by Amanda Churi
She continued to run her hands over her body, only then realizing the dullness in her sense of touch. Even when pressing down into her fleshy leg and redrawing blood, she felt no pain; her fingertip hardly even registered that it was being used.
Dazed, Flye looked around, continuing to feel the undertow of her injuries try and drag her down. With dull eyes, she could see blowing snow amidst the dusk with hills of winter piling around her, stretching on as far as she could detect with not a soldier in sight. Where the heck could I possibly be that doesn’t have fighting at a time like this?
She shifted her weight to her palms to stand and find out, instantly regretting it. The scattered, surviving nerves burst with a scream, igniting her body. She lost all breath; her eyes rolled, her sight flashed, and she nearly toppled forward, somehow catching herself. Come on… You were born to fly… It’s your name! Don’t drown now!
A growl shook her empty stomach, her determination so intense she nearly retched. No… Up… Get UP!
Willpower was the only thing that managed to bring her to her bare feet with a murderous roar, though staying steady was impossible. The furious wind knocked her rickety body as she began to drag forward, her corpse controlled by violent spasms and continuous twitches. Flying crystals whacked her on all sides; sometimes, their partnered gusts helped her forward and other times shoved her back, but even with nerves shot and muscles frayed, her bones were untouched, carrying her through the frozen ocean while Derek’s despairing cries looped in her head.
“S-stop…” she stuttered, blinking hard to muffle her brother’s pitiful screams. “I told you, I will find you—!”
Her weight swung forward, the ground vanishing beneath the tips of her toes. She screamed and threw her arms out, scampering back and falling to her knees just short of the drop. Every frantic breath killed her, but the shivers were worse as she kneeled, never realizing how vital her sense of touch was—and on the feet, of all places.
She carefully leaned forward, observing the holes her toes punctured through the ice, nearly thrown this time by the sight. She expected a hidden crevice or something of the sorts—not that.
Not the flying, wooden torpedoes, nor the rambunctious, uncontrollable Returned flattening the ice palace into a palette. The Proxez and the Encryption were at a stalemate; her rebellion would push forward before another fresh wave of enemies would charge, forcing them back until the unruly Returned eliminated the replenishments and swayed the battle back in the rebels’ favor. Clashing, they formed a living, breathing mass of blood and sweat, the fervent current of battle never allowing a single pawn to stand still or else it swept them under. Unstable swords of electricity and arrows of winter gave the air a harsh, deadly hue, rigging it with Death himself that continuously claimed victims on both sides.
The palace… She was on the roof.
“Holy shiza…” Having pieced together the loosest of maps, Flye raised her head, observing the environment the best she could. Gannon was the ultimate objective, but as much as it soured her to admit, she knew that in her current state, she wouldn’t stand a chance. For all the Encryption knew, she was dead—hell, she should have been…
…But that also meant that no one expected her to upkeep her oath… That meant…!
“Derek…!” She rose with unmatched fervor. Her eyes traced the powdered crests and protruding slabs on the roof, outlining the possible pathways. Her stripped feet starved of feeling filled with blood and need, and the instant her choppy mind made the roughest of maps, she took off, the pain gone, the battle gone—everything gone besides the image of her brother. Her waning strength centered itself in her eyes and legs, the only things needed to achieve her goal. She ran as hard as she could, leaving a thickening trail of blood in the snow as she clumsily maneuvered the summits, slipping, sliding, tumbling, but always getting back up with the same urgency.
I just need to find an access point of some kind! A break in the walls, a hole in a low-lying area—I don’t care! Just something! Anything!
Her once mastery ninja skills were worse than a beginner’s, making her awkwardly hop over growing faults and even slow to a floppy waddle when the slopes steepened.
She glanced down while clumsily leaping over a crumbling sector of the roof, surprised when she caught sight of her allies raiding a demolished mechanical room. It was Mabel and Eero that were pushing on, battling all in their way with streamers of fire and arcs of gold that crossed and reconciled at the center.
