As soon as David spoke, the pulsing in his chest shrank dramatically, as if it were folding in on itself like a black hole. It was now no more than a gentle hum in the background of his consciousness.
Malcolm was gaping at him.
“Dad,” he said quietly, “you’re Immortal now.”
David merely nodded. He knew Malcolm was right.
“You’ve just made an ethos pronouncement, whether you knew it or not. You’re Immortal,” Malcolm repeated.
And now David knew exactly what Malcolm had meant when he said he simply knew the instant that he became Immortal. David had felt a surge of heat run through his whole body. The thrumming and pulsing sensation around his heart had flared and then disappeared, and in its place was a deep inner quietude. David felt both strong and at ease. He had never been more sure of anything.
But he didn’t have time to pause and take it in. Malcolm was giving him a lopsided grin.
“You’re in love with Nev, huh?”
“Er—” David faltered. He hadn’t intended to come right out and confess this to his son. But there it was. He had said it.
Malcolm shrugged. “I would have preferred if it were Mom. But, oh well. I know that ship sailed a long time ago.”
David watched Malcolm’s face closely. Behind the goofy, relaxed grin was a shadow of pain. David had noticed this in Malcolm before, and each time, it sent a wave of regret and sorrow through him. He could handle his own pain after the divorce, but the pain it caused his son made him reel with shame.
But Malcolm was already rallying—and, true to his role as chancellor, he was moving on, two steps ahead of David.
“I told you you’d find your ethos,” he said brusquely, getting back to business. “And it’s a good thing it came so fast, too. It certainly won’t hurt you to be Immortal during the coming offensive.”
“Right,” David said, struggling to catch up to the speed of Malcolm’s mind. “About the offensive—”
“Dad, I told you, it’s not up for discussion. The attack on Detroit is happening. I know the Warped Immortals are dangerous and they must be stopped. It’s my ethos. Would you question your ethos?” he asked pointedly.
David shook his head. “No,” he said. “I trust you, son. If you think this must be done, then it must be done.”
What David didn’t say was that it was more than just his trust of Malcolm that was keeping him from protesting further. He knew now that his ethos was love—but not just love in general. It was specific love, for Nev—and for Malcolm. His ethos now bound him to Malcolm, for better or for worse. He had to support his son.
Malcolm strode onto the large, open lawn behind Flint City Hall. It was about half the length of a football field and equally deep, a flat grassy area, flanked by the marble columns of the hall’s façade, the capitol dome casting a lengthening black shadow over the grass.
It was late in the evening on the night after the Bereft unit’s dismantling of Detroit’s bioshield. Dusk was bleeding steadily into night. Malcolm planned to launch his offensive the following morning. His Immortal battalions were at the ready—a fleet of Dactyls and riders preparing to follow him into an air strike, and another contingent of gliders and ground troops, which would be led by Commander Kashay and joined by a unit of Bereft led by David and Nev.
Malcolm had assembled his warriors and mapped out his strategy during David and Nev’s infiltration of Detroit. Everything was at the ready for a strike at dawn. All that remained for him to do was wait and rest through the night.
But Malcolm was sleepless. Anxiety ebbed and flowed wildly in his chest. One moment, he was imagining the offensive, planning his positions and sorties with detached, soldierly calm. And the next minute, he felt himself tumbling into an abyss of uncertainty. Again and again, he asked himself, “What am I doing? What’s really behind this attack?”
He heard his father’s voice in his ears: “You need to understand that the situation in Detroit isn’t quite as we imagined . . . The Warped Immortals are not hostile to Flint.”
As quickly as this voice rose in his consciousness, Malcolm tamped it back down. Who was David to push him around? He was a newcomer in Ethos; he didn’t understand the challenges that Malcolm was up against. He hadn’t been here for the vicious battles between Detroit and Flint that had precipitated Malcolm’s rise to chancellor. He wasn’t privy to the intelligence Malcolm had gathered against the Warped Immortals. He was being reckless—casting doubt where he had no understanding.
But then again . . . what if David was right?
