by M. S. Farzan
“You’re crazy, Nightpath,” Gloric said into my ear, reading my mind. The gnome had found a dark place and was hiding with Vasshka, Buster, and a number of revolutionaries.
“Takes one to know one,” I whispered. I crept around the bunker, keeping close to the wall, a wraith among shadows. Following the sounds of the closest screeches, I found the first group of ragers not far away, crouched like animals and arguing unintelligibly with one another.
The sight of them turned my stomach. Fear, revulsion, and pity vied for supremacy in my aching body, and I felt my injuries momentarily through the Oxadrenalthaline. I pushed the emotions away and drew my pistol and nightblade.
Five ragers squatted weirdly, fighting amongst themselves over some perceived or real threat. They yipped and snarled inhumanely, their hair knotted messes and what remained of their clothes in tatters.
I took a deep breath and leveled my pistol at one of the closest monsters, a lanky auric with broken tusks jutting from his mouth. I fired one shot, grazing his upper arm and sending him sprawling into the crowd. They fought over him for a minute and then turned slowly in my direction, searching for the intruder.
The looks on their faces will haunt me to the end of my days. Cold, lifeless eyes scoured the air around me, their sweaty visages twisted in unrelenting anger. Their heightened vision would ordinarily be able to pick me out in the dim light, but because of my shadow shroud, all they would have seen was two floating, cobalt-laced weapons.
One of them, a tiny female, snarled, and the group leapt to their feet, their superhuman strength making them move unreasonably quickly. The sight of my weapons sent them into a frenzy, exacerbating their already antagonized state. Even the auric I had shot stumbled towards me, oblivious to the wound on his arm.
I ran, trailing the sword behind me as a goad for the ragers. They hooted and hollered, bounding after me, and I raced behind another bunker, retracting my nightblade and stuffing my pistol back in my coat. I kept running, hearing the monsters grunt confusedly as they turned around the corner. I gave myself several paces of a head start, then drew my glowing sword again, hearing the ragers scream in protest in response and give chase.
I continued to weave in between cells, drawing and sheathing my sword, guiding the ragers through the VPen like a minotaur in a labyrinth. Here and there, I encountered other little groups, who joined the chase, building a motley crew of pursuers in my wake.
I worked my way towards the rear of the VPen, hiding my nightblade and fumbling with my digitab. Spotting the maintenance shaft ahead, I activated the stairwell’s digital locking mechanism from afar, seeing the reinforced metal door open in front of me no more than twenty yards away.
I accelerated into a sprint, turning for a second to ensure the ragers were still on my trail. They were. Over thirty of them were caterwauling down the hallway, running, leaping, or galloping on four limbs. I didn’t know whether to be excited or terrified.
As I reoriented myself towards the stairwell, a rager stepped out from a nearby cell, drawn by the noise. I bumbled into him, tumbling to the floor and nearly dropping my digitab. He took the blow with a confused grunt and fell on his back, clawing at the air around me. I turned the fall into a roll and kept running, redrawing my sword to guide the monsters into the maintenance shaft.
I bolted through the doorway, hastily stashing my nightblade and pulling out my pistol. With two well-placed shots, I took out the shaft’s overhead lights, casting the current floor in darkness, broken only by the glow of my gun and digitab. Knowing the ragers were right on my tail, I sprinted up the stairs, trusting my shadow shroud to keep me invisible save for my weapons.
The monsters barreled into the stairwell a moment later, filling the space with their battered, foul-smelling bodies, ripping at one another, searching for the source of their pursuit. It took a few seconds for them to spot my pistol, disappearing up the steps. One of them howled, and I jumped despite myself, the sound reverberating deafeningly upon the concrete walls.
I turned the corner on a switchback in the shaft, almost at the second underground level of the facility. A landing loomed ahead, lit by two well-placed lights in the stairwell. I fired at them with my pistol, taking the steps two at a time and racing around another corner towards the upper levels.
