by Amanda Churi
He hunched over in his seat, crying as loudly as he could with the salvaged, metallic syringe leaning its sword of a nose into his arm. Why couldn’t he do it…?! He fought for his life like he had some right to exist, like he was still fighting for someone besides himself—so why was he about to give into the battle that had been raging since conception?!
“STOP!” He threw the syringe across the room and into an expansive screen, cracking the center. He convulsed with every breath; his eyes were beady, staring down Typo’s last “gift” as it rolled across the stone floors. “If I’m going to do it, it’s sure as hell not going to be on your terms! That’s what you want! That’s why you gave it to me!”
He swiveled harshly in his seat and put his back to the needle. The spin made him face a new wall, a new collage of Players searching the ruins of their lives for pieces that could be used to rebuild it.
Watching them twisted his heart in unnatural directions. The people weren’t necessarily smiling, but there was more life in their faces, far more than Justus had ever seen before. They didn’t have to be afraid of anyone anymore; for now, it was just them and whatever they wanted.
Yes. Because everyone always got something they wanted. The only things that Justus got he had to build himself, and in the end, they all ended up betraying him, machine or not.
His head twisted to the main control panel, decoding the significance of the programs he layered on top of one another.
It was an exquisite build… But so was he. The only question was if it was worth it. If it was right.
“Ey, but you don’t care about what they think anymore,” he reminded himself darkly. “You’ve never been blessed—it’s time to do what you want.”
He pushed off from the wall and rolled back to the main station, face-to-face with the single line that would crash the entire system. His finger itched to commit and push the code. It hovered temptingly over the last button, the last click, but his eyes veered off to one of the many camera shots that had just changed.
The joints of his finger locked. He stared at her in the wheelchair, a sea of clashing emotions ripping through him; there was justice, a glorious feeling of handing her what she deserved, but then, a rush of empathy struck him just as hard if not harder. Seek had lost everything too… Including her mobility. Yet she was still doing what she believed needed to be done, helping search the registry for yet another MIA.
He zoomed in, watching. The starving flops his stomach took helped trigger the tears that he didn’t want to rise. She had ruined it all, but she had also saved it…
The group she was helping console turned away. Seek sat unmoving for a while, staring, and then Justus’ name appeared on her database, only to shoot back the all-too-familiar question mark. She sank slightly at the sight; another part of her seemed to go out with the rest.
She’s looking for me…?
Justus’ hands took control, minimizing the current window to bring up a backlog. Keeping his eyes on Seek, his fingers flew all-knowingly across the keyboard, pinpointing the device’s id number and throwing its history onto the screen—waterfalls of white-chalked symbols on a blackboard. With a simple search, he found his name. An overwhelmed exhale left him; the veins in his chest popped. Justus Revere… She had looked up his name fifty-six times within the past two weeks.
Part of him was dumbfounded. She should have known his data wouldn’t update, just like hers wouldn’t. Another part was honored. Yes, of course, she knew—she was just hoping for a miracle.
Maybe… Maybe going back up would be ok… Sure, his plans had backfired epically, but in the end, the Encryption still won, so did it really matter? Seek would listen to him; whether or not she believed what he would say was a different story, but he knew she would at least lend her ear.
And maybe right now, someone to listen to him was what he needed most. This solitude surely wasn’t doing him any favors.
An unfamiliar beep touched the air. Justus froze, his listening peeling back with his eyes in place. He casually moved his hand to the empty tin cup resting next to him.
A click, a petite scamper against metal.
He knew where it was.
He grabbed the cup and whipped around in his seat, chucking it at the air vent. He hit it dead on, the grate plummeting down with the remains of stone. A distraught squeal exploded in the room, and by the time the thin veil of dust began to clear, Justus was already up and glaring down at the lerial adorned in golden armor.
“Sybil?” His voice came off more questioning than accusing. All too quickly, he felt cornered. Why was she here? How did she find him?
