by DJ Molles
Sagum’s hands went to his head, fingers clawing through his hair. “Okay, okay, okay. Um…but you said many are fragmented, so does that mean that some of them have a chronology?”
“Yes, some of them have a chronology.”
“Okay…” Hands releasing his hair now. “That’s okay. That’s something. I can work with that. Uh…help me out here, Whimsby: Are these memories like, time-stamped or something?”
“They are associated with a chronology that has been fragmented.”
“Right, yeah, we got the fragmented part. What I’m asking is, can you access two of these memories and see which one came first, according to the chronology that you do have?”
“I cannot accommodate that request, as the associated chronology is fragmented.”
“Oh gods in the skies…”
Lux stepped forward and then knelt on one knee, laying a hand on Sagum’s shoulder. “It’s alright. Calm down. Whimsby. Are you saying there’s no way for you to identify which memories come before others?”
“That is a correct paraphrasing of the situation.”
Sagum turned to Lux. “If the chronology is fragmented then it doesn’t matter whether the memory exists or not—he’s got no way to access them in any sort of logical order. We’re talking about possibly five hundred years’ worth of memories, completely disjointed and out of order. How the hell are we going to find what we’re looking for?”
Lux wracked his brain for a solution.
Whimsby tried another smile, this one slightly better than the first. “I’m unsure how long you have, but would you like for me to just begin summarizing individual memories until you find what you’re looking for?”
Sagum hung his head. “What would that take? Five hundred years?”
“Oh, no, sir. Approximately three-hundred and eighty-seven years. Obviously, you’ll both be dead by then, but there’s a small chance we might encounter the memory you’re looking for before you both die. Would you like me to begin?”
Sagum raised his head, looking skyward. “This is a fucking disaster. I think I’m gonna puke.”
“Easy,” Lux patted Sagum’s shoulder. “Just take some breaths.”
Whimsby looked at Sagum. “Your heartrate does appear to have reached an unhealthy level, given the fact that you are not physically exerting yourself.”
Sagum shook his head. “I gotta lay down.” He waved a hand in front of Whimsby’s face. “Stop that. Stop scanning me.”
“Very well, sir.”
Sagum wilted backwards onto the deck of the skiff, the heels of his palms pressing into his eyes. Groaning. “This is bad. This is so bad. This is so much worse than I had hoped for. We’re so fucked right now.”
“You’re just panicking,” Lux advised trying to fight through his own disappointment to keep Sagum from going off a mental cliff.
“Here,” Whimsby said, brightly. “I’ll begin summarizing memories. That might help. I am located at what appears to be a large domicile referred to as Praesidium, reading the diagnostics on a skiff. I am still in Praesidium—this is a different memory—but I am preparing to go on patrol…”
Sagum let out a moan as though he were being tortured physically.
Lux raised a palm to Whimsby. “That’s not really helping, Whimsby.”
“Oh. Pardon me.”
“It’s not even Whimsby,” Sagum groaned. “I mean it sounds like him, but it’s all wrong. What happened to your personality, Whimsby?”
“Mechanical men are not programmed with personalities, Master Sagum.” Whimsby still wore that bright-but-fake smile. “We are programmed to follow our directives and to serve our owners.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
OPPORTUNITY
The stars were an annoying companion to Perry’s thoughts. They seemed to mock him, staring down from their lofty positions, passingly amused by the foibles of humanity.
Fuck you, stars.
Perry sat in the dirt, a few miles distant from Junction City, his longstaff propped between his legs, his knees up, elbows resting on them, face scrunched into a glower. He was pissed at the heavenly bodies, and pissed at Gaius, and pissed at Hauten—and who the hell was that woman with the red hair?
Was he pissed at her too? Well, he figured he might as well be, though every time he thought about her and all the nonsense she’d spewed, he found his brain settling into a state of complete mystification, wherein he was so confused that he couldn’t even be angry.
He’d considered lighting a fire—there was enough dry brush around, and he could start it with his longstaff—but didn’t want to be seen by the perimeter guards around Junction City. Which only irritated him more, as a fire would have at least given him something to stare at.
He wasn’t even sure why he was still here. Several times in the hour that he’d spent sitting mostly motionless, he’d been about to rise up, jump into the sky, and pulse his way back to Karapalida.
Why this sudden sense of indecision? There was no reason for him to be here anymore. Gaius was an asshole and Hauten was unwilling to help—that self-centered bastard.
Maybe he was waiting for the Guardians to drop out of the sky and wipe them out. In his anger, which somehow extended from Gaius and Hauten to every sad peon trapped inside Junction City, he thought that watching their doom might cheer him up a little bit. Or at least make him feel vindicated.
I warned you! He would shout from the distance. I told you to stop being assholes and to help us survive, but noooooooooo—you didn’t believe me. Have fun being disintegrated by caustic goo, you gaggle of pricks.
It was a satisfying thought. Until he felt guilty for it. That was just his anger talking. He was trying to get people to survive, not watch gleefully as they died. And he knew that in reality, if the Guardians struck while he was watching, he would do everything in his power to save whoever he could.
But still…
Cocksuckers.
