by Ryan Tang
A few were simply trying to be political, saying what they had to say so they could tell everyone they'd remained loyal to the firm. There was no conviction in their voices.
The sky turned louder and louder, so loud it broke through the protestor's chant. Jared moaned in pain and clamped his ears with both hands. His eardrums felt like they'd been pierced clean through.
"What? Why do you get to stand at the top?"
"I thought I'd stand at the top!"
Jared stared in disbelief as the Scholars argued about Bret walking up to the top chair.
Why was the sky getting so loud?
"Here is an order from the Director. He says I will sit at the top."
His voice was strange. It echoed and wailed.
Anders and Munch saw the note and furiously returned to their seats, muttering angrily underneath their breath.
The last man keenly eyed his tablet, ignoring everything around him.
Some in the crowd began shouting up at the sky.
"Save us! Save us! It's the Hands Paragon!"
Bret stared down from his perch.
"Listen carefully. The boss wants us to say this phrase to kick off his arrival. Read the notes."
Bret's hands rose like he was conducting an orchestra.
"Follow closely and repeat after me."
"Two sacrifices have been given. First, came the Traitor to Knowledge. Second, came the Usurped Hero. Third, comes the False Storytellers."
The man with straggly hair repeated it at once, droning on in a dull sort of tone, but Bret and Munch only looked confused.
"What the hell?"
The crowd began to mutter.
"What are they saying?"
"Is this a gag?"
"Did we catch them off-camera?"
Jared was just as confused as the rest of them. What was going on?
He tried shouting so the crowd could hear him, but the sky was so loud.
Bret made an irritated noise.
"Again. Again."
"Two sacrifices have been given. First, came the Traitor to Knowledge. Second, came the Usurped Hero. Third, comes the False Storytellers."
They were more unified the second time, but it still wasn't enough for Bret, who pounded the table and raised his voice.
His voice was so strange. It echoed on and on.
It made Jared's blood run cold.
"What the hell?"
"What is he saying?"
"It's a doctored video! The Hands Paragon put a doctored video on the sky!"
The next time they spoke, it was all as one.
Their voices melded into the same hollow cry of all the brainwashed victims.
"Two sacrifices have been given. First, came the Traitor to Knowledge. Second, came the Usurped Hero. Third, comes the False Storytellers."
Other than Bret, who directed his hands madly back and forth, the others seized up and froze as soon as they finished speaking.
Munch's bulging tongue drooped from his mouth. Anders's head was tilted all the way back. The thin man with the tablet was suspended in place, his hair drooping over his eyes.
There was a melodic snick.
Countless black blades emerged from the four lower stages of the dais. The Scholars were skewered before they realized what was happening. The Eternium turned burnt red.
Their flesh immediately began to rot, turning black and gray in mere moments. Anders's eye fell right out of its socket, dripping down to the floor.
The crowd began to scream.
Bret spoke the last line by himself.
"And finally, the Listeners, everyone foolish enough to believe this tale."
The screaming stopped at once.
A river of red blood gushed from the stands, a massive tsunami nearly as tall as Jared's Peacetime machine.
Jared shouted before he even realized what he was going to say.
"Get down! Get down!"
He spread out his massive hands and feet, blocking as much of the wave as possible. The red tide sprayed high into the air.
The false sky dimmed then turned black. And for the first time in Jared's life, he heard a sound he knew only from movies.
It began to rain.
Something wet and black and slimy trickled through his cockpit and smacked him right on the head.
____
A sea of red and black blood flooded the entire courtyard. People were drowning in it. Jared lifted his feet to wade through the sea and then stopped. He couldn't blunder around. He couldn't see the floor. If he moved without thinking, he'd crush people beneath his feet.
He dipped his hands gently into the sea, shouting as loud as he could through his speakers.
"Grab on! Grab on!"
The once packed stands were now almost empty. The few survivors screamed in terror.
"Oh my god!"
"He melted! He melted right in front of me!"
"Help! Save me! Save me Hands Paragon!"
The people in the stands had simply vanished. One moment they were there. The next, there was a basin of blood in the courtyard.
The false sky was so dark he couldn't even see the forever black Spire anymore.
Black rain gushed down faster and faster.
The pictures he projected from his hand provided the primary source of light in the sudden nightmare world of the courtyard.
There were a few small dots, almost like stars in space, that came from others who'd pulled out their tablets.
"Grab onto my hand! Grab onto my hand!"
A shining orange pod descended from the sky. In contrast to the darkness, the light was blinding.
For one moment, Jared's heart leaped.
They were saved.
He didn't know how, but they were saved.
They must have been.
The orange sphere was their sun in the darkness.
Then a bridge emerged, and Stock stepped out.
His eyes were black as Eternium, but otherwise, he was just as Jared remembered.
The same square-framed forehead, the same stiff black suit, the same incredibly pleased grin. He'd worn that grin the night he told the entire Inner Circle they were fired. He probably wore that grin when he killed Jared's father.
