Final Empire

by Blake Northcott

  Shit. This wasn’t the plan.

  “This is your last chance, Brynja. I will not make the offer again.” He sounded like an irritated parent, not even attempting to maintain his composure. It was almost embarrassing.

  “Or what? You’ll kill me? Kill Mox and McGarrity and everyone else? Go ahead – I’ve got nothing left to live for, anyway. You’ve stripped everything from me.”

  McGarrity’s face twisted into a mask of confusion, and as much as I’d tried to maintain my poker face I knew I was failing. Brynja was going way, way off-script here. We’d discussed her making some small talk, turning on me, and then sauntering towards a distracted Kenneth, where she’d be close enough to administer the pill. This was pure improv…or it was something else. She was running on emotion and it was getting away from her; fists clenched, the heat rising in her face – she was losing it. If she had an alternate plan in mind I didn’t know what it was, and this sure as hell wasn’t the time to flip the script.

  “I’ve done nothing but give, can’t you see that?” Kenneth’s voice cracked with emotion; a single thread of humanity barely audible in his words. “People needed guidance and I provided it. The world needed someone to look up to and I became that. You needed a physical body – a host for your consciousness – and I crafted you one. I’m exhausted from being everything to everyone.”

  “Are you kidding me?” she shouted, stomping towards him. “You gave me this body because you wanted me to be your plaything! You stripped me of my ghosting ability because it scared you, and you turned my blood into some sort of tracking device so you could keep tabs. I’m not a fucking pet, Kenneth – you don’t just get to neuter me and train me and put me on a leash.”

  “You didn’t like your ghosting ability!” he pleaded.

  “It doesn’t matter what you thought I wanted or didn’t want – it wasn’t yours to take away. Can’t you see that?”

  Kenneth looked past her, eyes ablaze. “He’s brainwashing you, can’t you see that?”

  “Mox did nothing. I can think for myself, and if I’d wanted to be with you, I would’ve been. I barely knew you in Arena Mode, Kenneth – you were air lifted out of the battle zone and hospitalized before I had the chance to even see the real you.”

  “Because of him!” he shouted wildly, jamming an accusatory finger in my direction. “You have no idea what it was like – what I went through in that coma he put me in. I was trapped in a prison of pure darkness. I was fully aware, surrounded by sounds and the voices of those who came and went, but I couldn’t call out to them. Each minute lasted an hour. Each day felt like a year. I heard the sobs of my mother, pleading to a higher power that I be freed from my confines. Of course her prayers went unanswered, and I listened as she slowly unraveled, one plea at a time. And that wasn’t even the worst I had to endure: the doctors came and went, unsure of how to diagnose a superhuman. One afternoon a pair of interns mused aloud that it would be fantastic if I’d die so they could slice me open, tearing out my insides to satisfy their curiosity. Dissecting me like a fucking frog in a high school science class.”

  “Well boo fucking hoo,” McGarrity said in a mocking sing-song voice, and everyone turned to face him. “So you were scared of the dark and heard some things that made you sad. Welcome to being an adult, asshole. You’re gonna experience things that rub you the wrong way once in a while. Everything you see and read and hear isn’t going to feel great but we all just man up and move on – it’s called ‘life’. You don’t get to claim innocence and become a sociopath because you can’t deal with your own emotions.”

  Brynja cleared her throat. “Ahem.”

  “Sorry,” McGarrity clarified. “Man or woman up.”

  “Thank you.”

  Kenneth had clearly heard enough. He charged. “Stay out of this you son of a bitch!” A construct of brilliant blue energy appeared in his hands: a broadsword, three feet long, and it was a near-replica of McGarrity’s. Steve’s own weapon sparked to life, a vicious yellow blade forged from pure sunlight, just in time to make a horizontal block. Their swords collided. Brynja and I scurried to safety, watching the battle unfold.

  I don’t know if Kenneth had been practicing swordplay but his movements were precise; highly polished and fluid, as if he were wielding an elegant rapier, and not a two-handed blade.