“And who the hell are you?” Perry growled into the darkness, as though the woman with the red hair was standing in front of him. It felt odd to hear his voice in the stillness, as though it might carry all the way to Junction City and alert the perimeter guards. But it also felt a bit defiant, which was nice.
“You’re not a demigod, are you?” Perry shook his head at his own question. “Nope. No shield to make you fly. No longstaff. Not tall enough. Of course, neither am I, but I’m a halfbreed.” He waved his hand at the imaginary woman. “And what’s with all that disappearing shit? And the changing your face? That’s not Confluence.”
Was it?
He puzzled on that for a minute. Confluence, as best he could tell from his very limited training in it, seemed to be the control and direction of energy. Where that energy came from, he didn’t know. All he knew was what he felt. Confluence was the flow, the river of red that existed down in him, a source of energy that he was able to tap at will.
But he still needed a longstaff and a shield in order to project that energy.
But the Sons of Primus hadn’t needed those things. By all accounts, they had a “pure” version of Confluence, undiluted by human genetics. They were able to summon and direct energy without the use of technology.
So what was the woman? Not one of the Sons of Primus. She’d looked normal—not covered in those great, reticulated armor-looking plates. And she didn’t have glowing green eyes. And she also wasn’t ten feet tall. So, no. Not the offspring of Primus.
And how had she known those things about Perry? And why had she claimed to have watched him his whole life? And what was this secret she claimed to be able to impart to him? And if it was such a big deal, why not just tell him there on the roof? Why play all these games?
“Games,” Perry growled at the air. “You’re playing games, and I don’t like it.”
He saw the explosion before the soundwave hit him. A fireball blooming out of the north end of Junction City.
He shot to his feet at the same moment that the boom rolled ove
r him.
It seemed to take forever for the fireball to burn itself out into a midnight cloud that blotted out of the stars, raining embers on the city below it. It wasn’t a massive explosion—maybe big enough to take out a single building—but it certainly wasn’t expected.
Could the Guardians have crept up on the city without him seeing them?
A distant murmur of gunfire. A pause. Then more. Answering shots—a rhythm to them that Perry knew so well: Two sides exchanging gunfire.
He waited, heart beating hard, for what felt like an entire minute, trying to decide what it was he was hearing. He strained for the sound of the Guardian’s micromissiles, those series of hisses followed by the pummeling of smaller explosions. He listened for the crackling of energy bursts.
Only gunfire.
That’s not a Guardian.
But then what the hell was happening?
Perry instantly realized that he wasn’t looking at a catastrophe. He was looking at an opportunity. He wasn’t exactly sure yet how he was going to take advantage of it, but he sure as shit wasn’t going to sit around on his hands.
He burst into the air without really having to think about it—a moment of self-satisfaction at that—and pulsed hard, straight towards Junction City, and then up, gaining altitude as he rocketed closer.
The sounds from the city below grew dim against the roar of the wind rushing by him.
A little higher. A bird’s eye view of the city.
A whiff of harsh smoke in the air—possibly from the blast?
He pummeled through it before he realized—this black smoke that he’d missed in the night sky, enveloping him, the particulate still in the air causing his shield to shimmer and sparkle.
When he burst out of the other side, he was falling, disoriented by the sudden blindness. The city was rushing up at him, and he was tilted on his side. He swore, twisting in the air as he fell, trying to reorient himself so his feet were pointed towards the ground.
A flicker of gunfire below.
He reformed his shield as his altitude dwindled to an uncomfortable level, and shot a pulse sideways, just to get his body righted. He had just enough time to reform it again and send another haphazard pulse below him as he struck down on the top of a building. The pulse crunched against a rusted metal roof, caving it in and sending a cloud of red dust up at him.
He leaped off the caved in roof before it could break under his weight and grabbed the side of the roof, extinguishing his shield by instinct so he wouldn’t turn the brick molten. He let out the vestiges of a breath he’d been holding, then sucked in more city-stink.
The smell of explosives and spent propellant. The crack of gunfire sounded just below him, loud and extremely present. Shouts. The familiar whack sound of bullets striking armor and shields.
He pulled himself over the side of the roof and looked down. He’d completely lost his bearings going through that smoke cloud and struggled to make sense of the big blackness to one side of his vision, until he realized that he was at the very edge of the city. The blackness was where the light of the city ended and the darkness of the wastelands began.
To his right, barring the way out, a smallish contingent of legionnaires were bolstered up behind a row of their shields, the shield bearers hunkered low, while their comrades shot just over the top of their heads.
Perry followed the arc of their fire to a battered little building corner that had already been half-chewed away by the constant barrage of fire. Figures huddled there, taking pot shots around the corner, but they were sorely outgunned.
Directly between the two warring parties, a smoking crater sat, the center of it still burning brightly. Shields, armor, and body parts still swathed in blue told Perry that it had been a squad of legionnaires that had gone up with that blast.
Perry was about to launch himself down to the side of the legionnaire’s—lend them a hand, maybe work into Gaius’s good graces—when a voice reached his ears.
“Boss! We need another way around!”
And the response was a different voice, but one that Perry knew well. “There is no other way around!”
