by Ryan Tang
"What the fuck just happened?"
____
Her cockpit had been so thoroughly destroyed that there wasn't even a hint of the pilot's chair. If that'd happened in a real battle, Alex would have died instantly. Plenty would have fallen.
She stared dumbfounded at the screen. She'd thought she was just about to win.
Luke cheered and cheered.
Matthew laughed. Despite his claims to the contrary, he clearly still had some pride as a pilot.
"That was fun."
Alex blinked.
She hadn't seen the Defeat screen in a very long time. There weren't many opponents as skilled as Matthew.
She hit the replay to see what happened.
Everything was going perfectly.
She had Matthew's arm.
She'd wrenched away his sword.
He'd flown right into her, and the shock had pounded his machine to bits.
They grappled some more. Both machines took damage, but her mosaic blue Paragon had a pronounced advantage.
There was an enormous flash, and her machine was reduced to rubble.
Alex stopped and played it again, then again.
It took her the third time to see it.
Just as she finally realized what had happened, Alex suddenly felt very tired again. Her battle-mind had faded away completely. She was no longer a pilot. Now she was just someone who hadn't slept in two days.
She stumbled out of her pod, cursing angrily under her breath.
"Goddamn it. What a shot!"
He'd completely outwitted her.
Alex shook her head and involuntarily yawned.
She'd warned herself before the fight to watch for hidden weapons! He'd hidden a Last Resort pistol underneath his shield. The weapon was tiny, but it packed an incredible punch. It expended its entire energy cell in a single shot, making it the perfect option for ambushes.
Matthew smiled wryly.
"I was planning on using it as a finisher, but not under those circumstances. You played well too. You caught me off guard."
He waved his hand around the pod.
"You got too distracted by all the new equipment. You need to stick to your game plan. Don't hide behind a giant shield just because you have one. You can't get away from your bread and butter."
Matthew was right. Alex shook her head and grimaced. She had to get stronger. The Spire had chosen her, not Matthew. If a new enemy arose, it would be Alex who stood against them. Much like her inability to purify the Spire's books, her attempts to create Paragons for her friends had failed.
Since the night of the quakes, she'd carefully tested the limits of her abilities to command Eternium. Just as she couldn't regenerate her machine in the middle of combat, she couldn't create a machine for someone else. Eternium reacted to her deepest desires, and the metal couldn't be cheated. If she'd already created her Paragon, she could give it to somebody else to pilot, but then she wouldn't be able to summon a new machine until they'd given it back.
"Here are a couple of other suggestions I thought of during our fight."
Alex smiled wryly. She thought she'd given him a run for his money, but apparently, he'd had the time to think up of suggestions.
Matthew pulled out a tablet and scrolled through the weapons catalog. When he finished poking at the screen, he flipped it over to show the items he'd selected.
"How about something more like this? Then you'll be able to carry a shield in one hand while retaining your rifle in the other. You could still keep people back with the bayonet."
Alex squinted as she stared at the screen.
The words blended awkwardly together, and she didn't understand what Matthew was saying until he pointed at the picture. Then the librarian let out a cry of delight. An extended knife underneath the rifle was a fascinating adjustment. It'd allow her to keep her gun in hand even during close combat. Her rifle was her signature weapon, and she hadn't drawn it a single time during their fight.
"And what do you think about this chain? You could shoot it off from the wrist."
He laughed ruefully.
"You always try to go for grabs. This looks like it might be tricky to use, but it'd be worth your time."
She'd almost won with a grab today, and she'd beaten him during their first duel by holding him in place as an entire cliff collapsed on top of him.
The librarian took the tablet and excitedly pored over the details.
She should have thought of it herself.
"Hey!"
Luke cut in.
"Yeah?"
"Can your machine bite?"
It took Alex's tired mind a moment to realize what he was saying.
She laughed.
Her Paragon had a row of shark-like teeth, but they were only just for show. The mouth couldn't even open.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because..."
Alex trailed off. She'd been about to say that she'd never heard of a Paragon biting before. But there was no reason why not, not when she could forge her machine from Eternium.
She giggled excitedly.
"That's a good idea. That sounds actually really cool."
She shook her head when she realized she'd stumbled on her words.
"Sorry, I meant really cool actually."
The librarian stumbled back toward the pod, eager to test all the adjustments. She was tired now, but she wouldn't feel that way once she sat in the pilot's chair.
"Do you want to fight again?"
When Alex reached the simulator door, she tripped and almost banged her head.
Matthew shook his head.
"When was the last time you slept?"
Alex closed her eyes and tried to think.
When Stock mined the colony's core, the resulting quakes had destroyed her tiny cube home. She'd been staying at the Spire ever since, but because she worked there too, it was hard to tell when the last time she’d slept was. It might have been two days, but there was a chance it'd been three.
"Look. You need to sleep."
Alex shook her head.
She'd be able to think clearly again as soon as she stepped inside the pod. Her battle-mind would keep her from getting tired. That's how it'd been the last two nights during her training. And it'd taken so long to get Matthew to practice with her.