As I puffed up the stairs, I could feel the ragers coming dangerously close behind me, and knew that I had miscalculated either their speed or my energy levels. I frantically tapped at the digitab, opening the portal up the next flight of stairs that would lead into a corridor adjacent to the Gressler Atrium. Drawing upon my body’s exhausted reserves, I dashed to the next landing, firing at another set of lights and pocketing my pistol and digitab.
I’m not proud of what I did next. I pressed myself up against the first underground floor landing’s metal door, seeing the ragers advance up the shaft towards me. Their angry momentum would carry them upstairs towards the next lighted platform and into the atrium, but there was no telling if one or more of them would notice me as they passed my hiding place.
The ragers came up the stairwell like a wave of fire ants, yelling unintelligibly at one another and tearing at the steps and walls around them. They came onto the little landing, bumping into me and continuing on to the next set of stairs. I knew their augmented senses would allow them to smell me in the confined area, so I made myself very small, crouching under my shadow shroud with my hands over my head and thinking angry thoughts. I willed myself to be one of them for as long as they were in the maintenance shaft, hiding in the darkness and allowing their grubby limbs to brush against me, their stench my best disguise.
It was the longest thirty seconds I had experienced. The ragers poured ever upwards, spitting, scratching, and salivating around me. They bumped into me with their filthy legs, their long, dirt-encrusted fingernails scratching my clothes and arms. I gagged at the smell, a mixture of sweat, blood, excrement, and other foul things.
After what seemed like an eternity, they were gone, their voices echoing across the walls as they left the stairwell and entered the corridor and atrium beyond. I followed them, running up the flight of stairs to see the last of them spill through the open door like fetid air through a pressure valve. The sweet smell of marble and air conditioning wafted in towards me as the ragers scampered into the atrium, running in every direction and yapping like hyenas. The few agents present desperately reached for their weapons or took off, yelling into their digitabs.
It didn’t take long for the alarm to sound, and voices started blaring instructions over the PA system. I used the distraction to dart out of the shaft and around a corner into the atrium, soaking in the relatively fresh air and tracing the rounded wall to the north corridor.
“Coast is clear,” I spoke into my microphone. “There might be a few more down there, so be careful.”
“Gotcha,” Alina spoke into my ear. “We’re heading out. Good luck, Nightpath.”
“You too.”
I glided around the room, unconcerned about being spotted amidst the mayhem. The ragers were throwing themselves after a handful of retreating agents and scurrying down the hallways leading off of the atrium. The facility was a cacophony of monster screams, human yells, and ceridium weaponry against a constant backdrop of blaring alarms and droning speakerphones. The normally well-lit area was bathed in circulating red lamps, alerting anyone present that the facility was under attack.
I followed a pair of ragers, a dwarf and a gnome, down the north hall to a set of three freestanding elevators, watching the monsters separate around the structures and continue deeper into the facility. Using my digitab and Gloric’s enabled access codes, I hailed the central elevator and took it to its penultimate level, brushing my clothes with my hands in a feeble attempt to rid myself of the rager smell.
The elevator pulled into the upper reaches of the tower, and as the doors opened I stuck to its side panel, out of sight of the room beyond. The antechamber to Karthax’s sanctum and airpad woul
d be guarded, even with the battle broiling across the Bay and ragers penetrating throughout the facility below. I held a button on my digitab to keep the doors ajar, listening.
A distant voice reverberated from the room. “Sir, the elevator opened behind you. It appears empty. Are you expecting others?”
There was a pause as the man listened to a response within his earpiece. I recognized the voice - Beren Furghast, Lieutenant Inquisitor and one-time friend. I had no way of knowing if he was loyal to Karthax or if I could sway him to come to my side. I wouldn’t have time for an extended conversation, and was unsure of my ability to sneak my way past him.
“Understood,” his voice carried into the elevator. “I’ll lock it down.”
There was a shuffling as Furghast armed himself. “Wait here,” he said to someone.