He was accompanied by a strange woman wearing a dress covered with dying branches. They were holding hands, but not in the way that couples did. Their arms looked like they'd merged together.
Stock cackled when he saw Jared.
"You!"
He squinted and stared at the ground.
"You brought friends too. I was worried I wouldn't have an audience. Unfortunately, none of them were here to get my joke. A humanity transforming event. Get it?"
All of a sudden, his voice turned sharp and angry. It was the same abrupt swing into anger that'd haunted everyone at their firm.
"What's that thing in your hand? Turn it off! Turn it off!"
At first, Jared didn't understand.
"Peter! Make him turn it off! The light! The light!"
He was talking about the projector.
Jared ignored him. He continued searching the sea, trying to find anyone he could. He laid his hands flat on the surface like a raft.
"Climb on! Climb on!"
Stock began to shout and curse.
"Turn it off! Can't you hear me? Turn it off! I'm your boss! I'm your god!"
"Grab on! Grab on!"
Slowly his machine's hands began to fill up with people.
"I'm your boss! I'm your god! Don't ignore me! Turn off the light! Who do you think you are! Don't show an attitude! I've had it with your attitude!"
Jared glanced briefly at his screen, purely out of instinct than anything else. At Southern Robotics, it was always a good idea to look when Stock started shouting like that.
The Director cackled again and then took out something red that Jared couldn't quite make out. He kissed it deeply, then threw it into the sea.
"I'll make you turn it off myself. Oh, you'll regret s
howing me such an attitude. Oh yes, you will. I'm god! I'm god!"
The red and black sea surged into the air. Jared hastily closed his hands, protecting the people inside from being brought up with the storm.
The people unlucky enough to have remained in the sea screamed as they were blown high into the air, so high and fast that Jared had no hope of catching them. The beautiful white and gold Paragon was swept up alongside everything else.
Jared looked down.
The ground was abruptly spotlessly clean, reverted to the black and gray ruin it'd been after the quakes.
"God! God! I'm god!"
A monster descended from the heavens.
____
Stock towered in the air, far higher than the Paragon Jared had fought earlier that day.
The orange sun flew away, vanishing from the sky.
Now there were only black clouds and black rain.
Stock stared down with his pitch-black eyes. The old man was perched just beneath the plume of the Paragon's helmet.
He laughed and laughed.
"God! God! I'm god!"
His face was stained with black rain, and his hands held two mottled red tentacles, carrying them like the reins of a horse. His body beneath the hips could not be seen. He'd smoothly merged into the horror beneath him, a horror comprised of smoke and ink, flesh and Eternium.
The metal monstrosity stirred whenever Stock jerked the tentacles. The abomination belched out red smoke and dripped ink all over the floor.
The metal coils at the base of the Paragon's neck had been replaced by a mess of tendrils and pale pink flesh that anchored the head onto an asymmetrical and disjointed body. The noble metal feather wings were now both on the right side, one on top of the other.
Smoke and ink and rotting meat burst out of a hole on the left side, writhing furiously back and forth.
The people he was holding screamed and screamed. Jared screamed alongside them.
There were still survivors wading through the ground.
Stock drew a gun from his waist.
His fingers rippled back. They were not the fingers of a Paragon.
It looked like worms were crawling in between all the joints. The dying gray flickered in and out, caressing the box as it unfolded in his hands to reveal a sniper cannon identical to the ones from the simulator.
"Turn off that light!"
Stock shifted as he prepared to fire, and Jared got a better look at the strangely broken left side. There were teeth and tongues inside, countless mouths gnashing senselessly and angrily, pointing out from all directions. There were even a few mouths inside of other mouths. Teeth chewed furiously on dead gray tongues even as they flickered back and forth.
As the rain fell, the thing at the side grew and grew, expanding with each drop that hit it. Jared stared as a new mouth formed. The rain hit again. There was a splash. Another tongue emerged. Black turned to porcelain white as teeth grew and multiplied.
Stock chuckled.
"I told you to put away that light! My word is the word of god."
He fired.
There was an enormous black explosion. A geyser of black liquid gushed forward, faster than Jared could ever hope to react. His wrist was immediately vaporized.
The people inside wailed as his hand fell to the ground.
Jared dove forward, but he couldn't catch it in time.
The hand smashed onto the floor. The gel protected anyone who'd manage to stay on top of it.
But so many people had fallen as the hand spiraled to the floor. So many people bounced off when it hit the ground.
The curly-haired woman who'd rallied everyone with her cheers was dead. Her head was stuck deep in the ground, twisted horrifically from her head. The big bald man was killed too. His head had cracked like an egg against a jutting piece of ruin.
Stock laughed.
He raised the cannon for another shot.
"This time, I'll go for a leg!"
Jared turned and ran. The survivors scrabbled off his fallen hand and ran with him.
"A machine of peace! An ugly machine! A useless machine! What a dumb idea! What a loser idea! What happens when you come up against a god? What happens when you go against your genius boss?"