She couldn't let it end after a single fight.
She had to be Plenty's ace!
"Look. I'm not going to fight you. You need to sleep."
He chuckled.
"No offense, but you look horrible. Your eyes look like they can barely keep open. I didn't even want to fight you in the beginning."
"I need to get strong."
Now that Matthew was making her think about how tired she was, Alex realized it was kind of hard just to speak.
"I need to be an ace."
"I can't lose."
Matthew smiled kindly.
"Look, how's this. Go and sleep and give my boy a turn. I'll come back and fight you again tomorrow. I told Luke we'd play today anyways."
That didn't sound so bad.
"You're going to come tomorrow?"
"Yeah."
"But you hate the Paragons!"
"I don't hate them. Plus, Luke likes them, and I don't want you to die from not sleeping. I've got the time for them now. I'm not on call for that dipshit all day anymore."
"You'll come back tomorrow."
Now Matthew was getting impatient.
"Yeah. I'll come back tomorrow. Hurry up and sleep. You can't do shit for anybody right now."
"I don't think that's true."
She could help people with her battle-mind.
Matthew practically pushed her out the door.
"Get the hell out of here. Come back tomorrow."
She had to be better and smarter in case anyone tried to attack them again. She had to protect everyone, including Matthew and Luke. She even had to protect The Spire. The tower trusted her to defend it. Before he
'd died, the strange pale boy had called her the Guardian of the Spire.
Alex walked out of the librarian's lounge and back to her office on the tenth floor.
She smiled hazily at the stacks and stacks of books around her.
When she saw her pillow and comforter, she promptly fell on top of them.
Maybe Matthew was a little right.
She did need to sleep.
And he'd fight her again tomorrow. She wasn't being lazy or anything like that. She was just doing what she had to do so that she could train against the best pilot she knew. She wanted to keep working. Matthew was making her sleep.
She started dreaming before her head hit the pillow. It felt like the library's Eternium walls and floors were singing her to sleep.
She slept and dreamed the same things all Plenty's survivors dreamed of.
She dreamed of all the people they'd lost, and she dreamed of defending everyone she loved.
____
Alex woke up and stretched.
The librarian smiled as she peeked out her window.
The sun was high in the air.
It was the true sun, the one Old Earth and its sister planets circled, the one she remembered from her childhood on Diligence.
It was a welcome sight.
When Alex first arrived on Plenty, she'd been captivated by the colony's false sky. The blue skies and pleasant clouds were supposedly identical to Old Earth's before the planet fell. The projected sun shone brighter than a natural star ever could, but the beauty had hidden a monstrous secret. The atmosphere of lies had granted Stock's goddess of Ignorance unlimited strength and stamina. The sun shining through the void of space was far plainer, but at least it was honest.
The librarian smiled serenely for just a moment longer. Then she bolted upright as urgency flooded through her veins.
She couldn't sleep in, not now.
She had to practice with Matthew.
She had to become an ace.
Alex hastily dressed in the same clothes she'd worn yesterday. They were crumpled, and she could smell her sweat, but she'd hanged the rest of her wardrobe on the 8th-floor book corridors, two floors down from her office. In hindsight, it was kind of stupid she'd done that. She didn't want to clutter up her office, but now she didn't have any time to waste retrieving her clothes.
Alex looked up at the sun and squinted. She used to be able to roughly tell what time it was by looking at its position in the sky, but that was back on Diligence. Years of living under Plenty's false sun had skewed her judgment, and even then, it was supposedly different on every colony.
As Alex left her room, she heard a familiar voice echoing against the Eternium. Alex smiled, and her heart warmed. Her feet instinctively turned away from the lounge and down to the reading room. She was three-fourths of the day down the staircase before she caught herself.
She had no time to listen to stories.
The librarian sprinted back to the lounge, but it was empty. The two pods, built out of her beloved white plastic instead of Stock's bloodstained Eternium, stared innocently back at her.
He was supposed to be here!
Her first absurd thought was that she'd somehow slept through an entire day. Then she pulled out her tablet and saw where Matthew and Luke had gone. The librarian grinned and doubled back to the reading room.
With every step she took, Mrs. T's evocative voice resonated louder and louder against the Eternium walls.
Alex's mentor leaned over the sleek Eternium podium. The metal glowed with supernatural light, but Alex's eyes instinctively went to the shiny new book in her elderly colleague's hands.
Like all the Spire's rooms, the reading chamber was filled with books from floor to ceiling. The old covers, battered and well-loved, smiled back at her. But here and there were new titles, stories told by those who fought against Stock and his goddess.
The sleek covers made Alex smile whenever she saw them.
Oh yeah.
We can do that now.
We finally have the resources to do that.
It was an incredibly refreshing realization, and seeing the enormous class in the middle of the day was even better.
The reading room was completely packed. Her students, most of whom she'd known since they were children, sat at the very front. Their parents and other adults lined the back of the room. Everyone listened with keen interest.
