He frowned. It would only be moments before Zaphkiel realized where they had gone. At least he was as stupid as the others. “Alex, c'mon. How do we beat him?”
She swallowed visibly, and shook her head. “He... he's a warlord. He stands a decent chance against armies.” She licked her lips, thinking. “Perhaps... perhaps Kelly...”
What the hell would she be able to do? Ah... the chemicals. But wherever Kelly was, it wasn't here, and she probably wouldn't be much use against someone built specifically to fight her kind anyway.
Looked like it was all up to him, as usual.
But he couldn't kill him. Even if it was within his ability, Zaphkiel was probably the most important angel in the city. Laura's little history lesson on the way over hadn't been very detailed, but she had managed to get it into his head that Zaphkiel was the founder and leader of the culture. They would not take kindly to his death, however necessary it was.
Adam's thoughts were interrupted as the floor next to him started burning.
It took him a moment to realize that it wasn't an attack. It looked like someone was writing with a pen that used fire for ink—in other words, a laser.
But that particular train of thought quickly screeched to a halt when he realized that the screamer was writing words.
I am the Composer, the scarred floor proclaimed. Join me.
Adam licked his lips nervously. He had to keep him talking. Unlikely as it might seem, Kelly and the others might be able to get them out of this. They'd be here soon enough.
“Join you?” he asked, trying to make it seem as though he was considering the offer. “And do what?”
Kill, the laser wrote.
He frowned. “Kill who?”
Anything. Everything.
“Any chance I can change your mind on that? Maybe you should get interested in sports.”
No. Tried that. Kill everything.
Adam stared, convinced I was misreading. This guy had decided to go omnicidal because he sucked at sports?
“Look, just because you fail once—”
The laser wrote again, faster and angrier. No. Tried everything. Love. Power. Wealth. Knowledge. None of it is of any interest. There is only killing.
“There's other stuff besides killing,” Adam insisted. He really doubted he'd be able to reason with him, but he was the only one in a position to try.
To his surprise, Zaphkiel laughed. Oh? The laser wrote. Tell me, Adam Anders, other than killing, what has caught your interest lately?
He froze. Not because he had made some deep, cutting remark that made him question his entire life—no. That wasn't it.
The Composer knew his name.
Oh shit.
Apparently, he took Adam's hesitation for something else entirely. Join me, and you can have the powers that were denied to you.
He answered before he could stop himself. “Wait, what? You can give me powers?” Then he rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah, like I want to spend the rest of my life as a zombie. No thanks.”
No. Not like this one. Like Derek, like Akane. Power, no strings attached. Just so long as you use it to kill.
Adam wanted to say that the offer wasn't enticing. After all, a guy who made zombies was offering him vague promises of power. It was pretty clear where that would end.
But...
He had meant what he said when they first discovered these powers. He hadn't wanted one. They hadn't known anything about them. But as time wore on, it was becoming increasingly clear that there were no downsides—at least none that popped up too soon.
Adam would like to say to that he would have turned him down, preferably giving him his reply in the form of a god slayer to the face.
But he would have said yes. If out of curiosity, if nothing else. It was just too interesting an offer to refuse, too much power for the taking. This story would have ended very differently, in that case.
But then the Draculas detonated their EMP, and all the lights went out, leaving only the warlord, glowing like a nightlight.
So Adam ran.
The fact that the retinue got out as well was nothing but a lucky coincidence.
Chapter 48: FIDES
AKANE
Faith was what kept Akane going. It was all she ever had, really.
At first, it was faith in her father. Despite her mother's disapproval, he would always tell her stories about their ancestors, about how their family protected the Tokugawa from all comers. Akane went to sleep dreaming of ancient warriors—most of whom were probably fictional.
When he died, she clung to the honor he had taught her like it was a lifeline. She cried herself to sleep every night, wishing for the world to right itself.
After four years, there wasn't much faith left in her. Getting ridiculed for your beliefs by everyone—including your own mother—would do that to you. On the first day of middle school, some of her “friends' cornered her and decided to start beating her honor with a baseball bat.
She came out of that stronger than before. Her faith became stronger than steel, and she started truly embracing her family's legacy, rather than just paying lip service. She got a sword—well, one was given to her—and started training. At first, she just did kendo, but after Derek's debacle with the wrestling team, he suddenly had a lot more free time on his hands.
So they started doing missions.
A sword wasn't much use against a gun-wielding opponent smart enough to use range to his advantage, but they were slaying monsters, not people. Against a dumpster dog or an alley crawler, a sword was actually more effective than most firearms.
Akane trusted her training. She trusted her sword, she trusted her skills, and now she trusted her powers. She trusted Laura and her tactics—she had proven herself an able commander. She even trusted Ling, although half the time it seemed like she had to bail her out of trouble.
But most of all she trusted Derek.
He had never led her wrong, not once. Oh, in the short term he made mistakes, same as anyone else. He was too trusting for his own good, which had led them into trouble before, and he wasn't forgiving enough when someone tried to double-cross them. But she had never thought he was trying anything less than his best.
