Angel Descending

by Ethan Cooper

I’ll do whatever it takes to survive.

  30/Rumbles, Trembles, Tremors

  2195.12.15/Midday

  Knew something was wrong this morning. From that first moment when I opened my eyes and let a new day in, I could feel it—a wrongness in the air that seemed to brush against my skin as I took to the streets for yet another day on my own. I’m inhaling it with every breath. I’m either getting sick, or I’m high on the empathy charts. Whatever it is, it’s suffocating.

  I’m running on just a few hours of sleep, and my body is stiff from where I slept. Apparently, my body wasn’t designed to sleep in a sitting position against the side of a trash pile.

  Whatever it is that I’m sensing, it’s spreading, growing stronger. I’m not the only one who feels it. There’s disquiet in the streets. It travels among the people in whispers and groans, brief snippets as they pass me by. Fear and anger expelled from them in quick, violent gasps. Something’s happening. Too many people are restless, looking at the sky, gesturing, shaking their heads. Some are just standing around like they’re waiting for something, their implant-enhanced eyes scanning the area.

  (doom)

  I heard explosions this morning. What I can see of the sky at the south side of the city is filled with smoke—puffy black snakes that slither upward to mix with the low-hanging clouds veiling the city. Bombs, and lots of them. Things that were…are no more.

  But that’s not what I’m feeling. At least not all of it.

  BLINK.

  A young boy, naked and alone, runs through the street, carrying his severed mechanical arm under one arm, twin streams of blood and lubricant trail behind him.

  BLINK.

  A squad of city security officers, their uniforms gleaming, marching toward the south side of the city, one of them makes eye-contact with me and smiles through his clear face shield.

  BLINK.

  Shadows move through the clouds overhead, gracefully weaving between the skyscrapers, engines screaming, the ground rumbling as they pass.

  BLINK.

  Further north, a detonation, the shockwave rolls under my feet as everybody ducks.

  BLINK.

  Security officers—the same ones—hobbling back north, their uniforms now stained with blood and dirt. They are all leaning on each other, some limping, some unable to walk on their own. One of them is being carried, his headless body cradled in the arms of a fellow officers.

  BLINK.

  Need to get off the street. Don’t want to be out here.

  Dodging to the side, ducking, a door in my peripheral vision. I move toward it, then through as others are exiting. I attract a little attention from the denizens of this place as the dimness of the room wafts around me. It’s a bar, perhaps on the upper side of middle, but a bar nonetheless. Didn’t catch the name when I came in, but don’t care. Just need to get away from…out there. I can only assume that the gaudy memorabilia plastered in a frenzied manner over every square centimeter of the wall and ceiling is from previous decades. None of it looks familiar. Nothing triggers any repressed memories.

  The room is crowded, but I make my way to the bar. There are a couple of candles for light, but that’s about it. It’s calmer in here than it is out there. Conversations are low. The bartender, a woman with half her head shaved and six mechanical arms, turns toward me.

  Then there’s a hand on my shoulder and another on my arm, pulling, and I’m now sitting at a table, splayed crooked on a slick, neoplastic bench, a rock-hard bicep at my neck, a hand on my chin. With their hand like that, I can’t look at them even though they’re sitting right beside me. Something sharp is poking into my side, right between two ribs on my left side. Reflexively, I struggle, but that sharp thing presses harder, so I switch tactics to being as still as possible.

  There’s no static. Interesting.

  The voice in my ear is like liquid, deep and feminine. “Walking around dressed like that is dangerous. Do you realize what you’re doing? If the wrong person notices you, they’ll kill you.”

  “Let me the fuck go,” I say, trying to turn my head. Failing.

  “Your irresponsibility is inexcusable, young one.”

  “Let me go.” I try to talk louder, maybe get somebody else’s attention. Still no static. And the automatic me is hiding.

  The pain in my side recedes. “That was simply to get your attention. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “That’s what everybody says right before they hurt you,” I clench out.