Before, they never could have held a class in the middle of the day. Southern Robotics was infamous for keeping their workers long into the night. Stock frequently ordered mechanics and engineers to sleep at company headquarters. Even when he started brainwashing his employees with the dreadful magic of the goddess of Ignorance, nobody realized anything unusual until very late in his scheme.
Mrs. T stuttered to an abrupt halt as she reached the next paragraph. It took her a moment to find her voice again, but then she read on.
"I turned. My wife was gone, replaced by an eruption of red. Her warm blood sprayed over my skin. I gaped. Her clothes were still hanging in place, buoyed by a river of blood. I screamed and instinctively turned to shield my children from the sight. I didn't know what was happening, but it was something nobody should ever have to see. But there was nothing there, only three more blood pillars. The same thing had happened to my whole family. Their bones clattered and echoed against the black Eternium stands as their blood gushed high into the sky. I could still hear them screaming in terror, their voices jerking endlessly between moans and wails. It's a sound I'll never forget."
Tears sprang to Alex's eyes. The other listeners turned away, cried, stared at the ground, and hugged each other.
They all understood.
Southern Robotics's malevolent sprawl had engulfed the whole colony. There wasn't a single person who hadn't been affected.
Stock had stolen The Spire to host his dark ritual, and he'd tried to kill Alex when she refused to give it up. She would have died if the tower's Eternium hadn't intervened.
He'd brainwashed his employees by making them sign Contracts laced with the goddess's vile magic.
To cover up a childhood crime, he'd built towering walls around Block 12 and shut off their false sky, trapping the residents in a forever dark prison. The finally liberated residents of Block 12 were pale and thin as wraiths.
The wealthy residents of the early Blocks had been groomed as tributes. To merge with his goddess of Ignorance, Stock needed to sacrifice true believers who'd wholeheartedly swallowed his lies. His loyal executives and their family members had been the perfect victims. The true believers died screaming, their blood and bones fed to his dark goddess. The ones who'd doubted Stock survived, but they'd been rewarded with the sight of their loved ones melting before their eyes.
"It was my fault. All my fault. I taught my children to be true believers in Southern Robotics. I wanted them to get jobs with the company - the very best jobs, better than mine. I knew they'd need to flatter Stock. When I saw the Hands Paragon's projection, I knew it was the truth. Deep down, I knew it. But my wife and I made my kids look away, so they died. That's what people are saying, at least. That it had to do with belief, maybe it's just my bad luck that I survived."
The room fell silent.
She saw Luke and Matthew in the back of the room. The thin man's wiry arms were wrapped around his sobbing son. More than a few parents had questioned if the survivors' stories would be appropriate for their children to hear. But the kids had seen Stock's evil just like the rest of them, and most of them had been victims. The spiteful oligarch had eagerly enticed children into signing his Contracts. He'd stared with eager eyes as they cut their hands to bits mining Eternium for him.
There was a sudden violent jolt as the Spire's floor shifted beneath her feet.
Alex stumbled.
She took two awkward steps before catching her footing.
Then the Spire shook again.
This time, Alex fell hard onto her back.
The Eternium floor purred whe
n she landed.
Her eyes widened as hundreds of books fell off their shelves.
They careened off the walls, bouncing faster and faster as they tumbled down toward her. The Spire's floors were jagged and uneven. Some stories were practically horizontal to each other rather than vertical. The impossible shape looked like it could fall apart at any moment. It was only held together by the miraculous properties of Eternium.
During the mini-quakes, the Spire's awkward shape worked to everyone's detriment. It was impossible to tell where the books would land.
Shit!
Not again!
That's the third time this week!
Time slowed down, just as it did when she was in the cockpit of her Paragon. It was like she could see each falling book individually. Some covers opened, causing the pages to flap like weak wings. Others fell straight as missiles.
Alex closed her eyes, concentrating her thoughts into a single mental spear. She imagined herself in the cockpit of her Paragon. She was swooping through the skies, and every second was happiness.
She slammed her hand against the dark Eternium floor.
There was a brilliant flash of blue. The Eternium shifted to the color of her soul, then obeyed her every command.
The shelves roiled like a sea at storm.
A few of them inverted to reveal the book-corridors, the hidden passageways built from books that lay behind all the Spire's shelves. Thin tentacles of Eternium flickered in and out of the walls, snagging the books as they fell through the air.
The song of Eternium echoed through the Spire as the tower trembled and trembled. Alex winced. During the Southern Robotics crisis, the tower had stayed stiff and immovable. For some, it'd been their only refuge. Floors 8 and 9 had turned into informal campsites.
But now the library was shaking along with the rest of the colony. Jared said it was because of destabilization. With so many massive chunks missing from the colony's Eternium core, the remaining metal bore a disproportionate strain. It would get better once they repaired the damage.
These were small trembles, nothing like what had happened when Stock mined the colony's core, but a small quake inside the massive Spire could be just as dangerous as a massive one outside. It'd gotten to the point where classes were canceled unless Alex was inside the library. There were alcoves and safe spaces on every floor which she'd created with reinforced roofs, but the librarians didn't want people unfamiliar with the tower wandering around on their own.