The Unmaker: Tower of Ayia

by Casey Herzog

  Curse him, Thorpe thought, his plan better work or Fuller and I are dead.

  The sergeant pulled him further away from the burning tank so that they could make a break for it, but they heard the alien’s weapon system suddenly activate.

  “Shit, run for it, run!” Fuller ran as quickly as he could, ducking into a narrow alley that led behind one of the ruined buildings and managed to narrowly dodge a plasma blaze that tore the wall apart behind him. Private Thorpe came after, shooting wildly behind him as he ran and threw himself around the destroyed corner of the building. The Outsider powered forward and kicked past the burning tank with a powerful leg, its speakers emitting their horrible noises.

  Thorpe turned as he fled and watched the bipedal monstrosity smash right through the building that flanked the alley, entering the narrow street before he and Fuller had escaped it. An arm rose and Thorpe cried out for Fuller to get out of the way before launching himself through the open door of a long-defunct medical clinic. The entire alley was blown to pieces as the Outsider fired. A loud cry made Thorpe wince. The sergeant was dead, or dying. He heard the machine’s weapon loading and ran out of the clinic into the alley again, crossing to a different area with a small plaza and a tree in the middle and turning into another alley. The mech suit was close behind and only missed him because it had to smash through a kiosk on its way out of the previous street.

  Thorpe risked turning back and saw the powerful piston-driven arms spin to point at him. He waved his arms around furiously and clenched his teeth.

  “Fuck, do it, do i—”

  BOOM

  The railgun’s round slammed into the mech’s ammo pack a second before it could fire at him, and the machine’s arm went flying. Half of its cockpit was exposed as the damage from the explosion revealed the main body, and the suit released a weak, crackling blare in an attempt to control the situation. The effects of its emissions were no more.

  Private Thorpe stopped running. He smiled. The escape had been a ploy, a plan B to separate one of the enemy’s vehicles from their forces. Fuller had paid with his life, but Thorpe and Sanchez were still alive to avenge him. He sprinted beneath the alien armor and slammed a charge against one of its legs. Once far enough, he set it off and enjoyed the ensuing explosion.

  The thing collapsed in an almighty roar of broken metal and smashed alien crystal as its cockpit gave in. Thorpe’s grin faded as he saw the three-fingered hand stab out of the fallen armor while watched the creature pull itself out. It was suited and helmeted, its thin, gray metal plates protecting it from head to toe from most types of weaponry. Sanchez fired at it from his hiding place, but the creature was too slippery, throwing itself off the crystal and rolling behind the wreckage of an armored car.

  “Come out, you f—”

  The creature slammed into him from one side, its heavy fist thundering into his ribs and the alien’s weight bowling him over. Thorpe’s rifle was lost to him, but he managed to pull out his pistol and fired it wildly as the Outsider wrestled with him on the ground. The gun shot wildly in his hand several times, but none of the rounds hit the thing that was pinning him on his back. The creature pressed its free hand down on the human’s face and Thorpe felt it applying force down in an attempt to crush his skull — something he’d already seen them do — and screamed in frustration. His nose broke under the pressure and Thorpe cried out as he pulled out his blade in a final desperate move and—

  Thunk

  The creature’s body shuddered violently as Thorpe twisted the knife inside the alien’s head. The blade had punched right through its helmet and carved its brain up. He pulled it out and stabbed again and again, until he slipped out from under the Outsider’s body and spat out a blob of blood.

  “You okay down there?” Sanchez yelled from his vantage point, and Thorpe lifted his middle finger at him. The man’s loud laugh echoed around the plaza and Thorpe lifted his hands to his face. I’m gonna need a surgeon to fix this. But first, let’s kill some more of them.

  He and Sanchez continued to kill aliens for the next two days, their heroic exploits becoming well-known as they ambushed the enemies all over the cities and killed stragglers off before more of them could arrive.

  On the third day, the Coalition reinforcements arrived with the big guns and the enemies were flattened. In fact, he and Sanchez were almost crushed under the destruction of the collapsing buildings themselves, but a pilot managed to pull them out in time.

  Thorpe was elevated to Sergeant and given a fresh new squad, while Sanchez was whisked away to an elite force; they were barely able to say goodbye to each other.

  On the way to his next mission, he’d found out that Sanchez was presumed dead. He had knocked an Outsider troop carrier from the skies and fought off waves of the aliens for an entire day until they finally overran his position. Thorpe didn’t feel sad at all; he felt honored. Honored to have fought at the man’s side, honored to have shared such an experience with him earlier.

  The odds would always be against them, but they would always prevail. They were the brave and the just, and justice always found a way to end evil.

  And while I’m alive, he thought as he put away his data slate and armed himself to fight in the next battle, one of the last ones that would take place before humanity pushed the Outsiders back for real, I’m going to make sure that justice always has a chance in this war.

