NANO Archive 01: The City of Fire

by Jason Crutchfield

“Hmm, likely a coup or inside job. That, or Raze snuck someone in like a Trojan Horse. While it's hard to assault, once you have someone in who can control the lift, takin' the place over isn't that difficult since Loftsborough doesn't have very many mercs,” Crelyos replied.

  “So you think Raze is in there?” Like a switch being flicked in my mind, my interest moved from passive to aggressive.

  “Hard to say. The place is artistic enough to suit his tastes, but I feel like it's more his style to pull the strings from somewhere farther away. Either way, Loftsborough is where we need to be for answers. I wanna see that friend of mine, Eugene, anyway. The question is how we get in…” Crelyos scratched the top of his scalp, perplexed.

  “Easy enough,” I said as I stood and dusted the sand from my flowing tresses and leathery attire. I offered Crelyos a playful wink and patted the stock of my trusty rifle, “we say please.”

  “Hah, I like the way you think, girly.” He stood with me and slammed his left fist into his right palm. The dust clinging to his tank top and streaking his blond hair puffed away from his body from the mere impact his fist created against his open hand.

  “I… will stay back and guard the buggy. Can't have any hyped or bandits scurrying off with our precious cargo! Especially my computers. Perish the thought!” Oswald clamored to his feet and patted himself down.

  “But you two be careful and don't destroy the place. Especially you, drunkard.” He offered a firm finger waggle to Crelyos, who simply rolled his eyes in response.

  “Ready, Crelyos?” I chuckled softly and began the long walk down the hill toward Loftsborough. With my vision nanite still active, I watched as several guards with similar enhancements to their eyesight or binoculars took notice of my newly exposed figure. My slender hand reached up with unfettered determination and gripped the thinnest part of my rifle's stock just in case they decided to open fire. Crelyos enacted a few more dust shaking pounds of his fist against his open palm while following within close proximity.

  “Oh hell yes I'm ready…” He trailed off with a smirk.

  * * *

  “I can't believe you were freakin' serious about the please thing. This is such bullshit.” Crelyos stood atop the precarious platform hovering dangerously above the hungry desert sands with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face.

  I stood next to him in front of what looked like a giant conch shell. Its surface gleamed and glittered like a pearl; the spiral contours connected to a small device that looked like a metal speaker leading to a bundle of electrical wires. The wires snaked up one of the stone pillars like a series of veins. The larger opening of the shell faced the two of us as a gaping maw. From the arrangement of holes in the attached metal box, a scratchy distorted voice issued forth in droll monotone.

  “Welcome to Raze Haven. State your name and business.” I blinked a few times before looking over to Crelyos. “Raze Haven?” I thought to myself. Crelyos seemed equally bewildered, and in unison we offered one another a confused shrug.

  “Ihlia and Crelyos. We're tired and want a place to stay,” I bluntly stated into the gaping conch shell.

  “Sorry, no visitors. If you have no business for Duc Raze, get lost or get dumped.” The monotony of the voice persisted despite the mortal threat scratching through the makeshift speaker system.

  “What my companion meant to say is that we want a place to work. Duke Raze still takes on talent, right?” Crelyos interjected with a tone of familiarity and knowledge about Raze previously unbeknownst to me.

  “Duc. It's Duc, with the accent. If he heard you pronounce it Duke he'd have you barbecued. Geez, new people. Look, fine, I don't care, but you better be able to pull your weight around here. Duc Raze does not tolerate loafers, as many of the city folk will inform you. We'll send someone down to check you out. Remember, any funny business and I push this little button.” The last tidbit carried an inflection of concern to which I mischievously grinned.

  The sound of the electrical wires jolting to life caused loud mechanical creaking several hundred feet above our heads. Assumedly, it was the elevator descending from the city. However, the sparking electric bolts hopping between pillars due to faulty wiring made the event seem far more ominous. I nudged Crelyos' ribs with my elbow as the mechanical whine of the elevator drew nearer to our location.