She threw her head up once she heard his voice. A snarl ripped her open, and she lunged with a screech at his face.
He brought his hand up just in time to smack her away. She shot silently through the air, falling into a clumsy somersault and landing clasped against the wall. She threw a claw to the lens tied at her neck. “Seek! I found him!”
Found me?
She screamed and shot off the wall, back at his face. He spun to avoid her; a blade split his cheek as her lithe body shot past, latching onto the opposite wall. “Fight me, you traitor!”
Justus hesitantly turned, touching his oozing wound. “Traitor…? Sybil, I don’t want to—”
“FUCK YOU!” She launched again, a blur of fury that he didn’t catch until she was locked claw-in-skin to his face.
His hardly scabbed-over face burned and roared as she ripped through him. He threw his fists and tried to knock her off; she took bash after bash, hooked on too tight and too angry to let go. He tottered while screaming, bumping into machines and walls. He repeatedly clenched her at the shoulders, waist, trying to crush her if nothing else, but the armor wouldn’t bend no matter how hard he squeezed.
Coagulated clumps and paper skin fell with the rush of blood. Justus fought however possible. Most of the time, his fists hit her armor—sometimes, he hit her skin and other times her camera.
He slipped, felt the rush of air sweep under him as his spine shattered on the stone. Agonized cries ruptured his mouth. He tumbled, rolled, but Sybil kept spinning her hands and feet through his face. “S-SYBIL!” he choked out.
“First, you send my mommy to her death, then you kill Flye!”
“Wha—?!”
Her lashes came harder and struck deeper. “THAT WAS YOUR SMELL ON FLYE’S BODY! YOU’RE DEAD TO US!”
She was cutting through muscle. The pain was so horrific that it consumed everything. He finally resorted to attacking her with one hand, fumbling desperately across the ground with the other.
His fingers brushed over a metal tube. He crushed it in his sweating palm and whammed it through Sybil’s eye.
Her rage shattered with agony. She tried to untangle herself from Justus’ face, but she had dedicated herself so strongly to the assassination that she couldn’t rip her claws out fast enough. Justus pushed the syringe in deeper and began lowering the plunger, releasing the death that he had been holding onto for himself for far too long.
Sybil finally freed herself and fell onto her back, taking the syringe with her. Justus scrambled and slipped in his own blood, hauling himself up as Sybil’s screams quickly shrank in pitch and volume. Spasms overtook her. She tried to reach for the needle with trembling arms, but by the time her claws were finally on it, her strength had withered. Her teeny hands couldn’t get a grip, and her cries transitioned into worried hiccups and whimpers the further the poison sucked her in.
Justus could hardly catch his breath—he certainly didn’t try to catch the pieces of his falling face. So that was it… That was why Seek wanted to find him so badly. She didn’t miss him, didn’t want to reconcile. She saw Justus as a threat. She wanted him dead.
Funny, he did too. But he wanted all of them gone as well.
He clumsily stepped over Sybil’s writhing body, gripping the edge of the table which housed the deadly controls. He suspended the registry and sifted through the tabs to find the
terminal.
“S-Seek…” Sybil croaked. Her punctured eye was overfilling with blood both inside and out, claws scraping against the syringe, slipping down and away. “Justus… He…”
“Gave you all what you rightfully deserved.”
He didn’t think twice, didn’t consider all of the good and all of the bad, didn’t care anymore, and he hit enter, committing the world to his irreversible wish.
***
It started immediately.
The transmitters that were buried beneath the ground, encircling all that had survived, shut off. The ripple-effect started at the ground and quickly cascaded upward. No human eyes saw it—it was too far beyond the rift to be seen—but the handful of lerials that had returned to the forest sensed it. Their hunter eyes were some of the few that could always see the rippling plastic that domed the world, so as soon as the pressure changed and the opaque curtain rose for the first time, they hid even though they could not hide.
Some part of Seek felt it too, but she had hardly even clicked on the video, just enough to see Justus’ moving face that took her breath away before the radiation did.
