Catching Hell Part One: Journey
Page 8
He wasn't aware of any crowd noise as some stood in horror and others ran for their lives, but his mind (somewhere in the back where unimportant things were stored) recognized that the shouts of anger and fear had begun again. The words were meaningless. There was only Aryu and this thing from another time and place. A thing that, as far as Aryu was concerned, was an incarnation of the Devil Himself. A bringer of the darkness. A messenger of the apocalypse. Machines and Embracers: these things were the enemy.
He could have deduced that the thing had been here a while, seeing as how the crowd did not react the same way as he did. Sure, they were scared, but scared enough to run or at least not be paralyzed at the sight of it. He could also surmise that it even went a step beyond that. Sia was escorting the beast the whole way from inside the village council building, where one may go so far as to say it was a welcomed guest. Aryu could also likely deduce that if he and his village were doomed to destruction, it would be so already.
These were all things a rational person could have put together very easily.
At this moment, Aryu was not rational. In fact, it's a safe assumption that at this moment, he was one step up from a feral child raised by animals in the deep wilderness. One who knows only three things: hunger, fear, and survival.
The spinning, glowing blue eyes remained locked on him, whirling about the solid cores at various speeds. The thing was much taller than Aryu, but was skinny and ridged, like a steel skeleton come to life. No face. Barely a head, really. Just eyes in a round, flat metal plate.
Was he really home?
What was happening?
....How?
The thing was almost in front of him, gears and servos grinding until it had bent down to what could be called a knee, meeting the terrorized man face-to-mock-face.
“I believe, Aryu, that I understand your reaction entirely.” That voice! Gods, it was clear as a bell and twice as pleasant. It was surreal, like an educated teacher trying to get across a point to a child who won't listen. It was firm but understanding.
“Indeed, this whole village reacted the same way when I arrived. It took some...” a soft clicking somewhere inside its short, odd head, “...convincing, to have them understand that we mean no harm to them or you. We've been waiting for you, Aryu. You are very important to us.”
It spoke the words clearly, with proper inflections and emphasis. If you closed your eyes, there was no way to tell it apart from a regular human voice. The creepiness grew more and more.
Aryu heard these perfectly formed and well-chosen words, but they may as well have been garbled and unintelligible for the amount he understood. Confusion and fear continued their waltz through his head, neither daring to take the lead.
Aryu remained where he was, trying to grasp the words the thing was saying, head cocked slightly like a dog, confusion written all over his face.
“As I expected, it will clearly take a moment for my words to sink in. But rest assured, Aryu, I speak the truth of things.” Aryu’s body tensed as the thing grew closer, but he remained silent. “Huh, well, not surprising, really.” It let out a sigh, just like any other living, breathing, exasperated thing. “I believe you should come with us, Aryu. Ms. Sia and I both believe further discussion is warranted, but in a place a little less public.”
The first of the rational thoughts to come rose in Aryu. Aryu tore his vision away from the monster and its intrusive eyes and found Sia, now standing with her son Esgona, eyes softly staring at nothing specific. She was no longer the woman whose bravado and saber-rattling had shaken so many council meetings. This was a woman beaten to the limits of her mental strength. Aryu began to doubt she'd heard a word the thing had said. Her face said she hadn't.
“You must forgive her current state, sir.” Sir? “She is quite exhausted from the events of the last few weeks. Believe me, though. I speak for her, and I speak very clearly. We must adjourn to a more serene environment if we wish to continue. I believe the...” the clicking began again, “rabble, as it were, may cause us unnecessary distraction.”
The background drone of the crowd that hadn't run in terror became louder and louder until at last Aryu heard it for what it was: terrified people screaming for this thing to leave and take the winged man with him.
Aryu’s sense of survival was as keen as ever, and his most base instincts grew with every mental step he took back into the here and now.
He slunk back, away from the machine.
“Aryu, I am afraid I must insist on this matter.” It began to match his movements, inching forward as he moved away. “My purpose here is far more important than your petty fears and useless questions.”
With that, it began extending its arm, four grasping digits opening to grab Aryu.
When it was inches away, Aryu’s most primal urges, coupled with a newfound sense of power, didn't let it get any closer.
He pulled back quickly, rising to his feet as he did so, his right arm grasping the light, straight sword like an old pro, twisting it around his body until it came between him and the nightmare before him.
“I believe I made my stance on this issue quite clear, sir.” An edge of actual impatience inched into its pleasant voice. “There is no time for stupidity.”
As it rose to meet him again, grasping claws again coming closer, Aryu’s mind became clear as fallen snow. With one fluid motion of his wrist, the blade came across the lunging appendage, severing it like it was freshly baked bread right above its rotor-driven elbow. The scream of fear in the crowd was almost instantly drowned out by the inhuman noise that erupted from the machine. All hints of pleasantness were completely gone.
It was unlike anything Aryu had ever heard. Like an animal attacked by wolves, screaming for help or in pain, whichever instinct was stronger, but was then passed through some electronic megaphone.
The mechanical man staggered away, black and red fluid squirting out of the appendage that had moments ago had an arm attached. Now it flapped about like a giant chicken wing.
