NANO Archive 01: The City of Fire

by Jason Crutchfield

  “Hm? A birdie? Nonsense. What you caught…” I released the tension I held and lunged forward into his pull. The chain's grip about my arm failed to loosen, but the clanking links in the middle fell slack and caused the bandit to stagger backward with the force of his fervent tugging. I closed the distance between us and rammed my metal-encased arm into his throat. With his own staggering momentum and the brutality of my strike, I harshly slammed the back of his head into the wall behind him. I leaned forward, sealing his wind pipe and pinning him to the wall. I glared up at him through the shadow cast on my face by my black bangs while he gagged and twitched beneath the pressure of my forearm, “… was a snake.” I pushed forward hard and crushed his neck into the back of his throat. His body fell limp.

  As the chain toter's body slumped to the ground, I turned to see the man whose chest still housed my daggers stumbling to his feet just in front of the group of men charging toward me. With a quick jerk of my right shoulder, I lifted the free end of my new chain and began swinging it above my head. After a brief second, I launched it forward; its remaining length sailed through the air and whipped around the confused thug who had finished wobbling to his feet.

  The minion tasted the same searing sensation I experienced as the other grappling hook tore into his pectoral once the slack in the chain finished looping about his throat. After wrapping the links about my hands for grip, I tugged hard. A grotesque cross between a cough and a gag escaped his lips, and the minion staggered into my awaiting arms. I embraced him rigidly, his back to my chest.

  “I believe you have something that belongs to me…” I sarcastically cooed. Reaching around him, I gripped the hilts of my long daggers and tore them from their sheaths in his body. He cried out briefly before I plunged them into the sides of his neck to end his suffering. I utilized the last few seconds before the crowd of ruffians reached me to rip the grappling hook from my forearm and discard the chain. It jingled to the ground in a coiled lump. I spun the dagger in my left hand around in a reverse grip. A sigh parted my lips. The men carried an assortment of weapons ranging from swords to spears and from claws to axes. I steeled my nerves and dashed forward to meet their loud advance and unleashed a battle cry of my own.

  The flash of steel glinted in my eyes as the sharp clangs of our colliding weapons sang out in the night. The silvery twangs, evasive swooshes, and grim ripping sounds served as the music in our bloody waltz on Raze's ballroom floor. I drifted from partner to partner, and while some of the men provided a challenging exchange of footwork, none of them were up to the task of taking the lead. More than once, the dizzying pace of the twirling dance was interrupted when a blade pierced my side or sliced a valley in my back, but I choked back my weakness with feral growls and gritted teeth.

  Though I likely could have avoided the grievous wounds inflicted on my body by the lashing Dusk inhabitants, I chose instead to prioritize the safety of my head and throat. With the number of combatants brandishing deadly weapons, a single wayward strike to the back of the head or throat meant the end of my goal. It meant the end of my journey to kill Bradich.

  Each time the sparks raced down the length of my daggers from their collision with an opposing metallic instrument, their origin was rooted in a parry designed to guard those vital points from my neck to my scalp. Defending from multiple directions required a fair amount of ambidexterity, and the lithe motions of my body handled the stray attacks which my twin daggers failed to deter.

  At one point, my assaulters forced me to raise my blades above two sides of my head; I locked my right dagger with a spiked metal bat in front of me while my other kept a curved blade at bay to my left, I possessed little leeway to deflect an overhead strike cutting through the air at the back of my head. As the thug in my face drew his bat from my parry in preparation for a horizontal swipe toward my face, I jerked to my right away from the curved blade and twisted to look upon the man behind me. His hands gripped a long rusty spike crudely curved to resemble a dagger sans a handle. Instead, the spike possessed a flat circular head at the end opposite the tip where the man's hands desperately clutched. It looked like an overgrown steel thumb tack.