That was what kept her going, huddled in a small artificial cave under the street, waiting for their reservoirs to replenish.
“This isn't going to work forever,” Ling said. “I'm screwing with the ground too much. It will give soon.”
“When?” Derek asked, taking deep breaths to recover his energy.
Ling shrugged. “Hard to tell. I don't really have enough experience. Call it three more times, up and down.”
Derek nodded. “Then we'll have to make do with that. Akane, any luck getting a signal?”
She shook her head. Ling had created a small tunnel, only a couple inches wide, directly above her in hopes of getting some cell reception. It wasn't working, but then phones were rarely designed to work underground. Even the super phone Lori had given her for her birthday wasn't up for the task.
He clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Fine. We'll do this the hard way. Ling, take us up whenever you're ready.”
She muttered something mutinous, but fell into horse stance and moved her arms up in a lifting motion, as if she was physically pushing them to the surface. There was a loud grinding sound, undercut by a noise similar to mud flowing, as they slid upwards. As light began to peek out from the top of the dome, Derek reactivated his shield, bathing them all in soft blue mist.
The screamers noticed them the second they rose from the ground. They immediately started peppering the shield with lasers. The attacks were weak, but there were lots of them. Derek wouldn't be able to hold the shield for more than a few minutes.
Akane activated her speed just as Derek released his barrier for a moment. That split second was more than enough for her to get out and start attacking the screamers with her sheathed sword. She used her speed sparingly, reserving it for when Derek flickered his shield
again.
Fighting screamers, even ones with such a dangerous power, was actually almost ridiculously easy. They didn't learn from their mistakes, didn't seem to have any plan other than “attack.” There were the defensive ones like Kat to worry about, which seemed to retain some measure of intelligence, but those were very rare. Not to mention that if you so much as looked at a “defensive” screamer wrong, it switched to “aggressive” and stupid, and never switched back.
After two minutes, the shield flickered again, and she ran back inside. Before Ling had a chance to lower them underground again, every light went dead, all at once, like some massive switch was flipped.
Akane didn't know the cause, but she knew an opportunity when she saw one. She tapped Derek on the shoulder and he let his shield fall completely. In the darkness it would only make them a target.
“Prioritize the singers,” he ordered. “Ling and I will handle the screamers.”
Akane nodded and headed off in the direction the singers had been last. She still couldn't see very well, but her eyes were slowly adjusting, and she was still better off than the infected angels.
They tried to swarm her, but she was able to keep them at bay with wide two-handed slashes. She was tempted to unsheathe her blade and carve her way through the horde, but Derek wouldn't like it, and she still didn't know what had killed the lights again. They could come back at any moment.
So the moment she saw a clear path through, she activated her speed and took it.
She killed the first two singers on a single pass, but the next cluster was too far away to reach before her reservoir ran out. So she let her speed fade and rushed them normally. The first one, a glowling girl maybe a couple years younger than her, punched at her clumsily. She dodged without any real effort, and quickly skewered her through the heart, then spun away, taking her blade with her.
The second singer, a thin young man with gray skin and a shaved head, glared at her, still singing that unearthly tune, and tried to grab her. He had much better aim than the others. Akane couldn't tell for sure in the darkness, but he might have had normal eyes, which would explain it.
She wasn't able to get her sword around in time, but long experience had taught her the solution to that problem. She flicked one of her knives at his eye, eliciting a scream of pain, and stepped forward to take off his head.
But singers were smarter than screamers, if only barely. This one dropped to the asphalt, dodging her strike by a hair's breadth.
She cursed and jumped back a few steps, instinctively putting distance between them. That was a mistake. She could have finished him right then and there, but she was sloppy.
To her surprise, his next move wasn't to charge her. It was to rip the knife out of his eye.
He gripped it tightly in his hand, ready to use it against her. It was one of the double-bladed ones Maria had gotten her for her birthday, so it was cutting his hand pretty badly, but he didn't seem to notice. He just advanced on her still singing, his remaining eye cunning and alert.
A knife might not sound like much against a sword, but it all depended on how you used it. A sword had obvious advantages in reach, but at the same time was harder to manipulate. An experienced knife-wielder was sometimes more dangerous than a swordsman, especially if they knew where the important arteries were.
Not that it really mattered. Super speed would more than even the field. At full power, it would seem as though he was standing still, and Akane would be able to slice his head as easily as pulling a dandelion.
She rushed forward at full speed, sword ready. They hadn't measured her speed in a while, but she was moving at least twenty times normal, with a mind to match. Nothing and no one could hope to compete.
And yet he did.
A foot away from the singer, a field of light sprung up before her, just a soft glow, and she felt the sharp, tingling and burning sensation she recognized from her mission to North Island a few months ago. It felt like diving into a fire, and the more she pushed forward, the more it hurt. She veered off, let her speed die, and eyed the singer warily.
