Dimension

by Shay Zana

  “Deo,” he unexpectedly hears from Mazayus. “Get your ass off that temple, now! I don’t care how you do it, just do it!”

  Jump? Frowning in confusion, Deo’s reply is cut short when the temple yawns violently in sudden convulsion. Blazing fire caresses the temple’s flanks, spurting outward like spits of heat, invading Deo’s ventilation system. Swearing, he pushes off the wall and pivots, witnessing the embrace of the tornado and the temple’s submission.

  “Really sick of falling off things,” he grizzles to himself. He digs his remaining strength to the ground, and in a long strive, smashes through the guard railing and dives headfirst off the face of the 200 story building. Broken fragments of railing plummet with him, his angle skillfully aligning with the swerving Euphrates River below as it curves around to hug the side of the temple before twisting off further across Babylon. In his peripheral vision, he can see the tornado distortion engulf the entirety of the Temple of Anzac, reaching down from the upper atmospheres in hunger.

  This is going to hurt.

  From the enclosing distance within Altair, the crew can see a tiny black figure plunging off the side of the temple right before the fire of the tornado eats it up into nothing but glowing ash. The funnel of the tornado has narrowed in its descent from the upper atmospheres, but still nothing has been spared in the wake of the distortion, leaving behind a charred and burned trail. Its speed is erratic, and the funnel is beginning to bend and lean, sneaking up on Deo to catch him off guard. All they could do was watch helplessly.

  Barely entering communications range, Mazayus is attempting to contact Deo again, but the link has gone dead. “The distortion is interfering,” he announces as the crew stand idle. “Lost his signal.”

  While nobody notices Kitera close her eyes and cringe in concentration, Natheus draws his Phoenix and treads for the airlock.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Mazayus demands.

  Natheus does not stop. “If he dies, so does the mission.”

  “His signal’s out.”

  Natheus twists now. “So we allow him to die?”

  The wise man flounders for a solution, scrolling the tactical station for a lock on Deo. “I’ve lost a visual, and his biocode is nothing but static. We have no way to track him.”

  “I do,” Kitera speaks up, eyelids revealing a globular landscape of pearlescent silver. “I feel him.” Without another word, she follows in Natheus’ footsteps for the airlock, her pace subtly quickening.

  “Kitera...!” Mazayus calls nervously, moving from his station in attempt to stop her, but she quickens her pace to a sprint, all other motion draining in speed.

  “Stop her!” he tries at Natheus.

  But as she rushes past him, Natheus encounters an outlandish vibe in his being, a restraining coercion that flattens his will and highlights her will as justified, and so he lets her pass willingly.

  “Natheus!” Mazayus scolds, but it is too late.

  As Altair dips to the Euphrates River, Kitera swan dives out the airlock, her cloak whispering apart in the hot wind of the tornado to snap away in the torrents. A grainy vision of fire envelopes her eyes for a moment before her dive takes her body rushing at the reflective river below, its disturbed waves reaching up at her. As she collides with the water, her bones rattle, and a surge of desperation shoots through as she kicks for the surface again, lungs already screaming for air. Her barely clad body is pierced with the sudden hit of icy water, but is soon overtaken by the sweeping of unstable currents, water chopping and frothing.

  As her head breaks the surface, Kitera takes a gasp of fresh air and clings on to her upright orientation, constantly swamped by waves and sloshing rapids. The roaring distortion alongside the river is corrupting its once stable flow, forcing it to collect raining debris and cracking its banks. Structures have fallen to cripple the waterways, creating uneven surfaces along the river floor, resulting in rapids and eddying chaos.

  She fights for direction, feeling the Zodiacs latching onto her consciousness with an anxious hope, lending her their guidance like a lightened path to Deo’s presence. The Euphrates River snakes past the distortion narrowly, leaving its evil might behind to tear up more of Babylon, and although the Cipher can decipher the death and pain and torment around her, her mind screens it all out, weaving past all of the collective sensations to just focus on him.