  “So that's it? It's that easy? We just make up some impulsive story about wanting to work for Raze and they let us in the city?” I quirked a brow in his direction in response to the grin tugging at one corner of his mouth.

  “Yeah, kinda. Raze is… different. He likes pretty things or somethin' stupid like that. And his boys are usually pretty dumb. When you meet him, you'll get it. You wouldn't work for that limp dick for longer than a second if you had any cells left in your noggin'.” Crelyos knew much more about Raze than I thought. Originally, I had no intention of pressing the issue when Crelyos changed his mind back in Junction City at the mention of Raze's name, but the more I listened the more I wondered about the true nature of his relationship with the crime lord.

  The elevator hissed to a stop just in front of the platform. The man that stepped out stood at an unintimidating five feet nine inches, only an inch taller than me and definitively dwarfed by Crelyos' imposing stature. He concealed his hair, or lack thereof, beneath a ragged, dusty bandana wrapped loosely around his scalp. The cloth ended just above a pair of stale blue eyes. Bits of stubble and abundant grit partially covered the flame tattoo marring the skin beneath his right eye.

  While his lean figure lacked perfect posture, he did not strike me as slouched with particularly poor posture, either. In his right hand, the man carried a small, rusty metal box with a giant red button elevated in the center. At the top of the box, a radio antenna extended a good six inches into the air. The man's thumb rested cautiously on that red button.

  “All right, you two. Show me your weapons. It's not like we don't got enough manpower, and we understand that in this day and age not having a gun is pretty dumb, but I gotta make sure you don't have anything out of the ordinary. So let's go, show me the goods.” I recognized his voice. After stripping away the scratchy electronic droning and adding a touch of emotional concern to color the previous monotony, I realized the voice belonged to the same individual operating the speaker system. As I presented my various weapons for inspection, I tilted my head to one side and posed an inquiry.

  “So… are you the only sentry operating the elevator?” I squinted hard. The man looked up at me from his tedious inspection and nodded.

  “That's right,” he replied matter-of-factly.

  “So… how are you gonna drop us into the quicksand if we decide to pack your shit in?” Crelyos replied in my place. His thought process flowed in tandem with my own. We exchanged peripheral glances as the man under the fire of scrutiny slowly held up the box with the red button.

  “Well, I'd just press this button right here. And Kerplop.” A satisfied smile pulled apart his lips to reveal rows of black and yellow teeth stained by years of a neglectful bandit lifestyle.

  “So… you know how to swim in quicksand? You're standing on the platform too, after all.” I pointed a finger at his feet planted securely on the giant metal trap which the three of us shared. The man looked down, then back up to the two of us. The color washed away from his face, and his cheek twitched sporadically when he realized that he shared our fate.

  “Y-you don't get to ask the questions here! All right, shut your traps! Your stuff checks out, so up we go. In the elevator now, hurry it up. Talk to Mayor Trumark when you get to the city!” The man seemed frantic to get us into the contraption, and I noted with ardent amusement that his thumb no longer hovered anywhere near the red button. Crelyos was right: Raze's boys were dumb.

  At first, Crelyos and I entered the elevator in silence. We came to rest side-by-side behind Raze's nervous goon and exchanged a
quick glance. As the doors to the elevator slid shut, we both released a delayed laugh at the apparent idiocy of the no-name's flawed logic.

  When the doors finally slid open at the pinnacle of the ascent, the two of us still chuckled softly beneath our breaths. The disheartened minion offered us a dismissive wave as he returned to his post with a face reddened with embarrassment. Crelyos and I offered him a sympathetic nod and journeyed toward the distant glow of the city.

  From the elevator station, a single concrete street stretched across the metallic surface of Loftsborough's lower plate. Though no vehicles traversed the paved road, exquisite lights decorated its edges in perfect intervals clearly designed to maximize aesthetics. The resulting impairment to practicality, however, struck me as an irresponsible waste of precious resources. Crelyos seemed unaffected. As we exited the corridor entrapping the station itself, the city that opened up before my eyes temporarily took me aback. First and foremost, the entire city shone with the ferocity of the sun itself.

