by J J Hane
As time passed, we watched the fires dwindle to nothing. I knew we needed to move, to do something, anything at all. Instead, the haunting cries of the survivors and the mesmerizing flames kept my feet firmly rooted to the ground. All the pain from my injuries faded into a dull ache.
How many had just died? Several hundred, at least. Maybe more. In an instant, they had been destroyed, swept away by powers they couldn’t even comprehend.
“Now what?” Serenity asked, her voice hollow.
Margot let out a wordless snarl. “Now we kill that murdering bastard!”
“How?” I asked, trying not to flinch when Margot’s hate-filled eyes turned to me. “He’s surrounded by his warriors. We know that he did this intentionally, but they don’t. Even if they do, they might not be willing to turn against him.”
“What do you suggest, then, boy?”
I considered that. I wasn’t really trying to suggest anything, except maybe not getting killed just yet. Margot was right, though: we needed to do something.
“I have to warn the city,” I said, the words coming out quietly but seemingly of their own accord. With Azrael gathering his forces to attack, a lot of people were in danger. I wasn’t sure how much damage the artillery had done, or how long the Archangel would take to fire again, but if the outlander army could reach the city, they would kill anyone they came across.
“What?” Margot snapped. She threw one arm out to indicate the barren hilltop where her people had just died. “You want to warn the people who just did this?”
I could see her point. Still, my people were in danger, too. “More people are going to die if Azrael is allowed to do whatever he wants. If he gets to the city itself, we will never have peace. We’ll just wind up with more dead people. Even if Azrael was able to take over the entire city, the Martyrion Tower itself will never be taken. It was designed to survive the wars that caused the Fall. Even Azrael doesn’t have the kind of firepower it would take to bring it down.”
Margot kept glaring. “So, you want to warn your people so that they can kill more of mine?”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” I replied, but then I thought about it. Was that what I meant? If I told the MSF that an army was about to attack, they would definitely try to find a way to use the Archangel on them, even without the surveillance satellites for accurate targeting. They could just start burning the woods and hope that they hit something.
Of course, they would start doing that as soon as Azrael mounted his assault, anyway, so it might not make much of a difference. There was only one way to save lives: we had to stop Azrael and the Martyrion. At the same time.
“You’re not going to like this,” I said slowly. “But the only way any of your people are going to survive is if we can force Azrael to retreat and convince the Council not to fire.”
“Why wouldn’t they?” Serenity asked. Her face was drained of color, her breathing labored. “Especially once they realize that the man responsible for the attack on the city got away. They’ll want revenge.”
“Some of them will,” I conceded. “I don’t have a better idea, though. Do you?”
Serenity fell silent. The rest of the survivors had been slowly gathering around us, listening to the exchange.
Margot still wasn’t convinced. “How do I know that you aren’t just planning to betray us?”
Serenity answered for me. “Because you aren’t actually an idiot, you just act like one sometimes.”
Margot bristled.
“Don’t give me that look,” Serenity went on. “Raphael has done nothing but help us ever since I met him in the field that day, even after we… After I betrayed his trust. What does he have to do to convince you?”
The scarred former general ground her teeth, but she stopped arguing.
“How are you going to get to the city in time?” one of the Bay Tribe warriors asked.
That was an excellent question.
“What about the soldiers our warriors were holding off?” Margot asked. I looked up at her in surprise. “If they haven’t retreated, can’t you get a ride with them?”
“Maybe…” I replied, thinking it through. “Yes, probably. They might still think that Serenity abducted me, so I should be able to get them to give me a ride back.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Go!”
I started to move, but my eyes fell on Serenity again. She had one hand pressed to her side. “Are you okay?” I asked her.
“I’ll be fine,” she replied, although she didn’t sound like it. “One of the solar rifle shots got me earlier. It’s barely anything.”
“Maybe you should come with me,” I started to say, although I wasn’t sure how well that would work out. All I knew was that our medical facilities could treat any injury she had.
Margot interrupted. “We don’t have time for this. You need to go. Now.”
I looked pleadingly at Serenity. She nodded. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
Once again, I started to move, stopping after only a step or two. “Um… Which way?”
Margot let out an exaggerated sigh, pointing impatiently in the general direction I needed to go.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
I ran.
Let’s be clear about something: Running sucks. In school, running around a city block or through the gardens was something we had to do every week. It was meant to keep us in shape, help our bodies stay healthy, and keep our minds sharp. I always hated it. Running always made my lungs feel like they were going to catch fire, and I never felt better for it the next day like some of the other kids always said. It was hard work, and I never felt any kind of payoff.
That day, when I ran, it was harder than ever. Running through a ruined city-turned-forest is a lot harder than running on a sidewalk or track, especially when smoke is filling the air. Rubble, trees, vegetation, and uneven ground make it a serious challenge to go at any reasonable speed, especially for someone like me who grew up in a city with perfect streets. Every step is dangerous, as if the entire environment is actively trying to trip you up or twist your ankle. If I hadn’t spent years working in the Martyrion’s vast fields, I probably would have had an even more difficult time. I knew that if I fell or broke my ankle, I might not be able to make it to the Security forces, if they were even still there.