  He forced it down toward the top of my skull, and I dragged the length of my newly unoccupied left dagger across his eyes in a swift slice. At the same time, I spun my right dagger into a reverse grip and brought it to bear against the horizontal strike of the spiked metal bat previously in front of me. The man with the rusty thorn dropped to his knees. His frantic screams echoed “My eyes! My eyes!” as he clutched his face with one hand and felt around blindly with his other. The man whom I temporarily abandoned, the one wielding the curved blade, seemed offended by my neglect and stepped forward to reclaim his place at my side. It was adorable.

  As I parried, swerved, and counter attacked, my breath grew heavy. Panacea worked rapidly to seal my acquired wounds, but the nanites were far from miracles. As each opening sealed, two replaced it. The loss of blood slowly exacted its toll on my stamina, and from the thunderous panting nearby, I gathered Crelyos faced similar fatigue.

  I deliberately angled my path of carnage to draw me closer to my comrade, but after several minutes of fighting, the distance between us still seemed like a canyon. I glanced up at the rails upon which Raze leaned his thin figure; the flamboyant pseudo Frenchman simply stared with a wide, amused smile. I parted my lips to shout something toward him, but a grip around my right shin followed by a sickening thwack elicited only an ear piercing screech from my lips. My eyes widened as a tempest of pain swept through my leg from my ankle to my thigh.

  The man whose eyes I shut with a swipe of my blade had spent the duration of his time reaching, searching blindly for something to grab. He had found it: my leg. Once he had secured the grip on my appendage, he plunged his thick metal thistle through the top of my shin.

  The flat, circular top dug into my leg, and the slightly curved spike carved a destructive path through flesh and muscle tissue right next to the bone. The crimson point erupted from the back of my calf like a gruesome piercing; as my leg shook from the pain of supporting my weight with such an uncomfortable protrusion, the man's fellow bandits took the opportunity to renew the fervor of their assault. I dropped to my right knee, and as I did I brought one of my daggers into the skull of the muttering idiot that turned my leg into a pincushion.

  Why had I not noticed him with all my senses acutely enhanced by neurotech? It dawned on me that I had noticed him, the whole time in fact. The problem was as he writhed about on the floor in pain, I grew accustomed to his harmless presence and ceased acknowledging him as a threat. So sensory enhancing nanites possessed a flaw after all, albeit a user error. Unfortunately, my position of peril warranted little time for internal debate.

  To my left and right, a pipe and cleaver raced down toward my lowered cranium from above. I remained on one knee and lifted both daggers to avert the oncoming assault. While my muscles strained against the weapons from my lowered position, a third thug rushed me from the front to capitalize on that very issue. In his hands, a long spear constructed entirely of steel glistened in the chemical lights lining the walls. A sensation of finality wrenched the deepest parts of me as I stared down the length of the pointed rod intended to skewer my face. As I prepared myself for the inevitable blackout, I cursed fate for its cruel machinations, cursed my poor luck for rearing its ugly head, and cursed myself for my utter failure to remain aware of my surroundings.

  “Ihlia!” Crelyos' voice broke my dismal resignation. A body, flopping through the air with a mangled figure and fractured bones, slammed into the right flank of the man who threatened my life. With a sharp yelp, the two of them tumbled across the floor into a twisted heap. The soft light illuminating my face changed to darkness when my blond companion soared overhead and cast his shadow upon my two opponents and myself. When he struck the ground directly in front of me, he used the force of gravity to drive his fist into
the checkered tile.

  The humming vibrations cast tremors across the pristine floor as it sank into a crater. Bits of stone sprayed into the air and disintegrated before my eyes; the sudden depression sent a powerful shockwave across the ground. From my position on a single knee, I was virtually unaffected, but the two men at my right and left stumbled and cried out “whoa!” as they lost their footing beneath Crelyos' destructive architectural alteration.

  Crelyos' ragged breathing failed to impede his efficiency. He launched himself toward the off balance thug on my right; the bandit released a frustrated growl and wildly swiped his cleaver at the former soldier's throat. Crelyos crouched beneath the attack, his legs coiled toward the ground like a pair of springs while his arms tucked near his chests like dormant pistons. When he released the tension an instant later, his figure rocketed skyward. His right fist exploded from the center of his chest toward the underside of his attacker's jaw.