If the Warped Immortals were not really evil, then Malcolm would be acting against his ethos by waging war on them. He wouldn’t just be risking the lives of thousands of his Immortal warriors in a fruitless mission. He would be risking his own immortality. He would be risking becoming one of the Fallen, a fate far more ignominious than mere death in battle, even in a senseless battle.
Malcolm needed to clear his mind, and he was headed toward the one creature that always helped him accomplish this.
At the far end of the lawn stood the Immortal Council stables, where the Dactyls that belonged to many of the councilors were sheltered. Not all Immortals had Dactyls, but those who did were bonded with their birds for life. The relationship between Dactyl and Immortal was not so much the relationship between human and pet—it was far more akin to the relationship between wizard and familiar. The Dactyls became uniquely synched with the biorhythms and brain waves of their Immortals. They were infallibly loyal to their Immortals and could respond to their slightest emotional cue. Riding a Dactyl wasn’t at all like the technical exercise of riding a horse, which must constantly be urged to adjust direction and speed by its rider. Instead, when an Immortal rode a Dactyl, the two experienced a merging, a real, physiological connection between their minds and nerves, and the Dactyl would respond to the Immortal’s slightest whim as if it were his own.
The Immortal Council stable was a massive wooden structure eight stories tall. It was shaped somewhat like the traditional truss-framed, red-roofed barns common in nineteenth-century New England. At its far end was a set of barn doors five stories high, which could be thrown open to allow the passage of pterodactyls in flight.
Malcolm entered through a much smaller, human-sized door beside these great barn doors. Inside, the stable was cool and dark. It had no stalls; the Dactyls moved and slept freely in its cavernous main chamber. Its towering roof was supported eight stories over Malcolm’s head by a skeleton of rafters crisscrossing in the darkness. And on these rafters were perched dozens of looming, long-beaked black shadows.
No sooner had Malcolm stepped into the quiet interior of the barn than a great shape swooped downward, descending upon him from the rafters.
Sampson, Malcolm’s Dactyl, came to a precise landing just inches from where Malcolm stood. As his massive clawed feet met the wooden floorboards, his wings, spanning roughly fifteen feet, spread wide to break his momentum. Sampson gave two gentle pumps of his huge leathery wings, fanning Malcolm with a blast of air, then folded them in at his sides.
He extended his long, pointed snout, lined with hundreds of sharp teeth, toward Malcolm’s nose in greeting. Then he lowered his snout to the floor, so that the top of his head angled toward Malcolm’s face. Like a housecat, he gently butted his head against Malcolm’s shoulder and under his chin, tickling Malcolm with the fin-like crest that rose from the crown of his skull.
He had sensed his master coming, had felt the nervous energy of Malcolm’s anxiety. He knew instinctively that something major was coming.
Malcolm put out a hand and ran it down Sampson’s neck, his fingers tracing lightly over the slippery black scales that protected the beast’s flesh. The Dactyl cooed lowly, almost like a mourning dove.
Malcolm spoke to Sampson softly, muttering soothing nonsense, in the same way he might have babbled to a dog in 2024.
“Hey, Sampson,” he murmured. “There, there, good boy.”
The bi
rd nuzzled against Malcolm, lifting and refolding his wings softly.
They stayed this way, locked in gentle communion, for a long time.
he sky was black with Dactyls in flight. Malcolm and Sampson soared at the head of a phalanx of fifteen hundred Immortals astride their pterodactyls. The wind howled in Malcolm’s ears as Sampson’s wings beat mightily. The anxiety of the night before had disappeared. Malcolm was filled with a sense of certainty and resolve. He was flying toward the fulfillment of his ethos.
Far below the dense flock of Dactyls, the Immortal ground troops were rushing forward. Commander Kashay was at their head, flanked on either side by Bereft units led by David and Nev. Many warriors were on foot; many had piled into armored gliders. Some soared atop minigliders, hoverboard-like platforms that riders balanced on and navigated like twentieth-century skateboards.
Both the air and ground troops were armed to the teeth. Everyone, Bereft and Immortal alike, carried both a long-range and a handheld biotoggler. The long-barreled biotogglers were strapped across the shoulder blades of each combatant, and the handheld biotogglers rested in holsters on their hips.