  The years passed, and he got to see the uglier parts of the war. While certain future missions — ones in which he was now an officer with troops behind him — involved purging entire areas where the Outsiders were strongest, many others had him taking care of civilians who had been displaced. Refugees who had lost everything in bloody battles became his to take care of, children who had lost their parents and the sick and injured filling his days with new worries.

  He had to learn not only to kill, but to keep others alive and help them get through the darkest parts of human history.

  In the end, he was not just a stronger man, but a man transformed.

  His mind cleared and Callum sighed audibly. Dante threw him a funny look and tilted his head curiously.

  “What was that about?” the healer asked.

  “Memories.” He looked at the child and wondered what sort of things Dante had seen on his own adventures in the wastelands of the new world. At least I had a happy and peaceful childhood; he’ll never enjoy that experience as long as humans are so hell-bent on hurting each other, even when we need to be helping one another.

  Michael and Susan, two of the three guards that were walking in front of them, seemed to be whispering to each other. The group was passing a junction and there was very little light ahead. The path was wide and tall, but it would be an uncomfortable and cramped place to fight in, if the moment came.

  “Do you have something to tell us?” Johanna asked, as she stabbed Susan’s back with the barrel of her gun. “Speak up.”

  The woman turned with a sneer and spoke triumphantly.

  “They’re already here; you’re all going to die.”

  Johanna only had an instant to process the phrase before a bullet whistled past her face. The enemy prisoner walking right behind her was thrown off his feet by a shot to the head.

  “Find cover!” she cried, as several smoke canisters were thrown at them from the passages to their sides. Johanna cursed loudly and fired a shot at a shadow that ran past them, but return fire forced her to crouch behind some wreckage.

  Susan managed to kick herself free and ran in another direction.

  “Michael, follow me!” she screamed over the noise and smoke, and Johanna knew that they had lost their hostages for good. Good luck finding masks before the gas kills you, she thought bitterly. More shots fired, and the speakers above them suddenly emitted the sound of a throat being cleared.

  “Ah, finally,” Russell said with joy, “We’ve found you.” The noise of automatic fire drowned out the words that he said right after, but the rest was clear: “—they are
a good group, my Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Not surprised they were the ones to pinpoint your location. I’ll be joining you shortly.”

  A man who had been in the prison with Johanna and the others was hit in the eye by a stray bullet and he fell backwards onto the ground, dead. She stared over at Dante who was watching fearfully as his companions died and he could do nothing about it. The boy felt terrified at the thought of being so useless in a situation like this one where they needed him the most.

  “Gotcha,” Callum said finally as one of the enemies tried to find a better firing position and stepped out of the smoke for a moment. His bullet hit the thug in the chest and killed him immediately. Callum shifted where he stood behind a heavy metal box and aimed at another shadow. The man is aiming right at me.

  He ducked in time to avoid losing his head to a laser cannon’s beam-shot, which burned the very air it fired through as it passed by overhead. These bastards have alien weaponry, he realized. Is there anything they can’t find?

  Callum sprung out from cover and shot the enemy with his railgun in a fluid movement that ended with the man’s head being blown off his shoulders and his companions falling back a few feet in case they were next.

  “Move forward I said!” a rasping voice roared, and Johanna’s eyes widened.

  “It’s that man from before, the blue-eyed officer that captured us and killed Adam!”

  Callum knew what she was going to do next.

  “No, Johanna.” He grabbed her before she could spring forward and run into the smoke. “Don’t do anything stupid. We’ll have further chances to put him down. We have to leave.”

  The man’s presence was enough to turn the tide and Callum felt the immediate effect as the thugs began to step forward into the smoke and fire towards his group with renewed passion. Another couple of the ex-prisoners died, and there was nothing to do now but run. Dante was forced to keep pace as he kept the gas’ effect from killing them. A female prisoner tripped, fell and was left behind, her face contorting with agony as the airborne weapon soon began to poison her blood and organs.

  The cruel voice followed them as they fled back along the corridors and braved their way through the gunfire that whistled past and around them.

  “We’ll see each other very soon, guys. Very, very soon…”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ploy

  Russell smiled. He was an angel of death, a savage barbarian of legend. His own soldiers cowered before him as he tore through the passages, pushing past anyone too slow to move and throwing them off their feet. He had a place to be, an enemy to kill. Delegating his responsibilities had been stupidity on his part, and he would make up for it now. After all, he was a lord and lords were born to rule.

  He had risen from the very bottom, a petty criminal that belonged to a city gang that cared little for the lives or wellbeing of innocents. Theft, drug-related crimes and murder were all on his rap sheet, but even his closest friends had known he wouldn’t ever make it big. He was muscle and nothing more. All of that changed when the war broke out.