  When he activated his vibratory disintegration nanite, pieces of the man's head and face erupted into the air like a decorative fountain. The other thug, the one brandishing a metal pipe, brought it down atop Crelyos' shoulder. A fleshy thunk echoed through the room; for a brief moment, Crelyos merely stood in silence. When he turned, the blond mercenary reached forward and gripped the bandit's face in his right hand. I heard the muffled screams of Raze's minion. He dropped his weapon when the bones in his face started cracking and his skull began collapsing.

  “Girly, you need to pull yourself together.” Crelyos' blood-covered figure, tall and broad, stood like a daunting behemoth in the face of our adversaries. Despite his injuries and fatigue, the former soldier pressed on as his training dictated. The dull throb in my shin escalated. I sighed and closed my eyes; for a moment, I pondered activating that nanite. A sickening dread sank into the pit of my stomach at the mere thought of it. I shook my head and forced myself to my feet despite my roaring protest. Beads of sweat raced down my cheeks and forehead even though the cold night air still pierced the mansion walls. My misty breath escaped my lungs in heavy sporadic intervals. I glanced at Crelyos.

  “I'd have done so even if you didn't say anything,” I responded between pants.

  “Good,” Crelyos grinned. After he finished crushing the man's skull, he reeled back and hurled the limp corpse in my direction. I stood my ground as the body sailed passed my right shoulder and smashed into an advancing adversary. My enhanced auditory sense detected one more; with a quick twist I drew my impaled leg up and swept it in a wide arch behind me. With an enormous spike jutting from the back of my leg, such kicks became deadly techniques in their own right.

  My leg's broad stroke cut through the air like a hungry scythe. Catching a glimpse of the bandit as I turned, I noted his arms were drawn above his head in preparation to bring a metal bat down atop the back of my head. A quick adjustment of my leg's height mid-spin brought the spike sticking from my leg crashing into the side of his neck. The residual crunch resulting from his spine separating at the base of his skull also served to drive the enormous tack part ways back through my shin. I withheld my vocal agony and snapped my leg back to the ground to prepare for the next assault.

  When I once again faced Crelyos, the sight of his gargantuan right fist sailing through the air at my face immediately greeted me. Verbal communication was unnecessary. I dropped to my knees and arched my back. Thanks to my innate flexibility, the depth to which I bent caused the spike jutting from my calf to prod at the cheek of my derriere in a most uncomfortable manner. The force of wind trailing behind my companion's fist as he swung his arm in a wide hook just inches above my torso threatened to rip the very clothes from my body.

  As it turned out, he aimed his sweeping punch and its disintegration effects at a goon assaulting me from the left. My ears perked at the sound of his exploding midriff and distorted cry that fell on the spectrum somewhere between the realms of shock and torture. As I sprang to my feet like an elastic rubber band drawn too taut, I watched a bandit take advantage of the chaos; he leapt from his position behind Crelyos and attached himself to the hulking former soldier's back. In his raised right hand sat a dagger poised to plunge into the back of Crelyos' neck.

  The peril my ally faced did not afford me the luxury of time to think or aim. I immediately loosed the dagger in my right hand; it sailed through the air and plunged into the bandit's right shoulder. The pain it caused temporarily stayed his hand of execution. I shifted my weight to my left foot and drove it into the ground to propel myself up while spinning my remaining dagger into a reverse grip.

  I gripped Crelyos' shoulder, extended from the brutal impact of his punch against my attacker, with my right hand and hoisted myself atop his collar bone. The momentum obtained from my Supersoldier enhancement allowed me to support my whole weight on that single hand and turn my legs skyward. As I performed the handspring on top of Crelyos, I brought my thighs to bear against either side of the thug's head. Wrapping both legs around his neck and pivoting until I sat atop the thug's shoulder blades, I clamped my right leg down and drove its new scythe attachment deep into his chest.