I released the button on the digitab and stashed the device in my coat, allowing the elevator to begin to close. I could hear the Inquisitor’s footfalls grow louder and quicker as he raced towards the vault, sticking his pistol arm in between the doors to keep them from shutting. Seeing my opportunity, I grabbed his wrist, pulling him into the doors before they slid apart and knocking the gun out of his hand. He sank, unconscious, to the floor as the elevator reopened, and I ducked back out of view.
“The hell?” a woman’s voice called. I didn’t recognize her. “Beren!”
I heard her start chanting a spell, and spun out of the elevator into the room, drawing and aiming my stunner. The woman, a young Daypath, was moving her arms in opposing circles, delaying her spell until the attacker appeared. I had the benefit of the shroud that would obscure her vision, but she would be ready to fire at any movement.
She was fast, but I was faster. She let loose her spell, flinging a bolt of pure radiance at my shadowy form. The arrow crackled with energy as it tore through the air, and I had just enough time to twist out of the way and fire my stunner. The woman grabbed at her face as she fell backwards, jerking with electricity.
I holstered my weapon and hurried into the room, a corporate-looking entrance hall with lush seats and several doorways leading off into the tower’s surrounding chambers. A glass wall stood directly ahead, watermarked fashionably with the insignia of the NIGHT organization and the Great Seal of the United States. I ran over to the open door inset into the wall, stepping carefully over the unconscious Daypath and into Karthax’s sanctum.
For the office of one of the most powerful military leaders in the world, it wasn’t much to look at. Like the man, the room was stark, with very few pictures adorning the concrete walls and a simple wooden desk with the Inquisitor General’s monitor setup. Several chairs were placed neatly about the room, and a long bearskin rug was the office’s only ornamentation.
If I had stopped to think about it, I would have found the irony of Karthax’s sanctum amusing. It was austere, and visible to anyone from the antechamber. An architectural statement that the Inquisitor General had nothing to hide, which was wholly at odds with the truth.
I rushed through the room to a short flight of steps leading to another glass wall that enclosed the northernmost side of the tower from the outside world. A large landing jutted out over the island below, brightly lit against the night sky, with a ceridium-powered copter sitting in the center of it. Karthax, bandaged from the waist up, was being helped into the vehicle by Agrid the Destroyer, who himself had his injured arm wrapped. The Inquisitor General moved slowly but was very much mobile.
I pulled out my digitab and unlocked the door set in the wall, ripping it open and immediately being assaulted by the wind and the noise of the copter’s blades. Having helped Karthax into the pilot’s seat, the Destroyer turned towards me, his maroon coat flapping crazily behind him. I stashed my digitab and drew my pistol and nightblade, firing first at the assassin and then at Karthax. The entromancer deflected my shot with a wave of his hand, and my ceridium bullets ricocheted harmlessly off of the copter’s reinforced armor.
Desperate, I dropped my shadow shroud and any pretense of stealth with it, and ran headlong towards the Destroyer, firing shot after shot towards him and the copter. The aggressiveness took the assassin by surprise, and he frantically deflected and dodged my attacks, drawing his spear in between movements. I closed the distance between us and thrust at him with my sword, tearing a hole in his overcoat.
He backed away from me, dangerously close to the platform’s unprotected perimeter. I used the movement to level my pistol at Karthax, who was exposed through the copter’s open door. The Inquisitor General was ready for it, his hands and eyes burning with silver fire. I shot at him, but the fire ate the bullet and snaked towards me, wrapping around my pistol. I dropped it hastily and twisted out of the way.
The timing was perfect, as the Destroyer’s spear bit the air where I had just been standing. Karthax jerked the door of the copter closed as I pivoted in place, slashing towards the assassin horizontally. He parried it with the butt of the spear and thrust towards me. I didn’t have time to dodge the attack and took it in the solar plexus, pain bursting through my body and the wind escaping from my lungs. I managed to move out of the way as the entromancer continued the riposte, slashing down with the blade of the spear, but he still nicked my jaw, drawing blood.