  Russell remembered the look on the gang leader’s face when he’d entered the man’s office and put a gun to his head.

  “You’re not going to d—” were the last words he managed to say before the bullet blew his brains out. Russell had been tied by law and respect to keep the system going, following the code and all of that bullshit until the Outsiders came and tipped everything over. It didn’t matter anymore with the planet falling to pieces and people being killed daily. It didn’t take Russell long to get rid of anybody in his path. Then he moved to the next stage.

  It wasn’t difficult to be rich in a money-less world when you had all the food, all the ammo and all the medicines. And with the riches, came the enhancements. They not only gave him status, but they made him more of a killing machine than he already was. He began as a petty criminal, and ended up the ruler of an entire city. It was a motivational story, just with more death and cruelty.

  Before he had even realized it, Lord Russell was a legend of the new world.

  “Keep running, it’s making this more exciting,” he purred into the communications device that broadcasted his voice all over the building. My building, he thought with hunger. They shouldn’t be in here. I am going to do horrible things to do them, I swear.

  He ruled through fear, but fear was not enough to keep men loyal. There were rules, but there were also rewards. Very few within his organization could say he had wronged them somehow, a problem that many other warlords seemed to have sooner or later. It was what had brought him to kill his own boss so long ago. Keep them scared, but make them feel grateful for it, he knew. It was how things worked.

  With a grin, he chuckled at his own wisdom. It was a product of his life experience.

  He could smell the gas, but it didn’t worry him. Most of his respiratory system had been reconstructed anyway. It would filter all of the crap out of him and keep him alive. Still, at this moment in time, he didn’t feel alive; he wouldn’t feel alive until he found the man who had taken the boy from him. The boy…he was the last piece of a giant puzzle. If he could bring that lad into his care, he would turn him into a weapon of great power. His army would be unstoppable. No injuries, no sickness.

  The gunfire made him look up, and he walked over to the balcony of the floor he was currently on. The chaos was taking place at least five to six floors above him. He was getting closer, and the blade at his side knew it. He had saved it for a special enemy.

  “I’m getting closer, so much closer…”

  The Whisperer couldn’t be allowed to pick up all the glory, Russell knew. The bastard would be talked about for the next twenty years if he did, possibly even putting Russell’s own position into danger. I’ll kill that bastard if he keeps this new attitude up, he thought.

  He heard a soft alert chime in his ear and switched channels to a private line with a sentinel from his throne room.

  “Susan, what is it?”

  Immediately, she tapped a few buttons on her device and Russell was able to watch a live feed through his bionic eye.

  “I’m sorry sir, I can’t stop to talk. We’re making our way to the armory after finding a pair of masks along the way. They’re on the 31st floor and they have the boy. We must be quick to counterattack; they’ve managed to escape the Whisperer and they’re heavily armed. Paddy is dead, so are Heinz and Ockham.” She and Michael reached the armory door and Russell gave her the code so they could get inside and arm themselves. He was dumbstruck; it was impossible to believe how a group of unarmed prisoners had brought havoc to his organization. They had brought him to his knees, and he was still too far away to do anything about it. “It’s opening. Sir, as soon as we get our weapons, we’re going to find you and help get those fuckers, I promise—

  Russell screamed at her through their line as he saw the telltale shine in the darkness; the taut wire crossing the space behind the armory door was clear to him, but obviously not to her or Michael.

  “Susan, stop! There’s a tripwire!”

  The link died with a violent flash of light and noise, and then, he saw the explosion light up a floor far above. Glass and debris fell down to the ground floor of the building and smoke began to rise towards the domed glass roof. Russell mouthed silent words of disbelief as he realized how far the enemy had penetrated into his defenses and just how unprepared he’d been for a situation like this. He wasn’t just facing a group of pacifist clowns as he’d thought at the beginning. There was at least one veteran soldier, who had probably fought in the Outsider War, and a gang of smart enemies who just couldn’t give a fuck.

  Despite his enhancements, he could feel his heart thundering and his breath shortening. He had to stick his hand out onto the wall beside him to keep his balance, and he shook his head wildly. He had never been defeated. Ever.

  He licked his lips and clenched his teeth. He still had the advantage. Nobody would leave the building alive if he wished it so.

&
nbsp; “I’ve never been beaten and that’s not going to change today, no matter what.” He shifted his device back to the broadcast and softened his voice. “I’m giving you one chance to get out of here alive.” His anger and despair turned to a friendlier tone. “I’m offering you a deal.”

  Russell let the words hang in the air and sprinted off towards them, his hand caressing the handle of the exotic blade on his belt. If they fell for his trick, he was going to be doubly as fortunate. He knew where they were now and he was going to get what he wanted.

  One way or another.

  “What did he mean?” Johanna asked. “What does he want from us?”