The claw on the ground still clutched and grabbed wildly, causing the rest of the arm to shudder back and forth like a fish. Soon it stopped as the fluid within ran out.
Esgona and his mother just stood there, terrified at what Aryu had done. The machine’s scream ceased instantly as it got proper footing. Its head swung wildly, looking for Aryu like a top on a stick.
Aryu was in the same state as before, tense and ready for another attack. The story of its arrival no longer mattered. His fear was being overrun by adrenalin and the rush of what he'd just done. If he had cut through it so easily, he had all the faith in the world that he could overcome another assault.
The eyes, those crazy, unreal eyes, narrowed and locked in on Aryu’s own. “You are as stubborn and useless as the rest of your kind, boy!” The voice was not calm but was certainly more human than that scream had been. “You WILL come with me, or I will burn this village to the ground, with or without you in it!”
Suddenly Aryu regained focus and remembered the blast from the night before. His left shoulder seemed to ache at the sudden remembrance. This thing was not lying. It had the power. He lowered the sword, keeping it at the ready. “I'm willing to guess I could cut you down before you had the chance to give the order.”
“Perhaps that is true,” Aryu could almost see the smirk on the featureless face, “but what about the army that follows me, Aryu O'Lung'Singh? I doubt you could stop every one of us. You must know by now we are coming, and it is only by luck and our good graces we haven't destroyed your home like we have everything else.”
“I really doubt your graces are good.”
“Huh, good and bad are simply a matter of perspective, fool. All it took was this brief conversation to give the order. This town now has five minutes until it is destroyed, and that's an order that can only be deactivated by me.”
Aryu started to think it was a poor choice to antagonize this thing, his original fear returning as the situation played out.
Aryu laid him out on the ground with the most forceful and emotion-fueled punch he could muster. Now was not the time to tolerate Esgona and his juvenile bickering. As an established and proven man of Tan Torna Qu-ay, this boy had said enough. Besides, telling Esgona to shut up was obviously a useless gesture.
Sia yelped as he went down, rushing to his aid as blood began pouring from his mouth and onto the ground. She held his hand while looking up at Aryu. “Please, Aryu, do as it says; we're the only place that's safe. That's why there are so many others here; they know we're safe if we have you. That's all they wanted. You and only you can stop this!”
Tears filled her eyes. Her straight black hair, which had started neatly pulled back, was falling around her face. So much seemed to have happened here, and Aryu didn't even know where to begin. He just stared at the two of them.
“Four minutes, Aryu. Make the most of them.” The chipper edge was returning to the thing’s voice as it regained command of the situation. It made Aryu sick.
He looked back to the thing silently, studying it, still as horrifying and grotesque as the first time he saw it, but now loathing mixed with his fears. “Why me? Why am I so important?”
“Well, I believe that would have been explained had you allowed us to do so in the first place. As it stands now, you have less than three and a half minutes to agree and come with me. I will not waste any more time on this matter. My life, as it were, is very much expendable. Yours, and those of your fellow villagers, however...”
Things just seemed to be going from bad to worse. Aryu, filling more and more with contempt as he did so, sheathed the sword and rested his wings against himself. A beaten man. “Where am I going?”
“Away, that's all that is important right now. Three minutes left.”
“I need to see my parents before we go.”
Clicking started again in its head, longer than previous times. “Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Toma and Riva O'Lung'Singh. No, you may not see them.”
Aryu’s blood boiled. “You had better give me a good reason why, or I'll have....”
“They're gone, Aryu,” said a quiet voice from below him. Sia was looking at him, sadness in her eyes. “They left the day after you and Johan. They never said anything to anyone. They simply vanished.”
Aryu was lost to emotion once more. There was too much to process. Pure, raw egotism emanated from the mechanical man. “The loss of your parents was unexpected, Aryu. We wanted them alive. We had many questions for them about you. But we cannot locate them. I can confirm that they are no longer in this village, and as such, you no longer have a familial connection to this place. The choice sounds simple, and the clock is ticking. Come with me and we may still find them.”
Aryu heard nothing past Sia’s first words. Without thinking, without feeling, without a moment’s thought to anything but the faces of his loving parents: the mustached face of his father or the wavy-haired gentleness of his beautiful mother. His first instinct was that it was lying, but that only made Aryu madder. His parents had sacrificed so much for him. They would not abandon him.
Blinding, unbridled rage surrounded him like fire. He ran screaming toward the metal giant, eyes burning with tears of pain and anger. Unlike the last time, the machine was ready for his assault, side-stepping quickly to avoid him, swinging its good arm across the back of his head with a sick “thud”. Aryu was unconscious before he hit the ground, blood oozing from the back of his head.
“So predictable.”
The thing approached him, looking him over top to bottom. “No permanent injuries detected. We were right. An angry Aryu with nothing to lose was easier to apprehend. All's well that ends well.”
It bent down, grasping Aryu between the wings. With one almost graceful motion, Aryu was tossed over the thing’s broad shoulder as it turned to leave.
“Wait! Is the attack called off?” Sia was helping Esgona to his feet as she called after it. “You said we'd be safe as long as we delivered you Aryu.”