She smiled, but the change in the environment knocked her back into reality—back to the icy shingles falling into a straight stretch, runway-like in format.
The lookout towers! The battlement—the wall walks! That’s it!
Her feet hit the mixture of ice and concrete, and she continued as the wind. She kept running, watching her scabs peel and wounds reopen, releasing blood that she could not afford to lose. However belittled they were, her feet kept going, even if that meant she was partially treading on bone. Her shoulders were swinging with arms loosely flapping alongside, defeated, flaccid, and weak, but her eyes were locked onto a raised lookout tower with an open archway clear of guards, practically inviting her in.
There totally could have been a soldier looming in the shadows just waiting for her; heck, Gannon could have been there himself, fleeing the battle as the wuss of a ruler he was, but Flye didn’t care. There was no way to know what was coming next, and there was no time to waste either, not with her critical condition.
She clutched the busted doorframe, panting and staring down into the winding darkness. Exposed wires flickered, granting short frames of luminance that revealed an endless downward spiral of ice-coated stairs. Screams from both sides reverberated up the claustrophobic tunnel, the battles raging far below bringing ice chips down from the ceiling and shaking the slick, compacted walls of snow. She could not see any signs of rails—a necessity for her handicapped self—but it was the only way down within sight. Where the next entry point lay was anyone’s guess.
“You’re right, Laelia,” she chuckled dryly. “I’m definitely an idiot—but a proud one.” Taking a last breath of free air, she plunged into the abyss, hands scraping the walls and feet moving as quickly as they could.
The temperature plummeted even further. She was shaking without restraint, her ankles jelly and hardly supporting her. Darkness in front, blackness behind; she was surrounded. In an instant, a sword could stab her through either the back or chest. The grueling, splitting cries of the dying were getting louder, bouncing around her, and her heart was only beating stronger, faster, and far more irregularly as her rightfully paranoid brain sent an overflow of blood through her corroding heart.
Resonant, quickly encroaching footsteps came over her, the surprise nearly throwing her down the steps. She paused, listening to once muffled feet sharpen and rise in volume, a pursuing current of ferocious battle cries and ireful calls flooding the tower.
“Shoot, shoot, shoot…!” She spun her head from high to low as the pounding clamors became deafening. Up or down—up or down?! There could be a branching tunnel right there! But if not…!
“Ah, fuck it!” The uncertainty made up her mind. She spun around and lugged back up the slippery steps, clawing at the walls of snow for support. Her shins slammed into the serrated edges of the steps, cutting through her paper-thin skin, but with her darkening senses, she could hardly feel the impact; besides, it wasn’t like she had the time to sit down and tend to her injuries. If she didn’t hurry, she would have a much bigger problem.
But how far was the surface? Her scorched ears were ringing so loudly that it was a struggle to measure the proximity of the soldiers, and the darkness was not lifting no matter how far she climbed. Was she even making progress? She was sure she was moving her legs—but in reality, her feet and eyes were all but dead.
The snow beneath one of her clenched talons crumpled, betraying her balance and sending her stumbling through the snow-packed wall. She hit her skinned knee
s and immediately whipped her eyes over her shoulder to the dull sphere of light racing into view.
“GET HIM!”
A blinding glint shot off two blocky panes and then barreled into her, throwing Flye’s burning face onto the ice floor as her body crumpled beneath her assailant’s weight. Her scream got caught in her throat, shooting between the floor and her gut until it summoned a deep, burning bile that built in her corked mouth as her head was held down.
The pressure behind her eyes surged, hiccups and gags racking her chest as the vomit drowned her. Her unstable, blurring vision shot to the weight choking the life from her. Three Haxors raced past the hole she had unwillingly created, their illuminated figures briefly shedding a crescent of light over the silhouette lying on her.