A gasp of shock turned into a crackle of a croak, crinkling like cardboard in her throat. The cube and her brother tumbled from her hands and onto the ground that was rampantly breaking with scorching cracks.
Virgil nearly tripped while rolling Seek when that same shift hit him. “What the—?”
“GET TO SHADE!” Seek ordered with a gag. “HURRY!”
Virgil coughed and stumbled, but he did what he was told, rushing Seek over the gravel and heading to the closest wedge of darkness.
But it was already happening. The atmosphere—it was loosening, the bonds coming undone within Seek’s very lungs. Every breath she took trying to restore her energy sucked more out of her. The heat was already rising exponentially; her powder skin rapidly turned red, painfully sizzling under the suddenly deadly rays that were already birthing welts and water blisters.
Virgil stumbled through a crooked doorway with his queen, nearly dead from exhaustion as darkness swung over him. He let go of the bars of her chair and hit the stone on his knees, gagging and hacking up blood as Seek rolled farther into the home, panting with her skin tearing all around her.
“W-what happened?!” Virgil screamed into his hands, trying to hold back the spurts of blood shooting through his fingers.
Seek looked over her shoulder and through the empty door frame at the world she held seconds ago. Burning—anything exposed to the sun that had even a speck of something flammable turning into a ferocious pyre. People tried to mimic their flee, but so many failed; some didn’t start the run fast enough and collapsed mid-street, but many more had just never felt heat. They didn’t know that the sun caused it and, therefore, didn’t know what to run from.
Because breaking Reeve’s crystal only destroyed the magical ties she had to the world; it instantly melted the Elites as well as the snow and ice born from her powers, but the sun’s physical heat, the radiation that it supposedly caused, had never been able to touch them.
The barriers prevented that. Took the place of ozone long gone. And now, they were gone too.
The messages. His face. It was too much to just be a coincidence. “Justus did it…” Seek wheezed in disbelief. “He broke the code to kill us all.”
Virgil’s only reply was another hack of blood. He tried not to breathe, but his coughs fueled by thin, carbon-filling air left him begging for more.
Coughing herself, a string of blood falling from her nose, Seek took her semi-melted wheels and painfully rolled closer to the door, stopping beside Virgil’s doubled body.
Blackened logs of bodies were sprawled across the ground, spewing flames. The air was so unstable that it looked tangible in the sunlight, bending and tearing like fabric. What looked like comets were streaking across the blue sky that was rapidly being replaced by a red, smoldering haze. She could count on her hands those within sight that had made it to safety, all burned, some still burning, and not knowing how to stop it.
Already unstable stone baked further, beginning the transition to dust as building after building toppled. Metal beams turned to silver waters; flesh burned and filled the air with black ribbons of skin and flakes of bony ash. The heat steamed away the ocean of sweat the instant it came to Seek’s skin—almost all water was gone from her tongue as she herself withered to a mist.
Virgil’s knees gave out, and his face hit the soil. Seek wasn’t even sure if he was breathing anymore.
She numbly felt herself sliding forward from her seat, about to topple herself. How sick… How terribly sick could he be?! After all they fought for, he ended up taking it all away? Ruining what they fought so hard to save? She wanted to tell Justus to burn in Hell, but his outcome would be close enough.
Killer air and physical exhaustion took Seek to the floor, but the impact was only a muffled thump in her bleeding ears. It was getting harder to see; the liquids in her eyes were vaporizing, destroying her vision, her spirit.
Yet the sight… The view that was getting more blended and unclear, it was somehow beautiful, and in a way, relieving.
She wouldn’t have to fight for anything anymore. She could just let go and finally stop hurting.
Her eyelids slipped, but they stopped before they closed. The pain paused; there was a cool, rejuvenating breeze instead, one with moisture and uplifting power that shifted her raisin-like pupils to a suddenly darkening sky.
