Our numbers dwindle every day. We must find a way to make Orion our city again.”
Marlowe looked down into the massive turbine that controlled the power flow of the Tower. He saw there an end to it all. The visors drew power from this place.
There in that chasm was the solution.
“It is my city as well, our city. We…” he looked at Armon, his lips twisted in anger, “…clones find much solace in our home.”
“It is not your home, it is on loan,” managed Armon weakly as he pressed a hand to the wound, his palm covered in greasy crimson.
“I know about your people, Armon. I heard from one of them: Shasta. She said you would die. Your people don’t want you anymore, just like you don’t want us.”
Armon blanched. “Dead….”
“She said that failure would be the end of you. If you did not return with the viable, then your life would be forfeit. They meant Dana, didn’t they? She is one of you.”
Marlowe paced away, his mind screaming.
Armon grunted. “She was trying to make the world a better place, Marlowe. All of this to make a better world.”
Marlowe reached out and grasped Armon by his wound, digging his fingers deep into it, twisting the scathed flesh. “What happens if I shut this place down? Destroy that computer? End this?”
Armon tried to breathe, but a bloody cough overwhelmed him. Marlowe wiped the splotch of the man’s blood from his face. “You tell me, assassin. If your controls, if all of this is torn down, what happens?’
Armon shook his head desperately. There was blood on his lips and chin. “You need us. We made you. You can’t survive without us.”
Marlowe paced off the catwalk, retrieving his blade. His axe was in his other hand. He looked across the steel walkway at the beaten assassin, his haggard body barely standing.
“We will see.”
Driving his blade through the monitor, a white spark arced from the plastic. Electricity raced through the steel, climbing the blade and buzzing at the hilt.
The screen faded.
Armon faltered, leaning against the railing of the catwalk for support. Marlowe drove the axe into the heavy cords, severing the connection from the computer to the shaft of the Tower. The turbines slowed. The sound of machines faded.
The Tower was still.
Laying his weapons down, Marlowe moved back onto the catwalk. He knelt in front of the assassin, lifting his sagging head so they could see one another. “We begin again, huh? Your people. My kind.”
Armon opened his mouth, but spoke no words.
His bloodstained grin washed into distant eyes.
Death had found the assassin.
He moved past Armon and into the open room, feeling the cool air of the ocean breeze. There was a balcony with a lattice railing.
Marlowe looked out from the balcony of the Tower at the world he had always known. Across the Great Desert, he saw the distant lights of Orion. They flickered like fireflies in the night, swarming, reaching for the stars. But like many things in the short breadth of life, they faded, wavering beneath the weight of the world.
Soon, all that had been bright upon the world would darken, fading to shadow. The night crept along the horizon. The hint of the dawn of a new day seemed imminent. Marlowe hung his hands through the lattice and sat down on the earthen stone.
The voices had silenced.
Their charge that had become his was complete.
Armon’s words, though wise, ultimately couldn’t save his life. And he thought of Babylon, the shiftless souls who had governed from afar for so long. Would they be lonely untouched by the world? He sat there for some time, watching the flickers of day chase away the night, hoping against hope that this new day would promise greater things than the night it followed.
