NANO Archive 01: The City of Fire

by Jason Crutchfield

  “A ruse? Think of it more like fortuitous coincidence. Now, more importantly, where have you been?” Oswald's stern whisper belied his apparent concern. The idea that Oswald worried for my safety might have brought a smile to my lips in less dire circumstances.

  “No time for that, Doc. Where's my rifle?” I glanced in the doctor's direction. My gaze met with the sight of the good doctor fishing through his trousers. I immediately twisted my head in the opposite direction just in time to avoid the sight of Oswald's liquid expulsion. Turning my head offered little refuge from the sound, however, and I made a distinct mental note to do something horrible to the old codger later as punishment.

  “Ahh. Oh, yes, your rifle. It's up in your room, of course. I could scarce believe that you left it in my trailer when you went out; you had me worried something terrible, you know,” Oswald whispered.

  I moved to ascend the side of Eugene's home long before Oswald finished speaking. I needed to reach the top floor, enter through one of the windows, and retrieve my sniper rifle. It so happened that with my room at the apex of the late Eugene's mansion, retrieving my rifle and finding an excellent sniper's nest coincided. Upon witnessing my swift action, Oswald whispered, “You're not thinking of doing anything rash, are you? There are a great number of soldiers in Sarge's employ, and they are merely here to retrieve Raze and their hyped. I fail to see the logic of interrupting their endeavor.”

  “There is none, but Crelyos wanted Raze alive. If anyone is going to kill Raze, it's going to be me. Besides, you know that lug Crelyos will do something stupid to protect his old comrade. He could be injured or killed,” I responded plainly.

  “Hmm?” Oswald laced his inflection with accusation. When I heard the sound of his zipper enclosing his business, I glanced down to see one of his brows arched curiously.

  “What?” I fired back with subconscious indignation, briefly pausing in the middle of my ascent.

  “Oh, nothing. I didn't think you worried about someone so much. Especially with your quest for revenge superseding all other emotions and thought,” Oswald drenched his tone in sarcasm. I felt my face flush, though discerning if the source of the heat stemmed from anger or embarrassment proved impossible.

  “I'm not worried about him! I just need him to be healthy if he's going with us so he doesn't slow us down! Besides, his fighting talent and nanite are both very useful, so we need him,” I snapped back and resumed my climb up the back of the house.

  “Yes, of course. What was I thinking?” Oswald responded with a soft chuckle beneath his breath.

  The sound of the disgruntled guard interrupted our conversation. “Hey, you've been over there long enough. Get back here.” Oswald offered the guard a dismissive remark regarding the brutish captor's impatience, promptly grabbed his bucket, and trotted back to the group of hostages.

  I muttered a few things beneath my breath regarding Oswald's obvious sarcastic replies to my perfectly reasonable explanations. While I scaled the wall, I bit my lower lip and tacked another note onto my compiled list to make sure I extracted an extra horrible revenge on the old codger to quell my irritation. Inside the familiar territory of my room, I found my rifle propped neatly against the bed and slowly encircled my fingers around its lengthy barrel. The sensation felt like regaining a lost limb. I sighed with relief before searching for the various boxes of ammunition I stored for safekeeping.

  Once I tucked a few bullets neatly away into my deep cargo pockets, I knelt down in front of the window from which I used to watch Crelyos play merrily with children during a more peaceful time. I might have been amazed at how quickly the dark clouds of conflict shadowed peaceful days if not for occupational experience. Unfortunately time made the best teacher, so I understood all too well. That was simply how the world worked.

  Careful not to extend the muzzle of the rifle out the window itself, I activated my telescopic sight nanite and surveyed the small box of visible environment that comprised my kill zone. Crelyos and Sarge continued arguing, though the distance between them shortened with every one of Crelyos' obscene hand gestures and annoyed roars. Despite the blond mercenary's slow advances, Sarge remained unphased and unintimidated. He stood his ground. Though I half-expected as much from someone of Sarge's stature and experience, it still surprised me a little to see him completely unaffected by Crelyos' daunting physique.