  Deo’s body is motionless within the gush, just beneath the surface, his weight dragging him down. She paddles for him furiously, drawing on experience and techniques learned at a young age in harsh environments of survival. At last, her effort pays off, angling for him narrowly as her lighter weight drifts her along. She makes a final stroke and grabs onto him, hauling him upward with assistance of the weightless affect of the water, his weight slowing her down as she manages to lock herself around his body. If her trajectory had been any further off, she would have missed him and rushed right past him. She gives a silent prayer to the Zodiacs for their aid.

  Now that she has him, she gnarls her teeth and attempts to backstroke him toward the river bank, but without luck. He is too heavy, the water is too cruel, and she is running out of time. She needs to pull him back to consciousness. With effort, Kitera crawls around his figure, facing his front to lift his helmeted head up above water. She slaps at his visor, the usual red hue of his entity’s symbiosis with the faceplate absent. His entity is hibernating.

  “Deo!” she cries at him over the roaming water. “Deo, wake up!” Fingers fumbling with the underside control panel of his helmet, she is able to unseal the lock and force it to morph away from his head. Water spills out, causing her to swear in her native tongue and feel for a pulse at his throat. He is alive. She firmly slaps at his cheek with a flat palm, his face still motionless.

  “Ada! Paragon, wake up!”

  Letting out a frustrated wail, she dives a hand down through the water to feel at his armour, searching for a utility pouch that may contain an entity shot. She locates several pouches, but none contain a slim device. “Isik!” She grabs at his slack face, his hair clinging to his cheekbones, and the prick of his thick stubble softened in the damp drowning. “Deo, please!”

  Ahead, Kitera can see the edge of the Euphrates River, the waterfall that drops off the edge of Babylon Skycity. She gives a fierce and hopeless cry as the thought of falling slams into her mind like a piece of solid ice, shattering across her thoughts and soaking her in panic.

  “DEO!”

  And at the shrill sound of his Cipher’s final plead, the Paragon breaks from his slumbering state and instinctively grasps her body tighter to his, his awakening steered by an activated protection instinct before he can even comprehend the situation.

  Kitera is startled as one of his arms locks around her waist, but she too finds herself clinging to him even closer, relief and a heart wrenching emotion shooting through her. “The edge, Deo!”

  He takes his eyes off hers and glances at the approaching waterfall. The skycity’s failsafe must have deactivated. Usually a protective kinetic wall is placed around the edge of the waterfall to stop swimming citizens from falling, circulating them around safely. Quickly, he looks around for something, anything, to grab a hold of. Decrepit pylons from fallen structures create hazards in their path, but they can also be a means for survival.

  “Hold on!” he rasps to Kitera, who climbs around to his back and claws onto his shoulders like a frightened creature. Deo swims with all his might to the right edge of the river, but with his entity hibernating, his unstoppable action over the recent hours finally catches up with him, and fatigue ambushes him. He is unable to swim from the path of incoming debris, and both are ravaged by the collision, Kitera losing her grip and pushed under by a vicious wave. Deo cries for her, losing a visual again as his back slams into a chunk of pillar and piles of stone.

  Caught in the rapids, Kitera battles for air, sputtering through thick water as it pulls her under. She can no longer see Deo for all the heaving waves, alte
ring their heights before dipping low and thrashing her under again. She can hear him shouting her name, but her voice is so consumed by water that she cannot muster a return call.

  He bares his teeth and fights into the water relentlessly for her, feeling fluid saturate his lungs but not allowing it to impede him as he coughs it all out. Her silence has his heart hammering in panic, the thought of her drowning pushing him harder, willing his power on, his limbs stabbing in an adrenaline fuelled madness.

  After struggling through debris and making contact several times, Kitera manages to latch onto a slab of a fallen pillar, hands slipping down its length until her fingers succeed. She is sheltered by the turmoil enough to gather her bearings again, though the surrounding rush is tugging relentlessly and swaying the pillar loose. She groans as she pulls in, water leaking from her mouth in coughs, splashes punishing her from all directions.

