No one dared say a word. I turned, glowered directly into Maya’s camera, and said, “From ice to ashes.”
Epilogue
I jolted awake. My heart raced so fast my ribs were on the verge of breaking open. All I could see were blotches of white and blurred figures. As I went to turn my head and survey my surroundings, a respirator covering my mouth yanked it back into place.
That was when I realized I was gagging. I grabbed the respirator, needles popping out of my arms as I moved, and pulled. The long tube attached to the respirator slid out of my throat, releasing all manner of phlegm and who knows what else as I gasped for a real breath. And kept on gasping. It felt like I’d been chained to the bottom of an ocean until I was on the brink of drowning, then launched to the surface.
I threw myself off whatever I was lying on. Countless more needles affixed to tubes popped out from every region of my body. My legs were weaker than after a month in a sleep-pod on a passenger liner. Or at least, one of them was. I couldn’t feel the other at all, which caused me to stumble forward into a counter upon an attempt to stand. My groping hands knocked over pieces of shiny equipment. Some fell and shattered. My hearing was so distorted that they could well have been explosions.
Fingerlike appendages wrapped my arm and heaved. Muffled voices murmured in my ears. I tore free and attempted to run, but again my numb leg caused me to fall. I grasped at the area in front of me, expecting to find air, but instead my hand smacked into something rigid and cold.
Once more someone pulled at me, hoisting me to my feet. I threw them off and hopped along on the leg I could feel while my hands skated across a smooth wall for balance. I continued until one sunk through an opening. A door. I grasped the edge, swung myself into the adjoining space, and found the wall again. This time it was coarse and lumpy, like the face of a cavern.
I clung to it for a few hops, then discovered that I wouldn’t topple as long as I pressed all my weight on the leg I could feel, as if there were a crutch in place of the other. I’m not sure where I was planning on going, but I hobbled as quickly as I could. Faster and faster, like a kid learning how to ride a rusty, Pre-Meteorite bike. Until I slammed into a railing.
I searched for the hand-bar, and once I found it I slouched all my weight onto my arms. My working leg burnt with soreness. Each heavy breath I drew stung deep in my chest, like a blade plunged through my sternum. My vision remained cloudy, but as I rested there the ability to sense shadows and depth returned.
It wasn’t cold enough to be Titan, but I was in some manner of grand hollow wreathed in solid rock. Aged air recyclers rattled through the darkness. An asteroid perhaps? My augmenting senses informed me that the gravity was too weak for it to be Earth or even Mars.
I squeezed my eyelids as hard as I could and reopened them, trying to drive away the blurriness. They were wet with tears even though I wasn’t crying, as confused by disuse as I was about what the fuck was going on. I repeated that procedure a few more times, and then I saw.
I was in a glass-enclosed observation booth. A newsfeed played on the view-screen just above me. The footage was violent. Bullets streaked down a hallway as a line of soldiers in white mowed down a group of soldiers in red. Reporters talked over the sounds of the battle, but my hearing was still too distorted to hear them. My vision, however, wasn’t. The ticker at the bottom read:
KALE TRASS AND THE CHILDREN OF TITAN SLAUGHTER THE LAST STRING OF RESISTANCE ON PERVENIO STATION.
My good leg wobbled and I had to squeeze the railing to keep from falling. The Children of Titan were winning already? That was impossible; I had to be dreaming. I took a few deep breaths, then prepared to take another look when I noticed that on the level the booth was overlooking, at the bottom of the lofty hollow, a group of twenty or so soldiers were training in hand-to-hand combat. Only they weren’t normal security officers. They wore all-black boiler-suits. Their hair was neat and trimmed, almost military-like. Their skin was pale and youthful. And over the left side of each one’s face, a yellow eye-lens was strapped. The same as the one Zhaff wore.
I fell to a knee. Images of the last memories I could draw on streamed through my consciousness. A gunshot. Blood freezing, leaving only Zhaff’s green eye visible through the stormy haze of Titan. Aria flying away above him.
My breathing hastened until I was hyperventilating, clutching my chest as if to hold my heart inside. I stared through glass at the numerous Zhaffs below. They’d stopped training, each of their shiny eye-lenses aimed up at me.
I keeled onto my side, my whole body going numb. The corners of my vision darkened as I grew woozy. Glinting yellow dots danced across the room, like stars against the blackness of space.
There was a hell, and I, Malcolm Graves, was in it.
PHOTO: MARILYN GLISCI
RHETT C. BRUNO has been writing since before he can remember, scribbling down what he thought were epic stories when he was young to show to his friends and family. He currently works at an architecture firm, but that hasn’t stopped him from recording the tales bouncing around inside of his head. Rhett is the author of the Circuit series and Titanborn. To learn more about Rhett C. Bruno’s books, sign up for his newsletter.
rhettbruno.com/
Twitter: @RCBruno44
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From Ice to Ashes Page 28