Hauten.
Perry hesitated, still half-ready to jump over to the legionnaires. But what good would that really do him? Gaius might be more amenable, but Perry hadn’t come to Junction City to convince Gaius to help. He’d come for Hauten.
And here Hauten was, trying to make his break for freedom, and getting his shit pushed in for the effort.
People were so much more friendly after you save their lives. They might even be convinced to agree to something they didn’t want to do, just to save their skin.
Perry made a rapid decision, and pointed himself towards the corner of the building behind which Hauten and his crew were obviously rethinking their life choices. He hurled himself from the rooftop, pulsed one time to stay above the incoming fire from the legionnaires, and landed hard, just inside of cover.
He spun, and found himself face to face with Hauten.
Perry kept his shield up and completely ignored Hauten’s gaping face, staying just as casual as you please when a bullet skipped around the corner and sparked off of his shield. He let his gaze wander languidly down the row of men pressed up against the side of the building, a conglomeration of weaponry in their hands, some nice rifles, and also some ancient looking pieces of shit.
Hauten took a step forward. “Perry? Where the fuck did you come from?”
Perry leaned against his longstaff, as though this were just another boring old day in a war zone, and flitted his fingers up at the sky. “Oh, you know. Flying around.”
Hauten seemed to realize that his two guys on the corner who had been trading shots with the legionnaires had stopped shooting and were staring. He snapped his head in their direction. “Keep firing, you dumbasses! You want to give them a chance to advance on us?”
The two men jerked back into position and started blind firing around the corner. Hopeless shots that did little except waste ammo and make loud noises.
“You want out of Junction City?” Perry asked, still keeping up his calm façade.
“Oh, we’re getting out.”
“Doesn’t look like it to me. Looks like you’re hiding around a corner. What? Did that bomb blast not take out as many legionnaires as you thought it would?” Perry shook his head. “Well, that’s disappointing for you, I guess. Oh, and by the way, half the legion is on their way here now,” Perry lied. “I spotted them when I flew in.”
Abject terror crossed over Hauten’s features for a single second, followed by confusion. “What’s all this flying talk?”
Perry sighed, hefted his longstaff into his hands again. “Don’t worry about the details. Hauten, I can get you out of here, if you want. Or, I can just fly off and leave you to be shot to death. It would be a very heroic end for a selfish asshole such as yourself. Probably better than you deserve.” Perry frowned. “In fact? You know what? I think I’m just gonna go.”
Hauten’s hands came up, one of them still holding the massive revolver he always carried on him. But it wasn’t pointed at Perry. It hung from a finger of his open hand, supplicating. “Wait wait wait! Don’t be all fucking hasty!”
“Well, we might want to be hasty. Not sure how much time you have left on this earth. Probably not long.”
Hauten managed a gruff scowl, but he couldn’t rid his eyes of the fear in them. “Can you really get us out of here? Don’t fucking pull my chain, Perry.”
“I can guarantee your freedom,” Perry said. “But you have to give me a guarantee as well.”
The corner of the building blew apart in a fusillade of bullets, sending Hauten’s two shooters yelping and scurrying deeper into cover. The onslaught of bullets kept up, sounding like a buzzsaw, chewing through the side of the building.
“Sounds like they got an autoturret up and running!” Perry shouted over the din.
“Fuck!” Hauten spun in a panicked little circle. “Alright! Fine! Get us o
ut of here and you can have whatever the fuck you want!”
Perry took another step towards Hauten, as close as he could without disintegrating the man with his shield. “I want you to come to Karapalida and reload ammo. You understand me?”
Hauten gestured around the corner. “Our buggy—the brand new one that I had to buy at great expense because you exploded my last one—”
“Skip the drama, Hauten,” Perry interrupted. “Time’s wasting.”
“Our buggy is held in a building right around the corner. That’s what we were trying to get to. We can’t reload without it. You want my help? You get me my fucking buggy. And don’t explode it this time.”
“I’ll get you to your buggy, but I swear to the gods, Hauten, if you try to hightail it out of here, I will catch up with you.”
Hauten flapped his arms at Perry. “Would you stop with the suspicion shit? I’m trying to live here!”
“I want your guarantee!” Perry shouted.
“Fine! Guaranteed! I help you, or you can track me down and cut my fucking balls off! There! You happy?”
Perry pointed a finger at him. “I’m holding you to that.” He spun away, in what he figured was a suitably defiant move, and faced the hazard of the incoming fire, chipping steadily away at the corner of the building. He took a deep breath, the anger fading from his face.
“Please don’t get yourself killed,” he whispered to himself.
“Are you gonna do something or what?” Demanded Hauten.
“Tell your guys to stop shooting, and then run for your buggy as soon as you hear the legionnaires stop.”
Hauten shouted at his guys on the corner, who were only too happy to retreat, picking bits of rock out of their faces, blinking away dust and spitting it out of their mouths.
The second they pulled back from the corner, Perry launched himself into the air.
For a very brief moment, as he soared up over the rooftops and the legionnaires spotted him, there was a slowing of the gunfire. Like they couldn’t quite decide whether or not he was something that should be shot.