by TL Rese
On the elevator up, we watched the light move across the numbers. It seemed to take an eternity. Audrey indicated the security camera. “All that footage’ll be gone by tomorrow morning,” she muttered. “Nakada’ll cover her tracks; wouldn’t be the first time she’s done this.” The elevator stopped and the doors slid open onto a dark hallway lined with doors.
“She could’ve gone through any of these,” I whispered.
Audrey held up her hand, the golden ring bright across her finger. “There’s a gate here. I can feel the key drawn to it. I think it’s that way.” She broke into a run and I raced after her. We reached a set of double doors. Audrey forced it open with a push, the lock giving beneath her weight.
Audrey fell to the floor, Nakada on her with her black blade against Audrey’s shield.
Audrey expanded her shield so Nakada was flung across the room, crashing through cubicle walls. Nakada leapt to her feet and ran from Audrey down the office. I sprinted after them, rounding a cubicle just in time to see Nakada’s coat disappearing through a door at the far end. The door slammed shut, but Audrey kicked it open.
I stopped, stunned at the doorway. A spike was frozen in the air right in front of me, hovering between my eyes. The streetlights fell through the large office windows and illuminated the spike into a black shine. Behind it, I saw Audrey and Nakada fighting across the office floor. I let out my breath and it fogged into a flat pallor. I was inside a kyrion shield.
Audrey drew her sword but Nakada’s whip sliced Audrey’s blade in half; the tip of the blade launched across the room and slid under the desk. Audrey reached towards it; as if she held the broken blade at a distance, Audrey threw it at Nakada, the blade flying from the floor. Nakada cut it apart with a crack of her whip. Audrey swung her sword in an arc and her sword regenerated. Nakada’s whip lashed against it again, wrapping in coils around the white blade. But before Nakada could pull the sword from Audrey, Audrey jerked her blade back and the whip flew from Nakada’s hand, landing near me.
Nakada unsheathed her own sword. She centered it before her, its curved blade rising against her features. She pulled her weapon apart from the handle and it split into two identical blades. She swung her blades quickly as she advanced. Audrey dodged behind her shield and struck with her blade. Nakada leapt to avoid the sword, turning in the air and landing on the desk behind Audrey.
Nakada aimed a blow that was blocked before jumping to the floor. The desk was between them. Nakada kicked the desk, her boot smashing against it; the table flew towards Audrey, its contents scattering, littering the room with paper that fell to carpet the ground. The computer crashed against the wall.
As the desk propelled towards her, Audrey sliced the desk in two, her blade a needle cutting through wood. The two halves of the desk swept past her and smashed out the window, shattering the glass and letting in the great sound of traffic below.
Horrified, I watched as the broken desk began to fall; it would crush the commuters on the streets. Before I could even finish the thought, Audrey hurled a long line of white fire from her hand. The flames shot out the window and consumed the halves of the desk. The fire ate itself up and vanished. When it was gone, all that was left were ashes that sprinkled down.
Nakada took this chance to dive for her whip, sliding across the floor towards me. She looked at me briefly as she grabbed her whip; she was so close, I could see her pupils slit like those of a cat. In a feline motion, the way a cat might swipe at a mouse, Nakada slashed her whip at me and it struck the shield with a crack.
I heard the fire alarm sounding. The sprinklers spewed water like rain, soaking the paper that lay everywhere, the water coursing over the shield around me. Nakada latched her whip onto the sprinkler, pulling herself up, swinging across the room before landing on the shattered windows. “Why do you keep following me?” Nakada cried. As if to answer her own question, her eyes fastened on the golden ring on Audrey’s finger and comprehension lit Nakada’s face.
Nakada lashed out, coiling her whip around the key on Audrey’s finger. With a flick of her whip, Nakada pulled the ring off and sent it flying out the window. Audrey ran to the window ledge; reaching with her sword, she caught the key on the tip of her blade.
Nakada coiled her whip around the spinning sprinkler and pulled herself up. She ran along the walls, flying through the sprinkler rain, before leaping in a kick at Audrey, striking with both her legs out. Audrey dodged to the side. Nakada flew past her, out the broken window, her whip trailing behind her.
As she fell, Nakada threw a golden ring out into the sky; it stretched into the length of a gate, high at the top of the city. Nakada swung her whip, latching onto the gate’s edge. The whip tightened. She soared easily over the city on her whip and disappeared into the gate. The last trace of her whip vanished and the gate closed with a white burst.
Audrey ran to me, her boots splashing on the wet paper. Her palm flattened over the shield around me, and suddenly, the waters from the sprinklers fell hard on me, soaking me through.
“You have two shields!” I shouted over the fire alarm.
“Only one! You can split it.” She closed her hand into a fist; when she opened her fingers again, there were three shields, exactly the same as the original. She did it again and there were five. Then again, and there was only one. She put it in her pocket.
“What about the key? Do you have it?” I asked.
She smiled in her wry way and held up her sword. There around its thin blade was the golden circlet of the ring. “Yup.” She drew the ring from the blade. “I have to go!” she cried. “It was nice meeting you, Kevin. Thank you for driving me.” Her lips twisted jokingly. “Get out of here before the firemen come.” She went to the broken window, tossing the key. It sailed out, stretching into a long ellipse that opened in the black skies.
She stepped onto the window ledge. She would jump into the night and fade into a memory. And my life would be ordinary again.
“Wait!” I cried. I sprinted across the soaking ground, my clothes heavy with water. “Take me with you.”
She looked at me, straightening in the clear frame of the shattered window. Her hair was drenched from the sprinklers; lines of water ran down her face. I could feel my own features wet with streaks trickling from my hair.
“What?” she said.
“Take me with you!” I pushed my hair from my forehead, blinking at the droplets that fell into my eyes. The night opened wide behind her, speckled with the lights of the cityscape.
“It’ll be dangerous, Kevin. I don’t know what’s on the other side of this gate. You’re safe here. Go back. Go back to your normal life.” She waved at me, motioning me away.
“It’ll be fine,” I said. “You worry too much.” In the streets below, the red lights of the fire engines were trying to push through traffic. “Hurry!” I reached for her.
“What if I can’t protect you? What if you die? Think about these things, Kevin.”
“I’m not gonna die. But if I die, then at least I die happy.” The fire engines wailed.
Audrey threw back her head, almost exasperated with indecision. In a sudden motion, she grabbed my hand. She leapt out over the city, pulling me behind her.
For an instant, I hovered above Los Angeles and saw it from a view I’d never seen before. In that moment, I knew the city the way a bird might, suspended high over the freeways between the steel of skyscrapers.
Then we fell into the gate.
Chapter 20