  With my new vantage point, I beheld two slender figures far to Sarge's left that stood out from the rest of his entourage. One of them belonged to the woman that nearly dropped me down the elevator shaft with her flashy swordplay. The figure standing next to her looked identical to her in every respect save one. He was male.

  The male portion of the duo wore his hair in a similar style to his counterpart, and like his counterpart, he donned sleek leather that hugged the contours of his body. He appeared frail, so much so that even his skinny body resembled the woman's. He possessed neither the large muscular frame of Crelyos, nor the chiseled muscles that covered Sarge's figure. Instead, he looked for all the world like a woman with a small pectorals. If not for the clearly defined Adam's apple and square shape of his jaw, I would have chalked him up as a flat-chested female.

  “Crelyos, you're always writing checks your ass can't cash. I will ask you one more time to step aside. I will take Raze, I will leave, and you can go back to your blissfully ignorant existence. If you refuse, you will suffer the consequences.” Sarge lifted one of his hands in front of his face. He drew his thumb and forefinger together as though he prepared to snap his fingers.

  “You can do whatever you want to me. I'll die before I let you take Raze,” Crelyos dropped into his fighting stance. With his fists clenched and his shoulders parted, the blond mercenary was no more than ten seconds from leaping wildly into combat with total disregard for any form of strategy. Normally, the action drew an endearing smile from my lips. This time, however, something seemed horribly amiss. Crelyos misunderstood a very important piece of information; I felt it. If I understood Sarge's character as I expected I did, the situation was about to go from bad to worse.

  “That's exactly what I'm talking about, Crelyos. Ignorance. Who said anything about doing something to you? We're old comrades, you and I. I don't want to hurt you. At least, not your body. Men, take aim. Women and children first. Fire on my command.” The soldiers standing in rank and file drew their assorted firearms and took aim on the crowd standing behind Crelyos. The small children, already sniffling and shaking, clung to their corresponding families and released fearful cries. The women gasped and screamed while coiling down around their young offspring.

  The hesitant men stepped forward to shield their women; their valor was impressive. In fact, of all those involved in the horrifying threat, only Crelyos froze in his tracks. The color drained from his face, and the very muscles in his legs quaked beneath his weight. As I feared, Crelyos still saw Sarge as the gracious commander with whom he served in the military. The idea that Sarge became a ruthless thug in Bradich's employ failed to register, but I watched with a concerned furrow in my brow as the reality opened up before him.

  “Sarge… you wouldn't. You can't involve innocent people. This has nothing to do with them! Fight me like a man!” Crelyos stammered.

  “That's ineffective. I'm sure I could obliterate you, but I told you, I don't want to harm you. You have so much to learn about the world. I've always felt I needed to teach you more than anyone else that served under my command. You're like some naive child that thinks everyone in the world is going to operate on your sense of values and morals. It's infuriating,” Sarge growled. “Regardless, the bottom line is I have a job to do and I will take any course of action required to fulfill that job. It's just a bonus that I'll be able to open your eyes and fulfill my mission in one fell swoop. Remember, Crelyos, the blood of these innocents is on your hands. I hope the life of one man is worth the blood of so many. Ready, men! Aim!�
�

  Though Sarge's words rang harsh, I secretly agreed with him. Crelyos colored his world with his sense of valor and personal code. Unlike Sarge, who apparently felt very strongly about destroying that code, I felt an inexplicable desire to protect it.

  I trained the tip of my rifle on Sarge's temple in perfect timing with his command for his men to aim. I felt as though, for a moment, I stood among his ranks taking aim with them despite our significantly different targets. Sarge's fingers grew tense; I anticipated his snap, the snap that served as the death sentence carried out by a merciless executioner. It would herald a unanimous cry of suffering throughout Loftsborough. But in that moment right before he prepared to dispatch the many lives gathered in the city square, I squeezed my trigger.

  File 32: …and into the Fire.

  My shoulders jerked back with the recoil of the shot within the small confines of the room. Though the rumble shook the bed and echoed across the walls, nothing garnered my attention more than what happened at my bullet's destination. The shot approached the stalwart commander of Loftsborough's invading forces with pinpoint accuracy, but it curved.