Underneath their guns, all combatants wore biovests. These were thick, black, long-sleeved vests covering the torso from the nape of the neck to just below the hipbones. Into the organic fibers of each biovest was woven a cellular latticework that could interrupt the genetic signal of the deadly mRNA ammunition of a biotoggler. These were the “bulletproof vests” of the twenty-sixth century. Anyone struck by a viral projectile from a biotoggler would be spared rapid cellular disintegration.
Under cover of night, Commander Kashay had already ventured into the no-man’s land between Flint and Detroit and set up a semicircle of artillery units around Detroit. The units dotted the landscape from the banks of Lake Saint Clair to the northeast of the city all the way to the northernmost shore of Lake Erie to the southwest of the city. Each unit consisted of one long-range biocannon manned by twelve Immortals.
Biocannons could fire organic shells over distances of several dozen miles. These projectiles landed without explosion, releasing instead a biowave of virally disseminating mRNA capable of completely eliminating all organic material within a city block radius.
The biocannons fired with extreme precision, and each biocannon unit had its weapon trained on a specifically targeted neighborhood of Detroit. The Detroit Bereft Quadrant would be left completely unharmed by the offensive. Instead, the biocannons would clear paths through the city from the northwest along Woodward Avenue and from the southwest along Fort Street and the Detroit River. Both paths would converge on the Renaissance Center—the seat of Detroit’s government and the ultimate target of the offensive.
Malcolm peered down toward the earth from his perch astride Sampson. They were flying at least five thousand feet above the ground, surrounded on both sides and to their rear by hundreds of Immortals and their Dactyl familiars. The sound of the enormous animals’ pumping wings filled the air.
The ground beneath Malcolm was crawling with gliders and ground troops, packed together so densely that Malcolm could see nothing of the green grass. The army seemed to move as one being, like a huge black wave crashing over the earth toward Detroit. The city wall was only a few hundred meters away now, and already, in the distance atop the Detroit ramparts, Warped Immortal guards were starting to assemble.
The Flint army had the advantage of surprise. With Detroit’s bioshield disabled, the only warning the Warped Immortals had of the Flint Immortals’ approach was the sight of the black cloud of Dactyls appearing over the horizon. They had rushed to gather on the city wall, but it was already too late. The Warped Immortals opened fire as soon as the Flint Immortal and Bereft ground troops were in range—but the overwhelming majority of their viral ammunition struck the armored surface of gliders or the biovests worn by the soldiers and ricocheted, dying in the air before ever invading a single human cell. Here and there, a ground soldier was struck by a freak lucky shot in the exposed flesh of his cheekbones below the visor of his helmet. He would quickly fall and disintegrate as the virus attacked his body, but the press of his comrades in arms around him was so dense that the army surged forward unhindered. The bodies of these fallen soldiers vanished rapidly enough that their comrades did not even have to leap over them in the surge toward Detroit.
Nevertheless, Malcolm did not want to hesitate a moment longer. Now that the Warped Immortals knew of their approach, there was no sense in risking a single unnecessary casualty.
It was time.
Malcolm lifted his right hand, encased in a black leather glove, and spoke into the radiacomm embedded in his wrist.
“Biocannon units, stand by for Detroit Offensive Phase 2.”
A wave of “Standing by” confirmations cut through the whistling wind in Malcolm’s ears. He curled his body tighter against Sampson’s shoulders, and brought his wrist to his mouth again.
“Fire.”
From far below, there was a volley of pops as the biocannoneers responded to Malcolm’s command. Then, an eerie, suspended silence. Each shell traveled the distance of several miles between their biocannons and their targets within Detroit in a matter of seconds. In that time, the Warped Immortals on the Detroit walls had only enough time to realize what was happening: the distinct popping sound of a biocannon blast was unmistakable.
Running was senseless, as was ducking for cover. The virus, once released in a biowave through the city, traveled at the speed of sound and could penetrate brick and concrete. Anything organic—including human beings—in its path could not survive.