Still, I couldn’t slow down. Time was not on my side. Azrael was preparing his attack already. Lives depended on me.
I kept running, pumping my legs as fast as they would go. I hopped over fallen logs, pushed off of piles of broken concrete, and used the tops of mostly buried cars as springboards to propel myself over dense underbrush.
By the time I reached the fallen building where we had tunneled underground, I was completely out of breath, my entire body on fire from exertion. I dashed through one broken window, nearly tripping over the remains of some kind of rusted office furniture and navigated quickly to the other side of the building.
When I came out through another gaping hole, I saw two Security vehicles parked nearby, their engines humming. I tried to stop myself, but my momentum and exhaustion conspired to cause me to trip over a patch of uneven ground, sending me flying through the air. It worked out well, as a deadly blazing beam of light went hissing through the space I had just been occupying, burning into the building behind me.
“Wait!” I shouted with the last of the air left in my lungs. I tried to put my hands up, which was hard given that I was lying on my face.
“Don’t move!” a deep voice shouted. I obeyed, keeping still except for gasping for air, my chest on fire. I heard footsteps approaching.
“Put your hands on your head!”
I did as I was told, soon feeling hard rings click into place over my wrists, binding my arms in the position. I was hauled roughly to my feet to see Officer Williams, the burly man who had saved Serenity and I only a few nights before.
He squinted at me in surprise before turning to shout to his companions. “He’s one of ours!”
/>
I heard Officer Mac’s more nasally voice reply, “The kid who got taken by that girl?”
“Looks like it,” Officer Williams said. He guided me over to the vehicles, although he didn’t release me from the handcuffs.
“What’s he doing out here?” Mac asked, peering at me from the cover of an open door in the armored vehicle.
“I got away,” I gasped, still trying to get my breathing under control. “I have to speak to Director Kelley right now. I know where the next attack is coming from.”
It was a little lie, but it was an important one.
“Next attack?” Officer Williams repeated. “What are you talking about? We saw the Archangel fire…”
“It was all part of Azrael’s plan,” I told them.
“Who’s Azrael?” Mac demanded.
I blinked at him, then looked around. There were two functional MSF vehicles, but a third had been flipped onto its side, black smoke billowing up from it. There was a small crater a few feet behind it where the vehicle must have hit some type of land mine. Glancing back toward the building I had just come through, I could see dozens of round holes marring the already broken edges of the ancient skyscraper, with some new, larger holes burned into it as well. There were several bodies visible, scattered around the area like broken dolls. Behind the Security vehicles I could see several men in uniform laid out in neat rows, with another dozen men and women standing in varying degrees of cover, solar rifles held to their shoulders.
They were fighting the tribes, killing, dying, and they didn’t even know the name of the man who led their enemy. The pointlessness of the battle was like a punch in my stomach.
“Azrael is the leader of the tribes,” I told them, trying not to sound like I was talking to a group of little children. “He’s gathered all of the warriors from the tribes and is preparing to attack the city right now. I need to talk to Director Kelley!”
While Officer Williams considered that, Officer Mac let out a bark of a laugh.
“You’ve been in the wilds too long, kid,” he said. “The tribes are all at war with each other all the time. This Azrael character couldn’t have more than a handful of warriors.”
I was so stunned by Mac’s stupidity that I just stared at him with my mouth slightly open for a moment. “You’re joking, right?”
Mac looked a little uncomfortable, adding in a defensive tone, “You’re just a kid. What do you know?”
Officer Williams interrupted, his rumbling voice cutting the argument short before it could get heated. “I’m going to call this in. We’ll let Command decide.”
The big man strode calmly over to one of the SUV’s, taking out a shortwave radio and speaking quickly into it. I looked anxiously around, bouncing on the balls of my feet. We needed to be moving already. I was certain that Azrael wasn’t going to bring his forces this way, since that would alert the Martyrion of their location. There was still the possibility that he could send some smaller group to attack us, slowing down the response time. My heart was still racing, even though I was finally recovering from the run.
“Okay,” Williams said, gesturing me over to the vehicle. “We’ve got permission to head back.”
He turned to address his fellow officers. “Let’s get moving. We’re being recalled.”
I moved toward the SUV that Williams had walked to, but he was already moving away from it. The security forces began drawing back, some of them remaining vigilant while the rest started lifting the bodies of their fallen comrades, loading them into the two functional vehicles. I wanted to scream at them to leave the bodies, that there would soon be more dead to worry about if we didn’t get to the tower, but I understood the importance for these men and women.
Instead of arguing with them, I decided it would be faster and better to help. I walked over to the row of corpses, standing awkwardly for a moment as I looked down at the blank faces of the fallen officers. Mac gave me an annoyed glance, but he nodded to one of the bodies. It had been a young man, maybe twenty, healthy and strong. Now, his uniform was tattered, his chest soaked in blood, blackened by dirt. I could smell the metallic scent of his blood coating the earth beneath him.