  McGarrity blocked and parried each oncoming strike with equal precision. There was no clatter of steel on steel, but when the weapons of energy collided they rippled and hummed like massive power generators, casting off waves of heat and blinding flashes of light. The collisions intensified and they both seemed to gain momentum with each passing stroke, neither seeming to tire.

  The next sequence happened so swiftly it almost appeared choreographed: a low, arcing swing from McGarrity’s sword was aiming to take Kenneth out at the knees, but he leapt. The glowing blade dragged along the tarmac, carving a nasty scar that smoldered and coughed up bright orange embers. Before McGarrity could reset his position Kenneth’s blade found it’s mark, the tip grazing his exposed bicep. It was more than enough.

  McGarrity screamed and clutched his arm, oozing blood, his sword now nowhere to be found. It had disappeared the moment he’d been sliced, and his concentration broken.

  This wasn’t the distraction I was hoping for but it would have to do.

  When Kenneth raised his sword overhead and prepared to deliver the coup de grâce, Brynja’s hand ghosted into his throat and retracted. He turned and swung on instinct, his sword passing harmlessly through her.

  Kenneth wobbled, eyes fluttering. The pill had dissolved instantly and was already coursing through his bloodstream, slowing his motor skills.

  “Youuuuuu…” he slurred, lurching towards me. “You did this. You ruined my life!”

  He swung a gloved fist like a punch-drunk boxer and I swayed, easily avoiding his looping left hook.

  I retaliated with a stiff right cross, tattooing his exposed jaw with my metallic gauntlet. The shot buckled his knees and sent him into a heap, crumbled at my feet.

  “And that’s what you get when you…” I trailed off a moment. “Shit. I got nothing.”

  McGarrity stumbled towards me, hand tightly clutching his bicep. “That’s okay,” he winced. “Not every action sequence needs to end with a cool one-liner.” It was bleeding profusely; his entire forearm and the right leg of his jeans were stained with crimson, and even his white Nike’s had been spattered red. Kenneth’s blade must have nicked an artery.

  “You need a doctor,” I told him. “But first we need to get Kenneth in the freezer. Karin,” I shouted into my com. “Can you hear me? We need you, STAT. Open the box.”

  “On my way, boss,” she replied, and the TT-100 immediately burst into view, making its approach.

  The steel cryogenic cylinder that was tethered to the underbelly was clearly visible as well, until it wasn’t. Something from the ocean had snaked up and grabbed it, tore it off and crushed it like a tin can. It dragged the twisted remains underwater.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Lying face down on the tarmac, bleeding from a loosened tooth I’d just given him, Kenneth burst into gales of laughter.

  “You didn’t think I’d come here alone, did you buddy?”

  He rolled to his back, drying his eyes with the heels of his palms. He tried to sit up but his body refused to cooperate. He fell back, sprawled out with his arms flung above his head.

  He was out, but for how long I didn’t know. And we had no way to contain him.

  A shriek bellowed out from the tarmac on an adjacent mountain top. I slid my helmet back on and adjusted the visor, magnifying the oculars for better clarity. He snapped into focus, and I recognized the kid instantly: Trey Lucas McLemore, the lanky ginger with the ability to control plant life. He’d commanded tendrils of seaweed – towering lengths of Pacific giant kelp, from the looks of it – to drag the cryogenics chamber from the underside of the TT-100. It had happened so suddenly I’d first thought it
was a giant squid, but now I was positive.

  The kelp rose again, from every side of the tarmac, crawling towards us like two-hundred foot anacondas stalking their prey.

  McGarrity re-materialized his sword and began hacking and slashing, cutting away the vegetation that seemed to double with each passing moment.

  Brynja blinked into her newly designed purple armor and electrified cloak. She vaulted over the seaweed, leaped from the tarmac and dove into the Pacific, likely in search of what remained of the cryogenics unit. I couldn’t tell how badly it had been damaged when it went down, but any repair at this point seemed like a long shot.

  I could hear shrieking. The piercing sound of Trey McLemore on the opposite hoverpad, commanding ocean life to overtake our mountain top. McGarrity gamely fought off the tendrils but he was losing a lot of blood; without pressure on the wound it was draining him; his tanned face was turning ash white and his mop of blond hair had soaked through with perspiration, and was plastered to his forehead. He was fading fast.