  After I crossed my legs, I fell backward. The reverse head-scissors takedown peeled the offender off Crelyos' shoulders in a back somersault. To prevent my head from smashing into the ground, I placed my empty right palm flat against the ballroom floor and aided in the criminal's back flip. In the end, I found myself seated atop his shoulders with my legs tucked beneath his prone body. I drove my remaining dagger into the back of his skull, snatched both my killing utensils from his corpse, and rolled to my feet. The pain burning through my right leg gave me pause.

  “Ok… that's enough of that.” I gripped the flattened head of the spike, exposed after the two impacts of the pointed end into Raze's men, and tugged it out with a painful cry. I shivered notably as the experience left a dull, empty pain throbbing in the gaping chasm in my leg. After leisurely tossing the bloody spike aside, I stood and pressed my back firmly against Crelyos'. He finished obliterating another bandit and leaned back against me as well. I took up a fighting posture.

  “Ouch, that hurt,” I jested.

  “Oh? I'm surprised it didn't tickle,” He responded sarcastically.

  “Zurprised? I am zee one who iz zurprised, mon ami.” Raze's voice washed over the room like a dramatic announcer's. Crelyos and I snapped our attention to the balcony. Raze's hands were already slicing through the air like a languid mirage. When he positioned his hand with fingers prepared to snap, my eyes widened.

  “Crelyos, look out!” I dove from my position behind my blond companion. I instinctively slowed my perception at the point my feet left the ground. The heat built up like a raging furnace against my back, and the skin at the back of my neck prickled as though someone pinched and pulled at the hairs nestled on the nape of my neck. At the moment just before the roaring ignition, a strange, almost undetectable scent worked its way into my nostrils. The sensation toyed with my awareness and snapped me from the effects of my Cognitive Accelerator as I collided with the ground. I rolled forward to my knees and looked down to behold the tips of my lengthy obsidian tresses singed and frayed. A quick glance up revealed Crelyos in far worse a condition.

  “Crelyos!” I cried out as his entire right arm suffered the wrath of Raze's flame. The orange glow swirled, roared, and danced atop the flesh of my comrade. To my utter astonishment, Crelyos calmly lifted his right arm in front of his face and stared at the sea of crimson consuming his limb. For the first time since we began our journey, I regretted conning him into my selfish endeavor. If it meant permanently marring a drinking buddy, I would rather have taken my chances alone. I was torn from my remorse by Crelyos' nostalgic sigh. My eyes were electrocapacitor plates. Did he feel no pain? His flesh had already melted to the floor, and the fire charred his distorted bones black. I paused. Melted flesh? Black, distorted bones?

  Crelyos turned toward Raze and kept his arm
extended away from the other flammable portions of his body. When the flame died, it left a surprising sight in its wake. Crelyos' right appendage was one hundred percent cybernetic. From the metallic tips of his fingers to the synthetic tendons and bones embedded in his partially artificial right pectoral, Crelyos' right arm was a whirring black machine lined with glowing blue tubes and rotating discs. I looked down toward the goo on the floor that previously concealed his steel limb. It seemed rubbery and limp; its latex consistency spread out in random disarray and still hissed from the heat of the fire that consumed it.

  File 16: Harmonic Resonance

  “I did not expect you to dizplay zat power again, mon ami. Not after… it did zat to your arm during our lazt mission. Zough I did beg you to employ it during our time working togezher as thugz, you alwayz refuzed me! Oh how it cauzed my frail heart to ache zo. But to zink it was zis powerful… tres bien, mon ami, tres bien.” Raze pressed his formerly snapped fingers to his lips and blew a kiss in Crelyos' direction.

  “Crelyos?” I stood. The gaping wound in my shin was already well on its way to sealing shut thanks to Panacea. I recounted the vast situations in which we found ourselves that forced Crelyos to pummel things, living and nonliving, out of existence. A realization struck me; Crelyos only ever utilized his unique nanite through the medium of his right hand. But while the realization alone stunned me, the fact that I never noticed it before that moment sent me reeling. Crelyos shrugged off my inflective use of his name and continued curling and uncurling the black fingers on his mechanical limb. The various disks and moving parts lining the arm worked in unison with every faint motion of his fingertips.