A tuft of short brown hair with two brown eyes to match—orbs that were locked onto her with unmatched malice and shock. He was unable to move as the soldiers kept on in a hurry, screaming with electricity crackling around the barrels of their guns until they vanished, leaving the two in the dark.
He kept his hand on the back of her head well after they were gone. Flye’s ears were blaring, saliva and acid bubbling on her tongue. “J-Jus—”
His hand shot away from her head, a landslide of blood and semi-digested human shooting from Flye’s stuttering, flaring lips. Justus quickly got off her as she lay on her stomach, choking and heaving without restraint. The cramps rocking her body were so overwhelming that she couldn’t get back to her knees—not even hold her torso up, forcing her to bathe in the radioactive vomit exploding from her malfunctioning corpse. Each bullet of life that shot from her melting mouth sent Flye’s eyes reeling back toward the engineer’s scampering figure that went back to the steps—a death-gripped soul with only his eyes alive, actively fighting a battle of fear versus hatred.
His presence racked her throughout. She figured that traitor would have been happy to be back with his “sugar daddy” who could give him all of the inventions he desired, but that was obviously not the case. Regardless of the past, regardless of all the knives she wanted to stick through Justus’ paper-thin skull, her bone-dressed hands were clawing at the ice to turn her around. Her legs kicked, trying to find support in her folding kneecaps; her ribs dragged, sheets of skin ripping from bone and spilling blood as she reached for him. “J-Justus! Wait!”
The frailty of her call stalled his flee as he took the first step up the stairs. An unseen battle tugged on his shaken frame, shifting his eyes from his fallen comrade to his own freedom, processing the outcome of each route at a panicked speed. “I-I’m sorry, Flye. I can’t help you. You’re on your own.”
Her own? Now?! She would die!
Yes, because this… This was true dying. Not a fluke brought on by a messy kill or an overconfident backflip off a platform. This there was no coming back from, and she knew it. At least, not without him.
And if she didn’t survive, neither did her promise.
Her fear and adrenaline were blending so fast that they made her foam from the mouth. She stabbed the ice with nailless fingers, kabobbing the remnants of the skin with exposed bone. White shrapnel flew out under her enraged crunch; the nerves embedded across the surface split with a sharp crunch, uncaging a hellish wail. “NO! DON’T YOU LEAVE ME! DON’T YOU DARE LET ME DIE, JUSTUS!”
The shades of his eyes fell. “What do you have to worry about? You’ll eventually have your precious Heaven to get to, right?”
Her arms could not stop trembling, anchored only by the snapped trunks that were her fingers. Spurts of rosy vomit were a constant, seeping out between rasping gasps and fumbling curses as she uprooted one arm at a time, slithering with elbows and hips to the unforgiving engineer. “It’s not… My time! I’m not… Done! I’m not done until—!”
“But I’m done! I’ve been long done with you! With everyone! Have fun winning without me, because guess what? You can’t!”
He took his first abandoning step, next snatched around the ankle. The resistance startled him, stiffening his legs as his eyes locked onto the grounded flyer below, clutching, growling, and still living.
She didn’t just lack the patience for his tantrum, she physically didn’t have the time. “Derek…” she snarled, concentrating her strength in her weakening clutch. “I don’t care about you, Justus… I care about Derek. Tell me where he is.”
Justus was beyond baffled. “What?”
“Do what you want… I really don’t care. Just… Where is he? Please… I promised…”
Her words shook him. With the absence of skin, the crinkled, blackened wisps matting her scalp… The caking of blood and frosting of bone… Her eyes were double their size. The irises, even as she looked up at him, were low, begging with her body. Sickening acid continued to run from her peeled lips, but so did tears from her eyes—ones of desperation that shined through the delusions she was subjected to long ago. If she had a dying wish, this was no doubt it. To find him.
His throat was arid. Tense. “Flye…”
“Please…!” Her free arm flew forward and clasped his other calf, linking her to sanity. “Where, Justus?! Where?!”