  McLemore continued to shriek, and then he screamed. His pitch had raised to a blood-curdling falsetto, and I feared what would come next. I immediately pictured a hailstorm of great whites that would come flopping onto the tarmac, taking chunks out of our extremities like some unwatchable horror film. But the scream wasn’t a command. It was a cry of agony, followed by a death rattle.

  I glanced to the mountain where he stood, and he was gone. Lucas was now overhead, being carried in Melvin’s powerful jaws, dragon wings flapping in loud whooshing strokes. The kid was dangling from the manticore’s mouth, held in place by the eight-inch incisors that had pierced his jugular. He gurgled some more. Blood dripped as he convulsed. And then I heard a pop. It was like a celery stalk being snapped in two, and Melvin released his grip. Lemore’s corpse cartwheeled in mid-air before skipping off the side of the mountain, bouncing into the surf.

  The killer seaweed fell limp.

  McGarrity dropped to his knees, sword vanishing. He clasped his bicep. He had only a few minutes of consciousness left in him, if I had to guess. I ripped the shirt from his back and fastened a tourniquet around his damaged arm, yanking it tight to stem the blood flow. It was a half-measure at best but it would have to suffice.

  “Matt! Are you all right down there?” I could hear Gavin’s voice clearly in my com.

  “We can’t see you over the piles of seaweed!” Peyton added.

  The TT-100 was hovering out over the ocean, parallel to the tarmac, likely waiting for Brynja to surface. She was still underwater and I didn’t know for how long. Three minutes, maybe five? I hadn’t been counting.

  “We’re fine…well, not McGarrity, he’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “And where is Kenneth?” Karin asked.

  I scanned the tarmac, which was now almost completely buried beneath mossy green tendrils, in some places several feet deep. “Shit, I don’t know,” I admitted, frantically tearing the weeds away. “If he suffocates under this crap Brynja is dead…”

  Then, as I frantically searched, I heard a rumble. It was a low, echoing roar that was rolling in from the south side of the tarmac. A tidal wave. And behind it was a woman, walking shoulder-deep in the surf. She was tall enough to reach the ocean floor.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Kayleigh Botha stalked through the ocean, her greasy yellow hair matted against the sides of her skeletal face. Her sunken black eyes looked like craters. She’d been a hundred feet tall when she stomped through South Africa, crushing homes and businesses and low-rise buildings underfoot, but now she had to be twice that size, at least.

  As the ocean floor sloped upward she rose from the water until the surf was hitting her naked body mid-chest. A crane-sized arm lunged out and hammered the tarmac, snapping the end off. Rock and metal splashed into the ocean and the platform quaked, knocking me on my ass.

  Blinded by the glare of the sun or the sting of the salt water (or both, I wasn’t sure) her aim was wildly off-target on her first attempted swing. Botha’s next shot was far more precise. Her fist came down again and the shadow loomed overhead. I wasn’t fast enough to move. I buried my head in my hands and squinted, and felt a wave of heat rising around me. McGarrity, somehow, had summoned the strength to encase us in a glowing orb of light, and Botha continued to slam it like a hammer onto a nail. With each successive strike we were pounded further into the tarmac. It wasn’t the solid barrier of light he’d created in the Liwa Desert; as he faded, heavy lids fluttering shut, the barrier became translucent, fizzling out like a dying roadside flare.

  The TT-100 circled around overhead, and through the faltering dome I could see the side door sliding open. Gavin and Peyton opened fire on the giant, pocking her face with a hailstorm of lead. She squinted and tiny plumes of red burst from her cheeks and forehead. It forced her to turn away and it had diverted her attention, but the scale was simply in her favor. At her size it was like being pelted in the face with handfuls of pebbles. Annoying, sure, but not enough to drop her.

  Even Melvin failed in his attack. He’d nimbly landed on her neck, his venomous scorpion tail arcing over his back, burying into her flesh. Botha’s skin instantly reddened, but again, the size was the difference. To her it was a mosquito bite, nothing more. She swatted him away, sending him crashing to the surf.