Detroit waited in sickening silence for the shells to land.
And then, Malcolm saw, from his vantage point high in the sky, a flurry of bursts of activity. He was flying close enough to Detroit by now that he could see inside the wall. He watched as minuscule people dotting the streets of Detroit far below began simply to vanish as the biowave set off by each shell expanded outward. In a few moments, two stripes of the city along Woodward and Fort were empty and silent, like outdoor urban catacombs.
A split second later, the ground troops were within a hundred yards of the wall. A large, armored glider was at the head of the wave of troops. As it approached the wall, a solitary Immortal, clad from head to toe in black, including a heavy black helmet and black visor, emerged through a hatch in the outer dome of the armored glider. He took position behind a vintage M167 Vulcan Air Defense System—a remnant from the twentieth century—mounted atop the glider. This huge gun was capable of taking down aircraft targets from a range of tens of thousands of feet. Today, it would be used to take down the Detroit wall.
The Immortal artilleryman opened fire.
A volley of explosions reverberated through the air. Shells from the Vulcan exploded against the heavy steel of the wall gates, ripping enormous holes through it. Parts of the gate melted and smoked. The wall began to groan and creak under the barrage of artillery, its heavy material straining against itself.
Warped Immortals on the ramparts above the gate split and ran from the onslaught, some dropping their biotogglers in their confusion. Shrapnel was springing up from the gates, and a blazing chunk of concrete struck a Warped Immortal on the wall squarely between the shoulder blades. He let out a strangled howl and stumbled forward, striking the edge of the ramparts. He lost his balance and teetered dangerously for a moment, then crumpled and fell, his body somersaulting as he tumbled the forty feet to the earth and landed with a splintering thud, his uniform blazing from the burning shrapnel that had struck him.
Just as he hit the ground, the gates ceded to the onslaught of artillery. They groaned and fell inward together, one landing atop the other with a mighty clap that shook the ground under the feet of the arriving Flint army and tumbled several more Warped Immortal guards off the ramparts to their deaths.
The wave of Flint Immortal and Bereft warriors poured through the Detroit city gates, a low battle cry echoing from the front of the surge all the
way to the rear, a solid half-mile behind.
The biocannoneers had done their jobs well. Woodward Avenue was completely silent and deserted. There wasn’t even any indication left of the carnage that had just transpired. The rogue mRNA released in each biowave had destroyed every last cell, even every fiber of clothing, from all the victims in its path. While in any other battle in human history, corpses strewed the field in testimony to what had transpired, the opposite was true in Detroit that day. The victims of the war had simply been erased.
As the ground troops ran forward through the empty streets, a second wave of Flint Immortals was battering at the gates on the southeastern side of the city that opened onto Fort Street. The two waves of Flint Immortals would meet at the Renaissance Center, where it was their mission to take Chancellor Kinnion, leader of the Detroit Immortals, dead or alive.
David was running on foot alongside Nev down Woodward Avenue. His long-barreled biotoggler was drawn and at the ready; he held it steady against his shoulder, as Nev had taught him. Any moment now, a new set of Warped Immortals or perhaps even Bereft citizens of Detroit would come forward to meet them. The biocannons had cleared the life from Woodward Avenue for now, but there were plenty more Detroit warriors ready to take their place.
As the soles of his combat boots beat against the pavement, David heard a heavy, reverberating clap and a moment later, the street trembled underneath him. This could only mean one thing: The gates at Fort Street must have fallen. More Flint ground troops would now invade the city from the southwest.
Nev’s hand was suddenly on his wrist, pulling him down a side street.
“This way is faster!” She called over the clamor around them.
David began to put up an arm to indicate to the Bereft in his unit to follow, but she reached for it and slammed it back down at his side.
“Just us,” she said. “We don’t want to attract attention.”
David spun on her. They were now alone in the mouth of the alley Nev had just pulled them into. “You’re abandoning your command.” “They’ll think they just lost us in the confusion,” she said. “They’ll be fine. They’ll follow Commander Kashay. It’s safer for them on Woodward anyway—the side streets haven’t been cleared.”
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