  Though I lacked the wherewithal to activate my Cognitive Accelerator, I clearly watched the bullet's trajectory rapidly deteriorate as it approached Sarge. By the time it struck a solid surface, a gulf of several feet separated the man's head and the bullet as it ricocheted off the city's metal ground with a high-pitched whine.

  “Not finite telekinesis again… but how did he know I was firing? Is it impulse?” I inwardly groaned. Whatever the cause, Sarge stood alive and well in wake of the shot. With a quick jerk of his neck, Sarge's eyes locked onto my relative position with the trained skill I expected from a soldier of his caliber.

  “Nomeiko, Izuma, the window!” Sarge lifted a hand and pointed toward the very floor of the very building from which I sniped. The twins wordlessly responded with the swiftness of a serpent's strike. The woman sprinted across the city square like lightning, synchronously drawing her blade as she reached the midpoint between her starting position and my nest. Her twin trailed behind at a noticeably slower pace, though not unimpressive in its own right.

  In addition to earning Sarge's attention, the group of soldiers with readied rifles seemed shockingly distracted, too. Crelyos took advantage of the opportunity and leapt to action… literally. The bulging muscles in his legs propelled him forward into the midst of the boggled troops standing in rank and file, and at the apex of his mighty bound, the former soldier released a booming roar and drew back his right arm. Though I expected my blond comrade to perform a recklessly courageous feat at any given moment, that expectation did not prevent my surprise. Instead of engaging the lot in ferocious and bloody combat, Crelyos rammed his humming right arm into the ground in the dead center of Sarge's army. The metal groaned and creaked for a split second before exploding into near microscopic fragments like dust glittering in Loftsborough's artificial sunlight.

  The dome of chaff easily compared in radius to the explosion of a “Little Kid,” and the chorus of alarmed and desperate cries in the wake of Crelyos's Harmonic Resonance certainly resembled the final shouts of a Little Kid's victims. As the metallic dust plumed into a cloud, it cast a sparkling fog around an enormous crater in Loftsborough's central square. The shocked sounds of Sarge's troops transformed into elongated howls which drowned in the blustering gusts of wind whipping through the city.

  Crelyos had used his nanite to punch a giant hole clean through Loftsborough's bottom. Considering the immense thickness of the steel used to craft the town's shell, my eyes understandably widened at the prospect of his Harmonic Resonance possessing enough force to simulate the impact of a ballistic missile. It also stood to reason that the source of the droning screams belonged to the various soldiers as they plummeted to an untimely demise into churning quicksand several hundred feet below the city's new gaping wound, but where were Crelyos and Sarge?

  The initial blast from Crelyos' impact provided enough of a diversion for the people gathered in the city square to disperse. Mayor Trumark ushered them into their homes or the nearest available shelter, but not before their uproarious panic created a symphony of surprised gasps and horrified screams. Like their steadily rising cries, a faint but firm twinge of panic slowly built in the pit of my stomach. I frantically sought to pierce my gaze through the blot of chaff but to no avail. In the midst of my search, a different glint far outside the chaff cloud's radius caught my attention.

  It belonged to one of Sarge's men; a sniper sat poised atop one of the many homes in the city square. The lens of his telescopic sight reflected stray beams of light from Loftsborough's large incandescent sun. He busily swept his rifle to and fro probably searching for the same person as I, but I conjectured he sought Crelyos for completely different and wholly unacceptable reasons. I instinctively drew my rifle up and placed the iron sights between his eyes using my augmented vision.

  I slid the bolt action back to eject the shell from my wasted shot against Sarge; I reloaded a new round, exhaled calmly, and steadied my hands before offering a gentle squeeze to my weapon's trigger. The soldier's head shot back as though it ripped clean off his shoulders, and after a gratuitous spray of blood, he crumpled lifelessly to the ground. The familiar action of taking down an enemy sniper eerily calmed my nerves, and when I returned my enhanced sight to the settling dust cloud, a most relieving sight waited to greet me.