“Flye!” He tried to move up the stairs, but her weight restrained him. The song of storming footsteps was returning and strengthening, the enraged calls of the enemy rising in both number and power as the ambush closed in on both sides. He yanked harder, but she wouldn’t budge. “Flye, let go!”
“WHERE?! WHERE, JUSTUS?!”
His head flipped back and forth. “FLYE!”
“TELL ME! WHERE?! WH—?!”
“STOP!” His foot swung, striking her head and severing their bond.
Flye was left to tumble down the stairs, to roll, to break and smash as her mind fragmented with her body. Her vision was an endless spiral as her body met itself again and again in high-speed rotations; her limbs caught on spears of ice—they reaped through the grainy muscle to find stalks of bone.
It came in spurts and flashes: the stars, the darkness, nebulas of red, voids of blue, all folding into one another as she spun around an unseen axis that became more unstable by the second. She was gaining more air, taking harsher hits, all in a vicious, amplifying cycle.
With the swirling of her innards and eyes came the whirlpool of thoughts—first raging and then sluggish as each strike knocked her harder than the last.
No… This can’t be it… After all this time? Just like that?
The edge of a step sliced into her spine and threw open her eyes with a horrific wail. The blow set her blending sight straight for a mere instant. She saw only the rough outline of the crystalline roof winding with the stairs, illuminated by a distant light source—one of a harsh white.
The sensation of falling tousled the few strands of crispy hair beside her charred ears. The raw air ripped through her exposed flesh as she fell slowly and weightlessly. She tried to lift her stripped arm and reach for the enemy’s light, to catch the only ray that broke the bleeding darkness.
Was this the last thing Derek saw? Before the bombs took his sight? This… Nothingness?
A sensation tickled the back of her neck—one as gentle as a feather.
And it brought with it the memory of her brother on her lap, his clamping hands wrestling with another book that he would never be given the chance to read for himself. Cold filled the room, but the stone cup of tea next to their rickety chair gave them all the power they needed to fend off another night. The leaf was drained, only a casing, but even floating, the water it sucked up gave the illusion that it was plump and plentiful—alive in the dead land.
“‘For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son,’” Flye read aloud, “‘that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.’”
“But will we really?” Derek asked. “I thought there was no way to get there…”
She smiled, embracing the warmth that spanned through the memory and reached into the present—words she had believed then and still did now. “It may ta
ke a while, but He will find us, I promise, because we found Him.”
The tap on Flye’s neck turned solid and stabbed through the vertebrae. A torpedo of pressure launched, and Flye took flight from both that tender moment and her skin. Reality left behind only a body. Crumpled. Lifeless. A cast with a snapped neck lying at the bottom of the staircase.
One permanently grounded from flight.
Thirty
Moonfall
Once it was a frozen palace—high and mighty, the heartbeat of the land—but now, it had little more pride than that of an ice cube. The Returned had done most of the work; they infiltrated the core of the base and brought it to a fine shredding. Beams, pillars, eaves, staircases, towers—they were well on their way to having a 100% annihilation rate of everything that made up the palace.
And I didn’t give a damn what that pitiful excuse of an angel said: Embry was gone, we all saw it, and that meant that it was up to us to find the crystal before the route was permanently blocked off.
Mabel took to the head as we ran on through what appeared to be an overturned courtyard, me lingering behind with Justus’ box in an iron grip. The three-dimensional projection did nothing for us as we scaled piles of rubble and dodged landslides of debris; as it was, the palace no longer resembled its recorded state in the slightest. All we could do was run with eyes just above the level of blindness, chasing the pulsing X that got closer or farther depending on which route the collapsing castle shoved us in.
“How are more coming?!” Mabel screamed, sliding to a vicious stop with flaming arms crossed before her chest. Several Bots elected themselves as her next challengers. All were starved and frail, children no older than eight, but they had the eyes of monsters—overridden with a coldness that could only be born through the machinery that had grown with them.