The copter teetered, beginning to leave the platform. I wavered on my feet, grabbing at my chest and feigning as though I was going to double over. The auric took the bait, striking at me with his glowing spear in what would have been a killing blow. I dodged out of the way, slithering past his guard and smashing a ceridium capsule I had snatched from my coat into his face. I spat a word, and the sleep spell escaped my fingers and into his mind. His eyes rolled back in his head and his knees sagged, but he fought against the magic, shaking himself awake.
The distraction was all that I needed. I continued moving past him and kicked the back of his knee, dropping him to the floor. I followed his motion with my sword, letting the tip of it rest against his neck.
I booted the spear from his hand over the platform, letting it fall to the island far below. The copter whipped my hair and coat as it rose, and I stared daggers at Karthax through the machine’s windows. He met my gaze, expressionless, knowing that the Destroyer’s life was in my hands. Then he lifted the copter away from the tower and east over the Bay.
The platform was eerily silent in the vacuum left by the whirring copter. The wind continued to gust at us, but I could hear the Destroyer’s heavy breath over the sound.
“So that’s how it is, is it?” I looked down at him, tipping my head at the receding copter.
The auric shrugged under my sword, unflinching. “I would do the same.”
“I guess you would,” I said. “Gloric?” The gnome’s vision on my display was dark.
“Waiting for you to be done so we can get out of here,” he said into my ear.
“Great,” I replied. “Get the revs to send a copter up to Karthax’s airpad, and a security transporter. We’ll have a guest.”
“Got it,” he said.
“Alina?” I asked.
“In the elevator,” the Pitcher said. I was relieved to hear her voice. “Be up in medical in no time.”
“Avoid the atrium if you can,” I instructed. “It’s kind of a mess.”
I stared down at the Destroyer, who was looking at me curiously.
“What is it?” I asked him, keeping my nightblade against his neck.
“You’re weak,” he said.
“Says the guy on the floor?”
He smirked, white tusks gleaming against his pale face. Then he grabbed my sword by the blade, cutting into his hand but wrenching the weapon out of the way as he rolled to his feet. The sudden movement knocked me off balance, and I stumbled forward as the entromancer cast out his hand, spraying blood towards me and stamping his foot, grinding his teeth together with a growl. The droplets elongated into crimson arrows, hurtling towards me from point blank range.
I had nowhere to go but forward, feeling the a
gony of arrows tearing through my left shoulder and leg but crashing into him, driving my nightblade through his torso and sending us both sprawling towards the edge of the platform. He rolled backwards, putting his foot in my abdomen and sending me flying. I managed to catch him with my knee in the jaw before I flew over him, skittering along the concrete. I banged painfully off of a metal light bolted to the floor and slid over the platform.
I grabbed the floor lamp with my good hand, struggling to slow my momentum. My left arm wouldn’t respond, and I could feel my right arm threatening to pull out of its socket under the pressure. The lamp creaked but held, and I found myself dangling off of the platform, a hundred feet from the ground.
The wind buffeted me against the concrete, cold and merciless. My left arm and leg were numb, and the rest of me was on fire, the Oxadrenalthaline unable to keep up with all of the injuries. Spikes of agony shuddered down my right arm, which held precariously onto the lamp.
There is a frame of mind that few humans or aurics reach without the use of Oxidium or other stimulants. It is fueled by the will to survive when there is no other recourse, when one’s back is against the wall and there is nothing left to lose. It is a feeling forged in the fires of anger, hammered at the anvil of determination, and wielded by a consciousness that doesn’t know the meaning of failure.
It’s also known as adrenaline.
I flexed my right arm, dragging myself up the side of the platform, feeling blood soil my clothing. With a sheer force of will, I swung my left arm over the concrete, screaming in pain as I shuffled unceremoniously over the lip and onto the relative safety of the airpad.
I crawled at first, pushing myself to my knees and stumbling to my feet, holding my left arm against my body. I limped over to the Destroyer, who was lying on his side, my sword sticking out weirdly from his body. My leg pulsed in pain as I bent over, examining him.