  (stop don’t)

  (talk to her)

  “Wearing clothes that display your markings is an invitation to be assaulted.”

  My mark? Is that what this is about?

  As if in answer, there’s a finger at the base of my spine, where my skin is bare. Dammit. This is where I get mad at Tam for not being able to provide me with clothes that fit properly, and at that Mu person for ruining my cloak.

  (not his)

  (fault)

  “Fuck you. Let go of me,” I say.

  “Watch your language, young one,” is her reply, but the hand on my chin slides across my cheek and behind my neck only to grab my wrist as I whirl and face her.

  With the amount of technology she has installed in her body, the appropriate slang term here is modie.

  The first thing I notice about her are the etchings that cover her dark skin. They run and curve and bend in ordered patterns all over her exposed face, neck, and arms, molding to the natural flows and curves of her body. She’s close enough that I can see the slight indentation of each etching trail—tiny grooves in the surface of her skin. Can’t imagine how painful it was to have those inscribed.

  She has no eyelids. Her eyes peer at me beneath clear casings. She can’t blink—a disconcerting effect, since her stare is a constant, wide-eyed one.

  Her head is adorned not with hair, but with countless, segmented metal tubes. The sections of tubing are thin, falling past her shoulders like a waterfall of gleaming robotic serpents. On the end of each strand of tubes is a small curved talon. From a distance, it’d probably just look like she had a normal head of hair, only painted chrome. At my current proximity, it looks lethal.

  Lower peripheral vision confirms that her left thigh is entirely mechanical.

  I don’t know how to describe what she’s wearing, outside of that it has a lot of pockets and she wears it well. Her belt is a wide monstrosity that can probably transform into a laser cannon or something equally dangerous. She looks like she could take on an army all by herself.

  But I’m angry and tired, so I yank my hand from her grip. It goes easily enough, which means she let me go. “Don’t touch me. I’m tired of being grabbed. I don’t know you.”

  Her hair clinks when she shakes her head. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that. I saw your mark, and I…overreacted. I apologize.”

  Should be running for the door, but I just got in here, and I don’t want to go back out there right now. Doesn’t look like she’s gonna assault me again. Besides, there’s no way I can actually get away if she doesn’t want me to leave.

  “My name is Kiiziiziixii,” she says, fingering a small, cylindrical beverage container. The contents are hissing, as if whatever’s in there is trying to eat away at the container’s wall. She notices me looking at it. “Trust me, you don’t want to try this.”

  “And just what the fuck do you know about what I want?”

  She grimaces, as if my cursing inflicts physical pain, but she’s nodding. “If you knew anything about your markings, you wouldn’t ever put yourself on display like this, so I know you want me to tell you about that.”

  “It’s not like I had much of choice about these clothes.”

  “We walk down many paths in our lives, but we don’t always get to make our own choices about the ones we take. For example, I came in here to kill someone.” She holds up a hand, because yeah, my whole body is tense. “Don’t worry; it’s not you. Anyway, that’s why I’m in here. I didn’t kill him, and
that means the job isn’t complete. If the job isn’t complete, then I’m responsible, and I get to go back to my employer and explain why the person they want dead is still breathing.”

  (ohshesanassassin)

  An assassin who tells you what they are is either a bad assassin or one so good they don’t care what you know because they’re going to kill you.

  She laughs. It’s both pleasant and frightening at the same time. “But I’m not going to do that. I’m not going back. You know, this isn’t like me. Talking to somebody like this—telling them what I do. It’s the alcohol. It never took much to get me going.”

  “Can you tell me about the mark on my back?”

  Outside, something rumbles. The room quivers. Don’t like that.

  “What’s your name?” She asks like she either already knows the answer or doesn’t care how I respond.

  (what does it)

  (matter)

  Even if she is drunk, I’m not going to do anything that might make her decide that she can’t leave this bar without killing at least one person. I lied to Mu, but here I say, “Syl.”

  She waits. She knows there’s more.