  “I’m coming down to get you! She’s distracted, this is our only chance!” I heard Karin scream through my com.

  “No!” I shouted back. “I can’t find Kenneth, and Brynja is still out there. If we just give her a minute to…”

  And I’m sure I said something else. I can’t remember what. I was fixated on the small projectile that slammed into Botha’s jaw, and burst from the top of her cranium. It was a bullet. A rapid-fire shot that sent her bloodshot eyes lolling back in their dark sockets, streams of inky blood pouring from her nostrils. Like a building collapse she toppled backwards. The blast of water hit the tarmac with so much force that McGarrity and I nearly washed away. Oddly, it was the bog of dense seaweed left behind from Trey’s attack that had created enough traction, allowing us to stay grounded.

  Brynja was suddenly at our sides, scooping us back to our feet. Her armor and black cloak were absent of any viscera or brain matter, but she’d been the bullet I saw sailing through Botha’s head.

  She nodded as if she’d just read my mind.

  “No cryogenics chamber?” I panted, peeling off my helmet.

  She shook her head, eyes falling shut.

  “All right,” I groaned. “Anyone have a suggestion? I’m pretty open to ideas at this point.”

  McGarrity opened his mouth to say something, but words didn’t spill out. Only blood. We glanced down to see a glowing blue blade protruding from his stomach.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Up until that moment, Sergei Taktarov battling Dwayne ‘Sledge’ Lewis at the original Arena Mode tournament in Manhattan had been considered the greatest battle between two superhumans in recorded history (at least according to the keyboard warriors). Brynja Guðmundsdóttir battling Kenneth Livitski would have surely eclipsed that battle had anyone thought to record it. I missed a lot of it, to be honest. I was cradling McGarrity’s blood soaked body on the mossy tarmac, realizing that there was nothing I could do to save him. I administered CPR and bandaged his wound but I wasn’t qualified to do anything else.

  Overhead, the only two architects the planet had ever seen battled for what felt like an eternity. They clashed with blunt weapons forged from pure energy, and then graduated to blades. There wasn’t even that much technique involved; they hacked like mad butchers, taking chunks of flesh from each other, sometimes not even bothering to slip or parry or dodge, and at times severing a limb. They’d simply grow them back a moment after the appendage had been lost. Were they even able to kill each other? At this level, was it even possible?

  When they’d exhausted their arsenals of weapons they began creating organic creatures. Brynja’s newly-minted manticore battled Ken
neth’s towering three-hundred foot cthulhu until they tore each other to bloody pieces, seemingly killing each other in unison. Their enormous carcasses stained the ocean red for as far as I could see.

  The battle strayed farther and farther from Fortress 18 until they were outlines against the setting sun, silhouettes slamming each other with tidal waves and lightning and other natural disasters.

  And then I heard Brynja’s voice in my head. I didn’t know if it was my brain tumor (which is a distinct possibility) or if it was her authentic voice, communicating telepathically. Though as the battle of two titans raged over the open ocean, the voice was even and calm, almost disturbingly so.

  “Mox, I can’t believe what you’ve done for me. You risked everything and everyone to try and keep me alive, and it’s something I’ll carry with me forever. But I don’t belong here, and my time has passed. It was over at Arena Mode.”

  “No, wait…what are you saying? Are you giving up?”

  “Never. I’m moving on.”

  “How? Wait, don’t do this – there’s always a way…”

  “All I ever wanted was a purpose; to know what I was, and how I fit in. Now you’ve given me the greatest gift I’ve ever received. And I know who I am.”

  “Who…” I swallowed back a tear. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the girl who gets to die saving the world. And I get to go out knowing I’m loved.”

  “YOU ARE,” I shouted out loud, not in my head. “You’re loved and needed and you don’t need to do this! We can fight this together, until—”

  The shockwave blinded me, knocking me backwards. My inner ear spun and something popped inside my head.

  Epilogue

  I woke in a hospital bed in Manhattan. It had been a week. My blackouts were getting longer and my memory was worsening. The last several weeks felt more like a boggy dream, or a series of dreams and nightmares that had collided with one another, crushed into a broken kaleidoscope.