  Deo finally hears her scream out for him, and just ahead, through the obscuring chaos, he can see her clinging to a fallen pillar, but a pillar that is dangerously close to slipping and pulling in the rest of its fallen structure with it. She will be crushed. He powers toward her, swimming almost horizontally as the river flows. “Swim!” he yells to her, nearing her but knowing he will not be in reach.

  Kitera hesitates before a rattle of the pillar startles her, drawing her eyes to where it joins a much larger part of the temple’s debris. Chunks of carved stone plop down in the water around her, the forerunner to its eventual demise. Letting go, the currents once again sweep her away, but she summons her adept ability in the element of water and angles for Deo. As he nears, she paddles ferociously in a fight against the strong current, kicking her legs repeatedly, channelling her survival instincts. In one long reach of hands, they grasp each other as the pillar finally gives way, raining a deluge of rock at them.

  Deo clutches Kitera to his chest and pivots, sheltering her from flinging rock. Impacts against his back push them both under, but the Paragon rights himself and resurfaces quickly. All along the river’s banks, structures are crumbling and infesting the waters. The water is heaving more violently as the skycity shatters from deep within, and the heat from the savage twister leaves hot embers floating through the red winds. He can see the mist of the edge so clearly. Why did she do it? Why did she go in after him?

  “Don’t let go,” he tells her breathlessly, and she can only respond in kind with a small breathy sound as she adheres to his back. Deo exerts all of his remaining strength into a hopeless struggle, but his muscles are just too soaked in drought and heaviness that his physical power will not come to his summoning. At the nearing roar of the waterfall, he lets out a growl of fury and defeat, feeling Kitera’s body tighten and tense around him as she also knows their fate. Without his entity, he will not be able to cushion their impact with the ocean of Kronos.

  “Alira mokana,” he hears her whisper softly into his ear before pressing her forehead to his temple, but he catches the fearful tremble in her voice.

  And together they fall.

  ESCAPE

  The sting of the admiral’s harsh words stay with Rockland as he is prodded and shoved along the halls of the Oceanus by several masked guards, all of them genetically altered to be superior soldiers. He wonders if their supersoldier status in the UEU means anything to the cyborg Paragons. All soldiers in the UEU are considered supersoliders due to their extensive genetic manipulation, but next to Paragons, they all seem insignificant.

  “Pick up the pace,” growls one of his guards as he gives a nasty prick in the back.

  Rockland just shoots the man a sour expression and considers flipping him off, but realises he cannot with his kinetic restraints binding his wrists. He continues on through the monstrous warship, letting his dark thoughts accumulate and whirl. Has he made a mistake siding with those Paragons and their Cipher, Katana, Kiara, Kittywhogivesafuck. In his gut, he knows she had spoken the truth, something inside of him just clicked while he was listening to her. Maybe it was the Zodiacs influencing his judgment. Can they do that? He feels lost and without direction, like he is responsible to take on the entire universe single-handedly, and if he fails, then game over, everyone dies. But has the game ended before it even began? He failed already, about to be thrown in the holding cells like a rabid animal, soon to be locked up inside a mental facility back on Eden... No, Eden is gone. Panic and depression dances all around him, his mind an utter mess, curdling, still trying to process everything. Maybe Coleman was right, maybe he is losing his mind...

  Oh Kagen, my brave son, and my poor Sadie. Were they both on Eden when it happened? Are they still alive somewhere, trapped in some sort of abyssal tier in space, waiting for him to find them? One thing he knows for certain is that he will never rest until he finds his children, and he will find them, even if the Zodiacs or those Demons fight his every step. Even if the UEU declares war on him and pursue him to the end of the universe. He will find them.

  But he cannot think of that now.

  As they trudge their way through corridors and emerge in a crowded lobby, Rockland notices many of the crew are gathering to the observatory windows, muttering in low voices amongst themselves. From his approaching angle, all he can perceive are the scattered stars and the fury of naval combat over Kronos. Curious, he speeds up his pace to join the spectators, his guards just as curious as they trot beside him closely, weapon muzzles still to his back.