Springs of indigo and ebony bubbled up from the burning backdrop, painting the globe with swift strokes. Blotches of white, of real stars, were thrown into existence; ethereal rivers of blue cut the canvas into beautiful mosaics, petals of pinks, greens, yellows, oranges, every color on the spectrum pushing through the blooming sky.
Seek army crawled forward in awe and disbelief. The live embers feeding on her skin were blown away with a magical gust. The sun grew more and more dim; a black disk slowly moved its way through the sky to stand in front of the sun until it blocked it completely, only a thin circle of white visible. Snakes of light slithered across the ground. The falling stars of fire stopped in the sky, coming to a standstill halfway between both worlds. They fell in lines until they encircled the entire sky as beautiful, flaming rings. A single comet was far brighter and far larger than the others, so mighty and glorious that its flames, however far away, were seen curving into a gentle, nurturing smile.
The backdrop of emerging galaxies began to twist and bend to form a loose face. Hands built from comet trails and other far off suns came forth from the blackness, spread wide and all-encompassing. A simple smile of stardust took away every sentiment of pain within Seek’s body. That one look, one of love, it gave Seek every answer to every question.
He reached through the fabric of Earth and elegantly ran His hand over the land. The Eyla flocked to Him, squealing with gratitude and pooling into His eternal palm, finally headed for home. The bodies His whimsical fingers brushed over evaporated with a sigh; their souls came back to Him, and their bodies instantly returned to dust, safe after so long.
The hand swept toward Seek and then over. She saw and felt eternity for an instant—the universe at its beginning and all that it had come to birth washing over her in a breathtaking, immersive experience that words could not do just.
And a feeling. A sensation so pure that it brought tears to Seek’s eyes that quickly lifted into air. Heart and spirit complete, finally, she rose from her restraining body and into forever, every other freed soul joining her in her ascent. Virgil rose beside her as she climbed higher into the sky; his faded, opaque body twisted freely, a joy spinning him weightlessly as he rejoined his place amongst all. A woman and two young girls crashed into him on his journey, nearly knocking him from the sky with the force of their love.
Seek noticed, though, that not all bodies fell away—not all Eyla could hold onto His hand either.
An angel herself, she could suddenly see everything, be anything, a
nd her searching eyes immediately found her brother, who she suddenly could not be more thankful toward, even as he spouted crazed laughter in his underground cage.
God finished His collection and rested His hard-worked hands. The flaming legion billions large tracing the sky roared and plunged from their unseen platform, crashing onto soil and stone with the force of bombs. They moved swiftly, their dedicated cries pouring over the planet as they be rid of those left behind with a single strike of the sword, soul and body turning not just to earth but ash. They made rivers of golds, reds, and pinks as they conquered the short stretch left for humankind, spreading over all.
One went straight for Justus and pierced him through his turned back; Seek knew he didn’t even know what happened before his destroyed existence was already giving the expanding universe another push.
In what felt like not even a blink, Earth and all the humans that had ever filled it were gone.
God lifted His hands once more and took the entire planet into His hold. Every being among Him stopped to look, and the burning angels came back to the sky, retaking their watchful, protective positions.
God’s hands moved slightly closer, and the ground fell into itself. Entire buildings crashed and toppled, cracks as deep as Hell itself whipping through the rock and dirt as push by push, Earth folded. Mountains came tumbling over one another. Pools of magma erupted and sprayed into the thickening air. Anything that so much as stood fell, including those beyond Earth.
Their own realm began to compress and fold—the ruin of the Earth funneled in from above, every failure above crashing down to destroy the failures below. Satan Himself cried out in a fit of fury and hate as Nortora came down and the walls of Hell slid closer together, filling with the bones of both worlds. God only pushed harder.
Earth was an ocean of dust, rock, and fire, everything getting smaller and more compact. God’s palms were almost together; there was no way to tell that Earth had ever been a hospitable place—even a place at all… It was a melting mudslide of ruin and death, a rumbling mass of the past, gone for good.