  The first and most notable feature of the city was the lower plate's ceiling or, depending on one's perspective, the upper plate's underside. The ceiling concaved upward to form a giant dome surrounding the whole lower level, and the various metal plates melded together shimmered with a vibrant display of colors which I had not seen in ten years. The gray of the world sang to life as a portrait of the sky before the fallout cloud gleamed overhead like a giant mural.

  Though the white puffy clouds which dotted the ceiling were stationary and the blue expanse possessed no singing birds or gentle breeze, the illusion of a beautiful afternoon sky almost evoked a tear of reminiscence from the corner of my eye. Of course, that tear never fell; not a single tear had fallen from my eyes in the ten year span following the tragedy in Cairo.

  To top it off, the exact center of this enormous painting framed a bright orange light embedded in the plate itself. The emitted light imitated the majesty of sunlight with nostalgic precision. I even thought I felt the tender warmth of a spring day penetrating me to my bones. As an awe-inspired sigh wriggled from between my sparsely parted lips and misted with the crisp chill that blanketed the world, I realized that the clever illusion was still merely an illusion.

  Crelyos nudged me in order to snap me back to reality. The fact that he showed no signs of astonishment almost surprised me as much as the innovative environment itself. Once I returned my attention to the city's entirety, I noted even more intriguing designs allocated to the homes themselves. The breadth of architectural difference between the homes in Loftsborough and those of Junction City was as wide as the Everest Crater formed after the world's tallest mountain was obliterated during the Global Conflict.

  In Loftsborough, it seemed as though no one fretted over the inefficient use of space when constructing the dwellings. Instead, random assortments of shapes and dimensions varying from abode to abode inspired a sense of questionable abstract artistry. The person responsible for the house designs possessed extremely eccentric tastes.

  “Crelyos, you don't seem all that… surprised.” After finishing my slow surveillance, I focused my attention on the former soldier.

  “Eh, been here before. The houses are weird now, but the ceilin's always been like that. Kinda like throwin' a nice suit on a pile of shit, though. Might look prettier, but it's still just a pile of shit.” He spoke haughtily as though his words dripped with the wisdom of an elder.

  “So… where is this Mayor Trumark?” I placed a single finger on my chin and began looking around. It struck me, then, that the streets were all empty. Aside from the occasional guard patrolling about with a firearm or sword, the streets were devoid of life, and the homes seemed tightly locked from the inside.

  “Probably in that tall buildin' back there, but this place was a lot more lively when I was last here. I don't like it.” Crelyos scratched his stubble and walked toward the aforementioned building. I followed while offering sidelong glances to Raze's scrutinous minions. On the way to the mayor's alleged abode, we passed through the city's center square. In Junction City, the late evening would signify the end to a busy day of barter and trade. Mothers and fathers would be packing their supplies and gathering up any wayward children before heading home to begin the evening meal preparation.

  The only thing greeting us in Loftsborough's town square was the whistling wind as it filtered through the slit between the two giant plates and a horrifying ornament that decorated the very center of town. The decoration apparently provided enough novelty to give Crelyos pause. Submerged in the metal ground through what appeared to be brute force, a giant stone stake rose up almost twenty feet. Upon closer inspection, the twisted, gnarled metal plate at the stake's base indicated that something superheated the metal to a temperature soft enough to penetrate with the stone itself. The scorch marks wrapping around the stone like a charcoal design further affirmed that theory.

  At the apex of the pillar, tied to the stone with razor wire, a skeletal corpse sat affixed like a morbid hood ornament. The bones were nearly bleached save for numerous deep black scorch marks. The char-grilled jaw hung open in what I imagined was a final expression of gruesome torture and gripping fear.

  “They were… burned? The entire stone looks flambeau'd. Even the metal was melted. What kind of fire could have done this?” I inquired as we passed the human scarecrow. With his experience with the town, surely Crelyos possessed some idea regarding the origins of the atrocity.