“And so you have. A deal is a deal. You were safe, he is delivered, and the deal is concluded. Thus, the attack will go ahead as planned.”
“WHAT!” She ran at it, throwing herself in its path. “Aryu is yours now! Call off your attack! Thousands will die!” Sia suddenly realized how foolish she sounded. It was right. The deal was done.
“Ms. Sia, I never had the ability to call off the attack. Your naiveté is as delightful as it is pathetic. I believe you have less than two minutes left. Make the most of it.”
A rumble started at its feet as a controlled burn began to erupt from its lower legs. In an instant, it had begun hovering, readying to leave. Sia jumped at it, throwing it off and causing it to spiral away, nearly losing its grip on Aryu as he dangled lifelessly with his wings flapping about.
“Now, Ms. Sia, this will not do.” A quick rotation of its lower torso spun one of its legs around, the other pointing down to maintain its balance as it hovered there. The extended leg came across Sia’s face, shearing off skin and muscle before the burn of the rocket ripped through whatever was left exposed. Sia was dead long before her body hit the ground.
Esgona, still woozy from Aryu’s hit, could only whimper before falling himself, the situation catching up to him as he passed out from shock and terror.
“Now then boy, away we go.” The feet came together again and began lifting it skyward once more.
It was still not to be. No sooner had it began its acceleration, it detected the movement from behind. Its head swiveled about just in time to see the blade of a very large, oddly colored man begin to rip through it, the blade moving through its hardened body just as easily as Aryu’s had.
“N…N…Nix…Ix…Ixon…” was all it could get out before falling back to earth in two equal pieces.
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Nixon was content to just let the scenario play out as he saw it. Clearly, the sword-bearer was at the mercy of the robot before him and would be defeated shortly. Problem solved.
Nix had exquisite hearing, learning all he could from a great distance while still concealed in the shadows. The dispersed crowd made it that much easier to see and hear everything that was going on.
It was a simple decision to make. Hearing the plans unfold, he knew another of those freakishly strong bombs was on its way here, and as a maintainer of the natural balance, so many lives wasted was heartbreaking even for one such as him.
Time makes all men (and non-men) realists, though. He knew the time he had left (thanks to the machine’s convenient updates), and he knew there was nothing within his considerable power that he could do to help them. A sad truth, but the truth, nonetheless. The bomb was too powerful.
He could save one, or ten, or maybe twenty before it was too late, but one stupid glitch stopped him from doing even that. Should any one of those one, ten, or twenty be a difficulty he'd not anticipated, a foot dragger if you will, he could very well be at the mercy of that bomb blast again, in a place he knew hostiles to be. A risk he simply could not take.
He would weep for these people, but he could not save them.
The upside to this destruction was that his target would be destroyed as well. He clearly could not make it out before the blast hit, and should he leave with the mechanical man, he would be an easy target to track.
Ah, but the best-laid plans and all that.
It would have gone off perfectly, Nixon ready to leave, until he heard the conversation turn to the target's parents and their subsequent abandonment.
He had seen these sob stories many times before. The tragic upbringings that led to the heartless killer who wielded the Power and the blade-like toys. It seemed almost all of them he had faced would wax nostalgic about th
e terrible series of events that brought them to that point and how it made them justified in their choices and right to do what they had.
Nixon never cared. His purpose was absolute, his methods unwavering. No man was above God’s law, no matter how hard the road they had traveled.
What caused him to pause was that this was clearly the moment the target, an apparently winged man (he’d seen winged people before, but never so far from their home) found out this information. That alone was more than he had expected to be a part of.
Nixon had always shown up late to these parties and had never been privy to such a heartbreaking scene. He had no parents, only parental figures, and even then he could not fathom the pain this young man had just been subjected to. If that pain didn’t make him summon the Power, he clearly had none of the Power to summon.
Once again, that unrelenting feeling that this was not the way it was supposed to be was upon him. He had only brief instances to think out his next course of action.
He watched as the target rushed at the machine, only for the swift and nimble mechanical intruder to dance away. The extremely skilled blow to the back of head at just the right location had just the right power to knock him out with no serious damage. Still, the Power wasn’t summoned in any way Nixon could feel.
He watched the lifeless body get hoisted onto the machine’s shoulders. The woman attacked suddenly, and he flinched knowing what was coming next. Sure enough, she was dead moments later. Nixon couldn’t stay inactive much longer, and the weapon was getting closer.
There was no more time to delay. No matter the series of events that had brought him here, this kind of ruthless and unjustified terrorism was not going to be tolerated. Nixon had always had some levity in his missions for such causes.
He paused, for just an instant, considering the consequences of the action he was about to take.
Was he really about to save the life of the target during this act of revenge against a merciless, unfeeling machine? Was this even the target? He had not embraced the Power, had no intentions to use whatever powers he did have at his moment of ultimate suffering (this was key, as Nixon knew such self-control to the possessors of the Power was unfathomably unlikely). He was still a boy, or barely a man. Nixon had rarely been called to dispatch a mortal man or woman, and when he had, they had been ages older than this.