  All attention is locked to that monstrous fire-tornado as it undulates across the atmosphere of Kronos, spearing down to the surface in a thinning length. The nebulous gas actively swirls into this vortex with spasms of static electricity, feeding it. Rockland can see the opening of the tornado like the eye of a hurricane. This is one of the strangest and most unnatural distortions he has witnessed yet. He can see vessels fighting a gravitational pull that seems to have generated within, their hulls snapping like taut paper until they submit to disintegration.

  Panic stricken, the spectators begin to back away from the view, and the subtle vertigo of the lurching Titan brings them all to heightened panic. Rockland can feel the Oceanus engage its main thrusters and attempt to divert course from the distortion event, but he knows it is too late, that thing is growing too fast, like a wildfire hitting its stride.

  “This is the admiral speaking,” ricochets Coleman’s voice over the intercoms. “All crew buckle up and brace for heavy acceleration. Do not attempt to abandon ship and engage SS speeds, we are about to enter the event horizon of a distortion event.”

  At the scattering of the crowd and the distraction of his guards, Rockland takes his chance. Having spotted the pistol at the belt of an operative just in front of him, he moves for it, snatching it and swinging his aim around on one of his guards. Kinetic energy weaved with a lace of radioactive properties smacks into the soldier’s chest, making his shields slurp over his body in protection. Ducking through the stampede for cover, Rockland morphs for a fully automatic edition, firing off a sleek burst that coats the guard in fusion shards. As the fugitive makes a run for it, his shields absorbing shots, the radiated guard stumbles to his knees in intense nausea, blood exuding from a gaping mouth. The brief exposure will not kill him, however, just render him immobile.

  Tailed fiercely and with a hammering heartbeat, Rockland dashes desperately through the corridors, pushing past fleeing and panicking crew members and dodging fire seemingly from all directions. He lets off a continuous stream of fusion shards as he flees down an adjacent corridor, his eyes darting around at the hall labels for directions. He is headed for the exterior docks of deck 19, where the Marauding Exile has been grounded, locked to its dock. Outside through the passing windows, he can see the fume of the distortion growing by the second as the Oceanus is pulled into its gravity well, already in too deep to engage star shift speeds and escape its tug, the risk of encountering the collapsing tiers of space guaranteed. How is Coleman planning to get out of this one? Never mind him, Jaron, how are you planning to get out of this one?<
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  “Kann, do you read?” he calls into his earchip, the ringing gunshots overpowering his voice. “Do you copy!?” After stumbling through endless halls, always only mere corner-turns ahead of his pursuers, Rockland hears that reply he has been praying to the gods for.

  “I read you, Commander. What’s going on? Why have we been grounded?” First Officer Ike Kann replies with his usual hard edge, though a hint of panic seeps through.

  “We’re pulling into a distortion event and I’m running my ass off through the bowels of this damned thing trying to get to you.” He pauses to fend off his pursuers with a few sprays from his auto pistol, only grazing at their shields. “I’ll explain later. Can you get the Exile unlocked?”

  “Zee’s working on it, I’ll patch him in.”

  A moment later, Zee’s voice permeates Rockland’s earchips. “Commander, what the fuck have you done now?”

  “Not now, Zee.” He stumbles over a chair in a cafeteria, failing at catching himself due to his restrained wrists.

  “I can hear gunfire. Is somebody shooting at you?”

  Rockland’s shields oscillate rapidly to deflect shards, enabling him to slip unscathed through a narrow passageway that veers to the left, giving his shields the chance to regenerate. “You could say that.”

  “I take it the debriefing with the admiral didn’t go well, then?”

  “The stubborn old fuck has his head so far up his ass he can’t see his own shit,” Rockland replies bitterly as he rushes through a maintenance shaft, pistol lowered to the floor as he constantly checks back for any sighting of his pursuers. Holding the weapon is awkward. “Do you have access to the Oceanus’ schematics?”