  “(2)Syl,” I sigh. “Are you this insufferable to everybody or am I getting special treatment?”

  She mouths my name, then raises her beverage to her lips, tilts her head back, and downs the contents all in one smooth motion. “Probably both.”

  “Okay, are you going to answer my question, or can I go now?”

  A deafening series of BOOMS outside gives Kiiziiziixii a valid excuse to continue not answering me. My mind registers that she’s in motion, her hand on my wrist, as the entirety of the bar seems to explode around us, filling our world with thick black smoke, burning flesh, and screams.

  31/Calamity (iii)

  2195.12.15/Midday

  The world is just a muffled monotonous tone. Most of me is on the floor, but my legs, those are up in my chair. And Kiiziiziixii—who somehow escaped being erased by the blast—is hovering over my torso. I’m on my back, so those segmented metal tubes that she has for hair and the sharp talons that cap each of them are hanging in my face. To me, she’s upside-down, entirely too close for comfort given what she is and how few seconds we’ve known each other.

  Then again, strangers invading my personal space is a recurring theme.

  Still alive, still breathing, still surviving, ears ringing, sucking in the smell of char and destruction. Muted screams from every side, filtering through the haze that blankets my ears. I should be panicking, but for a moment, I’m content to just lie here and breathe. No static. Yet.

  “Are you hurt?” Kiiziiziixii asks.

  It’s disconcerting to have her face this close to mine. The bubbles over her eyes wink dark then transparent in their best attempt to mimic a blink. Her eyes are a deep brown. She’s an assassin, and even though it all happened so fast, I think I’m alive because she threw me to the ground and protected me with her body. She’s not a very good assassin.

  “I don’t think so.” I turn my head to the side and cough. Through the dust I can see incomplete bodies, twitching in the rubble, fluids spilling onto the cracked floor. A severed hand rests near my elbow. Don’t know how both of us weren’t killed by that. Were we at the edge of the blast radius, or were we just lucky?

  Something high up above us creaks, then follows it up with a series of repeated popping sounds. The whole building groans.

  Kiiziiziixii pushes up and away. “It’s time to leave.”

  “I agree.” I have enough presence of mind to acknowledge that I’m still calmer than I should be. Kiiziiziixii helps me to my feet. I’m basically untouched, which is inexplicable given the level of destruction around me, but I’m not complaining.

  Various bits of debris fall from my body like confetti. If Kiiziiziixii’s face is any reflection of the state of mine, I’m glad I don’t have a mirror.

  BLINK.

  Kiiziiziixii’s hair talons moving on their own, writhing like a nest of snakes, raining dirt onto her broad shoulders.

  BLINK.

  The bartender’s body is pinned to the wall and burning, flames lap at her corpse with tongues of blue, green, and purple.

  BLINK.

  Another soul, unharmed by the blast, reaches past the bartender’s body to grab a still-pristine bottle of something called Ignite, removes the cap, tips their head back, guzzling the liquid until it runs out of their mouth, down their chin and neck and across the front of their shirt in a jagged pink river.

  BLINK.

  The explosion created a hole leading to the street. The smoke outside is much thicker. I can make out strange, chaotic movements, people running, some huddled to the ground in leaking lumps.

  “This way!” Kiiziiziixii shouts over the roar of new explosions. “Follow me and stay close. I’ll help you.”

  (ask yourself angel why she would)

  (help you)

  “Why?” I yell back at her, then I’m ducking out of reflex as some vehicle streaks by outside. I can hear the low thump as it collides with people in the street, sending their bodies tumbling away. I’m still hunched over, my hands near my head, when I noticed that Kiiziiziixii has a gun in her hand. Didn’t see her pull it, but I will admit that I’m comforted by the sight of it—and that it’s not pointed at me.

  “Because I want to,” Kiiziiziixii says.

  “I know that’s not all of it!” I’m not stupid.

  “It’s enough for now.”

  She’s right about that. I don’t think I’m in any position to reject her help. If invasion of my personal space is one theme in my life, then being forced to accept unwarranted help from strangers is a second. Someday I’ll be self-sufficient. Right?