  The two former soldiers hung from the enormous crater as though their lives depended on their grip, and in all likelihood, they did. Crelyos swayed at the base of the hole where several straggling soldiers clutched at jagged metal for dear life. One by one, their holds faltered, and they issued their final cries during their drop into the merciless sea of sand. The backlash from Crelyos's Harmonic Resonance had torn the skin-colored latex from his cybernetic arm until only a few scant strips remained in an eerie pattern. The limb's metal grip clutched the razor sharp surface of the crater he had created.

  Sarge's arms hung over the top of the crater on the still-flat surface of Loftsborough's ground; he clutched at the metal plates which made up the city floor. Though the surface was sheer, for some reason Sarge managed to effortlessly maintain his hold on the flat metal plates. It took only a few seconds for the seasoned commander to draw himself up from Crelyos' hole, and by the time my blond comrade joined him on the city floor, Sarge already stood as composed as ever with his arms folded over his chest.

  The moment I confirmed Crelyos' safety, a figure darkened my window. The katana-bearing woman crouched atop the sill with a stoic expression painted on her thin face. Though she possessed enviable exotic beauty, she offered me little time to admire her. I released my father's hunting rifle and blurred my hands to my waist to grip the hilt of my remaining dagger; her hand flashed to her side with equivalent speed. No, she was faster. She lunged into the room and snatched her katana from its scabbard in a blinding swipe.

  I lifted my dagger in the nick of time and caught the silvery edge of her blade with a sharp clang. As I stared at her emotionless visage for a second, a vicious pain suddenly streaked through my midsection like fire. A spray of blood splashed from a fresh gash across my stomach, and in the seconds that followed, I quickly put the pieces of the puzzle together. In the time it took me to raise my dagger, she had swung not merely once but twice! Her speed left me dazed but not nearly as much as the crippling shock that coursed through me in the next instant.

  Her katana sparked with the snaking blue electrical veins I perceived when I first beheld her. As the blade connected with my flesh and a second time with my extended dagger, the pulses of arching lightning coursed through my body and sent me into violent convulsions. My legs quaked, and my hands clenched into useless heaps of rigid flesh. My lack of flexibility in light of the electric pulses provided the sleek fighter ample time to deliver a powerful spinning back kick to the center of my chest. When her heel thudded
against my sternum, the blow launched me into the window on the opposite side of the room. My shoulder blades shattered the half-open glass frame, and I stared at the olive-skinned beauty who stalked toward me like a cat toying with its prey.

  Though I regained control of my body, my muscles continued twitching intermittently; the electric shock she emitted was no laughing matter, and its effects partially extended even after contact. I crawled out the shattered window frame and grabbed the roof's protruding overhang, and with a firm push off the sill, I rolled onto its subtle incline. The cold breeze tore through my hair and against my healing wound with a vicious chill. As I backed away from the roof's edge, the sound of footsteps behind me quickly diverted my attention.

  The male half of the alleged Storm Duo rushed at me with the purposeful motions of a trained fighter. Unlike his sister, however, his movements barely surpassed human limitations and his muscles operated with easy-to-read normality. Without so much as activating my Cognitive Accelerator, I swiveled to the outside to avoid his right hook. As his arm passed next to my left ear, I brought my left fist up into his diaphragm. His forward momentum and the propulsion behind my augmented muscles caused my fist to thud into his chest with a boisterous crack. Shakily, the man sank to his knees, and I stepped forward to drive my dagger through his skull.

  Unfortunately, as soon as my first step collided with the metallic roof, my vision blurred. A queasiness built in the pit of my stomach, and I soon found myself applying extraordinary effort to merely remain standing. My empty left hand shot to my forehead; I plastered my palm across my eye as though applying pressure might stop the world from spinning in front of me.

  Eventually, I succumbed to the dizziness and dropped to a single knee to keep from toppling over in atop the glacis formed by the roof's slope. Though the man remained doubled over a few feet from my location, I could not even stand under the effects of such intense vertigo, let alone finish him. The light clack of boot heels slowly approached from behind; the female had joined us atop the roof, though I doubted she intended to join us for midday sunbathing or friendly gossip.