She knew that feeling. It was the very distinct pain of weaponized radiation—in this case, light, used as a sort of defensive wall.
She had grown sloppy. There wasn't enough light for the screamers to utilize, but there was light, and apparently the singers were more powerful. But still, he shouldn't have been smart enough to use his powers like that.
This wasn't a singer. At least, not like the others. This one seemed to have retained all his intelligence. A “defensive” singer. Laura had thought there might be some, but we hadn't seen any until now.
Where had this one come from? He wasn't like the others. Even the defensive zombies had never been smart enough to directly counter her abilities before. This was someone well-trained and experienced in using his powers. Did that mean—
Her brain was forced back to the matter at hand when the singer rushed forward, brandishing her knife.
She readied herself, falling into a defensive stance.
She had faith.
Chapter 49: LUX
?
He ignored the pain in his hand, the pain in his eye. He had a few toys to dull it, but mostly he just gritted his teeth and bore it. He had been a soldier since he was fifteen years old. He had taken worse hits than a knife to the eye.
The samurai girl, Akiyama, sidestepped his charge easily enough, and then increased the distance by a few more paces. She wasn't using her power; she was being cautious. She didn't know what he was capable of.
Worked for him.
Their powers were at roughly equal development, he thought, but he was still at a massive disadvantage. There was barely any light, so he was forced to use what little starlight leaked through the clouds. The screamers—or chorus, as the Composer called them—were far too weak to even manage that.
But that wasn't the real problem.
The problem was that he wasn't trying to kill her.
The Composer had strongly encouraged killing the Paladins at the first opportunity, so long as it was a “fair and honorable fight” (complete with air quotes), but he knew better. He had worked hard to get that creature to trust him, to convince it that he would be more useful without the failsafes the others had.
All screamers and singers started out as “defensive,” but if they tried to go against the Composer's wishes, even for a moment, they switched to “aggressive,” which was basically autopilot. Due to some fast talking when he was first captured, the Composer had removed—or perhaps simply never added them in the first place—the normal hypnotic blocks it put in all its creations. That meant he had free will. Mostly, anyway.
He needed to keep the Paladins alive. He needed them to find out what the Composer was up to, what its plans were. Sure, he had some idea. The bastard didn't make any effort to hide its bloodlust. But there was someone else pulling the strings here, keeping the Composer from going too crazy, and he wanted to know who. And stop them.
He wasn't in a position to stop the Composer. He didn't know who it was—men and monsters, he didn't even know its real gender. He didn't have most of the hypnotic blocks, but he still had the one that made it impossible to identify it. Whenever he met it in person, it looked different, its image twisting and writhing before his very eyes. It gave him a headache.
Akiyama dashed forward at super speed again, and he barely got his screen up in time.
He couldn't afford to be distracted. Right now, he needed to figure out how to get both of them out of this alive.
His reservoir was mostly spent. With the current level of ambient light, he could barely do more than a single screen before he had to wait for it to replenish.
Luckily, Akiyama didn't know that, and dodged to a few feet away, watching him warily. If she attacked now he wouldn't be able to stop her, but she was playing it safe.
He did have some advantages over her, though. He could give orders to the screamers, tell them where to find her and to
attack. He was hesitant to do that, not least because it wasn't the direct, fine-tuned command that the Composer had. It had simply left a standing order for them to obey him, and using the link they all shared, he could issue instructions. But he couldn't take direct control, which limited his options. Orders or not, they were still stupid.
Sure, he could make the singers attack all at once, but they'd just end up killing her. But if he tried to communicate, he risked the Composer finding out. No, he needed to disengage as quickly as possible. Merely demonstrating his intelligence should be enough to set the Paladins on the right path. Probably.
Before Akiyama got the nerve to strike again, he dashed forward, making sure to keep her outside of his blind spot. He feinted with the knife, and when she instinctively raised her sword, he struck her wrist with his other hand hard enough to crack bone.
She didn't drop her weapon—she was experienced, to be sure—but her strength was greatly diminished. Her wrist probably wasn't actually broken, but it definitely hurt like hell. She wouldn't be able to use that hand for a while.
Perfect. Now he just needed to disable one of her legs. Even at super speed, she wouldn't be able to follow him on a sprained ankle. And it did need to be sprained, not broken. The screamers would get her if her injuries were too bad, and the Composer would notice if he ordered them to hold back.
“Over here! I see them!”
He glanced towards the source of the shouting and cursed. It was a vampire, about fifteen feet away, wielding what looked like a tranquilizer rifle. He couldn't see the drake's emblem well enough to identify his subculture, but there were more behind him, neutralizing the screamers with military efficiency.
This was the last thing he needed right now. If he was captured, nothing good would come of it. He was under no illusions about how the Composer felt about him. It would cheerfully kill him if he became a liability. And he was pretty sure it could take direct control of him, even without the hypnotic blocks, so it would probably make him commit suicide.
But maybe...
Yes, he could use this to my advantage. He opened the link to the other singers, gave the order, and waited. A heartbeat later...
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