  Kiiziiziixii leads me toward the street, pushing tables and chairs out of her way, sidestepping lifeless bodies. She’s moves with confidence, as if this is the environment she’s most comfortable in. Others, in various states of disability, are doing the same thing. Kiiziiziixii grabs my hand, urging me forward. We emerge from the bar onto the decimated street, where a whole new level of chaos has taken the throne. Looking back at where we came from, I can see a blackened crater in the middle of the street that must be ground zero for the explosion that took out the bar. The face of the building is now a cavernous, toothless yawn, the threat of total collapse evident in continuous cracks and groans that cut through the noise of the panicked citizens flooding into the street.

  We’re caught in the crowd now, pressed up against them, against their legs and arms and implants. I can feel them all, coming into contact with my body, my skin. Kiiziiziixii loops the arm not holding her weapon around my wrist, pulling my body to hers, pushing me forward through the throng.

  “Don’t let go!” Kiiziiziixii yells.

  “I won’t!” I assure her, but I’m being pulled, feeling her grip slip, my other arm snaking around her in reflex.

  (why is she)

  (protecting you she)

  (knows something you)

  (really think this is a coincidence)

  People are spewing from buildings on either side of the street, trampling anybody who can’t stay on their feet, slicking the street with blood.

  “What’s going on?” I yell. We’re caught in the middle of the street now, trying to move to the side, still clutching each other against the demanding press of the crowd. Others have the same idea, so we’re not making much progress. Kiiziiziixii holds her weapon close to her body, keeping it hidden for the most part. Still, she’s not holstering it.

  (she’s in your)

  (personal space)

  Kiiziiziixii elbows somebody in the face and they go down. “This isn’t anything organized!”

  I look at the violence raging around us, whirlwinds of ferocity that twist about like eddies in the ocean. We’re caught up, somehow in the eye of the storm, but without a clear path of moving out of the center. I thought this was just panicked people, fleeing danger, but it’s not.

 
It’s a riot. Full scale.

  BLINK.

  A woman with knives for fingers, frantically tearing into the stomach of another woman—her twin.

  BLINK.

  A modie with smooth, high-end implants for eyes, staggering, a shard of metal in his back.

  BLINK.

  A group of small children pummeling a fallen city security officer and tearing his clothes.

  BLINK.

  A trio of Dokks holding down a screaming young boy, ripping his implants out through his ears.

  BLINK.

  Seven naked bodies nailed to a wall.

  BLINK.

  A large, two-headed mechanical monstrosity roaring, severed human legs dangling from its mouth.

  BLINK.

  Silent explosions, followed by silent shock waves, bodies flying in ungraceful arcs.

  BLINK.

  I put my face as close to Kiiziiziixii’s ear as I can manage and not lacerate my lips on her hair talons. “We’re going to get killed out here!”

  Kiiziiziixii’s response is lost in new explosions that seem to go off everywhere around us. A wave appears to pass through the crowd around us as they absorb the shockwaves, heat, and debris.

  There’s a hand pulling on the back of my shirt. Looking down I can see an implant-diseased hand attempting to pull me from Kiiziiziixii. I push at it, but it doesn’t go. There’s a flash of light, and the distinct whine of Kiiziiziixii’s weapon recharging for its next shot. The hand retracts, twitching, then it’s lost in the crowd.

  “Did he hurt you?” Kiiziiziixii asks.

  I shake my head, noting that the crowd is not as thick as it was a few seconds ago. May have something to do with Kiiziiziixii discharging her weapon. Best take this opportunity to breathe and relax my grip.

  “Where can we go?” I ask.

  “I know where a Haven is. We just need to get there in one place.”

  (why is she)

  (helping you she)

  (wants something)

  Kiiziiziixii moves us closer to the edge of the street—which is unoccupied for reasons I can’t immediately determine. “I’ve seen riots before, but nothing like this. There’s no purpose here.”