“Grab his legs,” Mac ordered. “It’s the least you can do. We came out here for you, after all.”
I tore my eyes off the dead man to look up at Mac, but he was squatting down, waiting for me to help. Bile rose up in my throat, threatening to make me vomit. This man, as well as the others, were all dead because of me. They had come out here to rescue me from the girl I had wanted to go with.
It was my fault they were dead.
How many deaths was I going to be responsible for before everything was over? If I hadn’t helped Serenity, she might not have been able to shut down the surveillance system. If she hadn’t succeeded, Azrael wouldn’t have been able to fire his weapons into the city, the Archangel wouldn’t have been used to kill all of those elderly and children, Serenity wouldn’t have brought me along, and this young man would still be vibrantly alive.
“Snap out of it, kid,” Mac grunted.
I couldn’t breathe. My lungs felt like someone had reached into my chest and was squeezing them, along with my heart. My stomach was rebelling at the spiraling thoughts, recognition of my own guilt.
What had I done?
Oh, God, what had I done?
“Hey!” Mac shouted, startling me.
“Sorry,” I muttered, breathless. Sorry for everything.
Hardly aware of what I was doing, I knelt, took the corpse’s legs, and stood with Mac, lifting the dead man between us. He was heavy, limp. The body swung loosely between us as we carried it to the nearest functioning vehicle. We stacked him in the back along with two of his fallen comrades, the fire of life cruelly extinguished from each of them. They stacked well, like logs of flesh, reminding me of the little wooden cylinders I used to play with as a kid.
Abishai and I used to play with them together, building little log cabins and then smashing them apart for the sheer joy of it. I must have played with them for hours when I was little, always trying to create something new, but limited by the small square indentations that fit the play logs together. The toys had somehow survived the generations of war that led to the Fall, so that even after civilization had been destroyed children were still playing with them.
Just like the violence we liked to imagine the Martyrion had risen above.
Once we had the body settled in the back, Mac and I joined Williams and three others in the crowded vehicle. The humming engine grew louder as we lurched into motion, speeding backward into a sudden turn that knocked me into the woman sitting beside me. We accelerated forward, bouncing over the uneven remains of the ancient city, back toward the relative safety of the city, surrounded by a cloud of death.
Somewhere far behind us was a burning hill where once there had been hundreds of human beings. In the back of the vehicle were empty corpses already beginning to exude the sickly smell of death. The horrors of violence were etched into my mind, burned in like a cattle brand in the shape of a red stream of light.
Once we were out of the forest, I heard a gasp from the front seat. Leaning around the passenger chair in front of me, I looked out the reinforced windshield to see the great city stretching out before us. Ahead and to our left, we could see smoke billowing up from the very edge of the city, flames reaching up along some of the taller buildings there. A section of the wall had been blown out, now laying strewn across the field.
“How did this happen?” someone in the vehicle muttered. “Aren’t they supposed to be watching for this stuff?”
It sounded like a rhetorical question. Nobody had any answers. I realized that I was probably the only citizen who knew that there was a traitor somewhere in the city with enough technical knowledge to bring down our satellites.
I watched as the other SUV sped past us, accelerating toward the damaged area of the city while we remained on course to reach the security checkpoint that I was becom
ing so familiar with.
“So,” Mac said from the front seat, almost conversationally. “You say you know where the attack is coming from?”
“Uh, yeah,” I replied, bringing my attention back to the ride.
“How do you know they’re going to attack again, when we’ve destroyed their base?”
“Azrael told me,” I said simply.
“So why do you need to talk to the director?”
“Because this wasn’t some accidental oversight,” I told him. I realized that he was twisted around in his seat to watch me.
“You think we were betrayed?” he asked, eyes unreadable.
“I know we were,” I said, defiant. I expected him to laugh, to ignore me, maybe even to yell at me for suggesting such a thing. The other security officers were either staring out at the damaged city or looking at me.
“Who is the traitor?” he asked, surprising me with his sincerity. “Do you know?”
I thought about how to answer. How was I supposed to know who the traitor was? I didn’t really have any idea, and I lacked any evidence beyond the little memory stick in my pocket. Still, I figured that if I wanted to get to the director to keep any more people from dying, I needed to imply that I knew more than I did. It was a gamble, but I figured that I didn’t have a choice. Besides, it wasn’t like it mattered all that much in the moment.
As it turns out, it probably wasn’t the best course of action.
“I have a pretty good idea of who it is,” I lied. “And I have evidence to prove it. I have to tell the director.”
Mac held my eyes for a moment longer, studying me. We were already across the buffer zone, into the field. He let out a heavy sigh.
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” he said, rubbing his eyes. Then, for what seemed like the thousandth time that week, my world exploded.
Chapter 19
The loud, crackling hiss of a solar rifle filled the cabin of the SUV. A beam of white-hot energy seared through the back of Mac’s seat, blazing through the chest of the woman on my right. Her eyes widened, mouth opening in silent shock. Mac shifted, bringing his solar rifle to bear on the man to my left, another crackling hiss accompanying the bright flash that burned through the officer, as well as the man behind him.