  “Raze. He has a very unique nanite ability. Pyrokinesis, he calls it. Flame manipulation. It's pretty badass, not gonna lie,” Crelyos shrugged as we approached our final destination, the large dome establishment supposedly housing Mayor Trumark.

  On either side of the sliding metal portals indicating the building's front entrance, two minions clearly belonging to Raze's gang stood attentively guarding the doors. I walked ahead of Crelyos and rapped my knuckles against the metal; after a short delay, a raspy voice echoed from the other side, “Ohoho? We have visitors? How rare, how rare. Please, do come in young ones.”

  I shot Crelyos a quizzical glance, and he responded by lifting his hands seemingly just as confused as I. After a deep breath, I placed either of my hands into the fold on the edge of the door and tugged. I expected to hear the squeak of old metal grinding against itself as the door slid open, but surprisingly, the door swished open with a soundless ease that nearly sent me reeling from applying unnecessary force. I stepped inside with the heavy thud of Crelyos' boots following close behind.

  The interior of the mayor's residence seemed rather plain when compared to the gaudy design of the city. Without decorations or ornaments, the home possessed only basic stone and metallic furniture. With the considerable space of the living area, the lack of decorum made the domicile seem empty and cold; it was a stark contrast from the display we witnessed outdoors. As we approached the main room serving as the mayor's audience chamber, we beheld a tiny old man.

  The likeness Mayor Trumark bore to stereotypical little old men struck me as rather amusing. He sat on the floor on a mat facing an extremely short table. His head's wrinkles possessed wrinkles, with brown, rusting age spots crinkled up amidst the various folds that lined his bald scalp. A pair of overgrown bushy eyebrows concealed a droopy brow line that weighed heavily upon the old man's face. The sheer weight of the skin forced his eyes shut in a typical old man's squint.

  Just below his sagging, bulbous nose, a long fuzzy mustache completely covered his lips and dipped deep below his chin ending in a wispy dangle. The only way to indicate when the elderly man spoke was the faint wiggle of that mustache as it rose and fell above his hidden lips with each spoken word.

  “So, what brings you to our fair city, young ones?” The old man exhaled a puff of cold mist. His manner of speech was slow and methodic, almost like some kind of robot.

  “Why is the place called Raze Haven?” I inquired, curious as to the events that
led to Loftsborough's capture. The old man paused for a moment. With great difficulty, he lifted a brow enough to show us a foggy green eye. I felt for all the world as though the old man was sizing us up to determine our motives.

  “Yes… we used to be Loftsborough, then about a year ago Raze's men got in when one of our sentries turned traitor. Once inside, it was an easy enough task to take the town over. Next thing you know, he says the town is ugly, changes its name to Raze Haven, and sends out our young men to engrave random rubbish on the stone pillars. We lost a good few men like that. The houses were all reconstructed to suit his artistic taste as well. It's horrifying, but at least we're alive, I suppose.” The old man's face betrayed his sadness.

  “I don't understand why he wants a piece of junk in the middle of the desert. Place is pretty enough, don't get me wrong, but why does he want it?” Crelyos proposed the question, and the old man nodded in agreement.

  “Good question. Duc Raze immediately put our men to work and told our women to stay indoors. The line of work he has our men doing is dangerous to say the very least. But at least he's making good on his word. As long as my citizens bring him a fresh supply of captured hyped, he provides us with the means to survive.” Another exhaled cloud of mist followed Mayor Trumark's words.

  “Hyped? What does he want with hyped? It's hard enough to kill them how does one even go about capturing them alive?” While learning that Raze forced the town to undertake such dangerous tasks just to live surprised me, my piqued curiosity as to the purpose behind capturing hyped far outweighed my shock. What would a crime lord want with the afflicted?

  “I'm afraid I don't right know, missy. Raze's orders, we just obey. Those that don't or fail get sent to the top plate as punishment. Surviving there is almost impossible.” The old man's eyes rose to the ceiling as though he looked through the roof to the top plate itself. The heaviness in his heart at the thought of his suffering townsfolk further creased his wrinkled face.