Jared heard that cannon explode behind him.
There was no chance.
The people in his remaining hand screamed in terror.
He didn't turn to look. He knew his death was just behind him.
But then there was a flash of blue light, even brighter than the orange sun from before.
A voice echoed through the courtyard, a voice that'd save him so many times.
He had no idea where she'd come from.
She'd always been like this.
When there was a fight, Alex always had his back.
____
His friend's voice boomed through the courtyard.
"Get the hell out of here! Run for it!"
The blue machine hovered high in the air, rifle drawn and aimed at the monstrosity in the courtyard.
The machine had emerged from the tower itself. In the shifting blue light, Jared could see a hole where her friend's office had once been.
In a day filled with things he could never have imagined, the familiar sight of the shifting mosaic blue gave him comfort.
Alex fired.
A beam of pure blue light streaked through the air, blue light with words dancing all over it. When it landed on Stock's monstrosity, Jared saw hints of a book's cover.
Stock screamed in pain.
"You! You! You again! You're going to pay for your attitude!"
She fired another streak of blue filled with words.
The shot blew a hole clean in Stock's torso, cutting straight through the Eternium armor.
But then more rain fell, and the hole disappeared.
The armor returned.
"Turn it off! Turn it off!"
Alex shouted again.
"What the fuck are you waiting for? Get out of here!"
The crowd obeyed her at once, streaking towards the forever black Spire, the only refuge in a world filled with ruin.
Countless people slipped and fell in the rain. Jared doubled back time and time again, protecting people from the crossfire whenever he could. Parts of his remaining hand were shot off. He took a critical blow that sent his head spinning away. He took a moment to activate the backup cameras in the shoulders before continuing in, bringing back whoever he could.
Every so often, Alex's light shone on him as well, but nothing happened when the shots struck him. It was just a warm light, not a weapon like Stock's liquid gunfire.
The light bothered Stock. His dad's pictures had bothered him too. But Jared's projector was had been obliterated along with his wrist.
The inventor took another shot just beneath his actual body, and he screamed bloody murder.
"You'll pay for this! You'll pay for your attitude! Thralls! Thralls! Kill them all! Kill! Kill! Kill!"
There was the thunder of thousands of footsteps, so loud that it overwhelmed the sound of the rain. Countless Southern Robotics workers in their white uniforms streaked towards the courtyard.
They instantly killed the stragglers.
Mr. Chen, the gentleman who led The Wastes, got kicked in the face so hard that the top part of his skull tore clean off.
A girl screamed.
"No! Mr. Chen!"
And then they were upon her too, twisting her head so far back that it was now facing in the wrong direction.
Jared stepped into the tide. He stretched out his broken arms as he hovered on a shattered leg.
"Get inside! Get into the Spire! I'll hold them off!"
The hypnotized assailants almost got Luke until Jared swatted them away with a long outstretched finger.
"Get inside! Get inside now!"
He leaned forward and shielded them with the body of his machine, completely covering up the entrance as the survivors hurriedly retreated inside.
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He had to block the entrance to the Spire.
He couldn't let them into their sanctuary.
Thousands of hands scrabbled against his machine, creating an echoing screech that quickly amplified as they climbed on top of each other to find a free part of his Paragon to begin attacking.
The mindless warriors in their white uniforms crashed into his machine over and over. No matter how hard they slammed into the metal, they didn't make a single noise.
The panoramic cockpit showed an endless horror of desperate hands in blood-red gloves. As the fists smashed over and over into his machine, Jared realized that they were all broken. Fingers had been torn off. Palms had been cut to pieces, and in some cases, even shattered. The drones were still bleeding beneath the gloves.
Jared tightened the massive hand even further, but it was no use. It was just too damaged.
There was a painful cracking as the drones began to dig through. Jared saw the bleeding stump of a hand slowly wedge its way through the interlocked hands, waving back and forth to try and get some more space.
The sound of breaking metal intermingled with the cracks of breaking bones. Finally, a drone crashed through. A beautiful woman with a bleeding and haggard face took two stumbling steps towards him then fell to the floor. One of her hands had wholly torn off.
He pushed her back out with a massive thumb as she feebly got back to her legs, but then another came and then another.
It was like pulling water out of a leaky ship.
Some of the survivors turned to help him, but they didn't stand a chance.
"Don't look back! Keep running! Keep running!"
The battle raged above him. Jared pleaded for Alex to win again, just as she'd won so many times before. But every shot she took seemed useless. The rain continued falling, and Stock returned just as powerful as before.
And with every clash between the blue machine and the white monstrosity, the scrabbling outside his cockpit grew louder and louder.
The metal wailed as his death drew closer and closer.
CHAPTER 31: EVERY BLUE, PART 2
The thing took flight.
The mass on the left-hand side warped into two wings to match the mechanical pair on the right.
The four wings, two of them pearly white and beautifully wrought, the other pair monstrosities the precise shade of bloodsoaked Eternium, beat furiously as Stock drew closer and closer.