"Disgusting,” Akane said, glancing first at the pooling vomit, then the youth. "Oh...a student and alive, how lucky."
"Who are you?" Aaron asked frankly.
"The devil."
"More like a demon,” the boy said ducking down into the crate.
Skirting the throw up, Akane tapped the box with her foot. "Get out."
“No…thank you.”
The monk kicked the wood harder this time. "That wasn't a suggestion.”
Aaron didn't answer.
"Stubborn,” Akane muttered, as unsheathing a sword she stepped onto the platform where the crate rested. Transferring her weight to her toes, she looked at the cowering student within and rested the sword edge above his shoulder. "I hate stubbornness; get out while I still have patience. Killing kids isn't my favorite pastime."
Akane retracted the katana and stepping back, shot out a leg in a front kick. Aaron braced himself inside as the crate tipped over. Slamming atop the concrete, Aaron's head hit one side of the box, then the other. He stretched out a hand from its interior and groaned.
Circling around, Akane grabbed the arm and dragged him out. Lifting him up by the collar, the monk stood Aaron up before pulling him along in the direction of the vault. Halting before it, she pushed him forth. "Open it,” she ordered.
"I'm guessing the rod's in here?" Aaron asked, stumbling forward.
Akane, extinguishing the flames, leveled the sword to his neck. "Open it."
"Quite the limited vocabulary you've got there."
Akane lifted the sword from the student's neck and whacked him across the head before returning the blade. "I won't repeat myself again."
"Whoever asked you to?"
Akane pricked his skin. "This is not a game; this is your life. Stop treating it like a—"
"Who are you then?" Aaron asked looking over his shoulder. "Why are you here? What are you doing in Cor—"
The monk brought the katana up and socked the Goethe in his side. Aaron dropped.
"You think you're valuable?" Akane said grabbing a handful of the youth's hair. She tilted his head back. "Well, you are. You think the rod's in here? Well, it is. No one needs to tell you that because you already know, but if you think you're going to get real information—information from me, about me, well...all you're going to get is a beating. Now open the vault."
She let go of his hair and wrapping a hand around his arm, jerked him to his feet. "How do you know if I can open it?" Aaron asked, flinching as the sword blade settled against his neck once more.
"Why would you be hiding in here otherwise?" Akane summarized unreasonably.
"That's not much of a basis."
"I trust my intuition. Now stop stalling and—"
"My life."
Akane drove two fingers into a pressure point of Aaron's neck. "Don't interrupt me."
Aaron's face twisted as he squirmed down in the attempt to flee her iron grip. "I-I won't.
The monk released him, leaving the boy's skin with imprints of red.
"Good. Now what about it? Your life? You want me to spare you? Fine, now open the goddamn vault."
"Yes ma'am," Aaron said half-heartedly as he studied the numbered touchscreen.
If he was his grandfather, what would he set as the code to an eight-digit combination? A birthday? His perhaps?
Aaron typed in the digits: zero, one, four, twenty-nine, ninety-eight. The denial occurred with a high pitched beeping and the red flash of lights. Aaron tried again. Perhaps his grandmother's?
Twelve, thirteen, twenty-nine, forty-three. The vault flashed green, and turning the handle he opened it. Akane shoved him out of the way, nearly into some discarded furniture. Aaron looked over his shoulder as a flash of anger shot through him.
What Akane retrieved from the vault could only be described as a large purple glow stick that was three times thicker in diameter than the average manufactured product. “So easily accessible,” Akane said. “This is obviously bait…I wonder who’s pulling the strings.”
Aaron turned and watched as the monk tucked the rod into her cloak. As she passed him, the student slowly put his hands together. Am I okay with this? He thought uncertainly. Will I put up with this? Should I put up with this? What would Gramps think? It was a rod! Hundreds of thousands of lives have been spilled over them...if not millions. What is my life worth in comparison?
He reached out for the monk, his hand flicking sparks, yellowed by his titus it hummed with electricity. "I wouldn't do that if I were you,” Akane said, without turning.
Her pace was no slower than before, it was as if she'd never spoken. Aaron flinched and retracted his arm hesitantly.
My life? he thought. Or the rod? The rod...or my life?
The face of his grandfather flashed before his eyes. The old man’s weathered expression was set with its usual deep frown and crinkling green eyes. It’s not a choice I’m a Goethe.
Aaron stepped after Akane, hand outstretched and ready to shock. "The rod."
"It seems you've made your choice,” Akane said her voice ladled with disappointment as she turned and drew the katanas.
With a yell, Aaron went for her, his hands reaching for her robe, for skin. Just one shock. He thought desperately. Just one touch.
Akane spun around on her heel and leveled a sword at his throat, stopping the student in his tracks. "You’re weak, I'm strong. Give it up while you still can. Hanging onto your life isn't something to be ashame—"
Aaron wrapped a hand around the blade, and touched her sword arm with the other hand. Eyes wide in surprise, Akane screamed as the volts tore through her body, marring skin, and swept up the current of her nerves, to touch her heart. Slack-jawed, her eyes rolled back as she dropped.
Dissipating his titus, Aaron reached into her robe, drew out the rod and tucking it in his pocket, headed for the vent. Stepping onto the platform, he leapt for its edge and catching it with fingers alone, pulled himself into the tight space. The rod was Kaiga property, and on Corpus grounds, Goethe responsibility. The day he let it go, he vowed, would be the day he died.
From the vent, he dropped out into the office hall and rolling to his feet, stood up. The fire alarm sounded and Aaron, startled, ran out of the hallway. How far would he go?
Chapter 32
Upon the Battlefield
Back in the auditorium, Daniel stood.
"Out the door now. Let's go,” he said as he stepped over Mr. Goethe's body and passed through the hole in the door.
The others followed him out and Alex, stopping in the middle of the hallway, looked sharply to the side, drawn by the frantic clamor of students responding to the fire alarm.
Had they also encountered that gold monk? he wondered.
Sierra bumped him and Katelyn pushed him aside. "Moron! This isn't the time to space out; get your ass in gear. Come on!" the gray eyed girl said in passing.
Alex noticed, her earphones were not in her ears and her phone was forgotten in her pocket. Pulling him out of the entrancement of the life-threatening situation, Katelyn grabbed him by the arm, tugging him along. Going around a corner, she dragged him out an emergency exit down the next hall.
Outside was chaos. Takumi had wasted no time pulling the alarm. Students by the hundreds were fleeing the building with many having already put a good bit of distance between themselves and the Commons. However, instead of joining the crowd in the race to the creek, Melissa and Sierra broke from Daniel's lead and swerved for a leafy cluster of trees and bushes. Daniel, Katelyn, and Alex soon followed suit and regrouped.
"Why are we stopping? The creek's over there,” Daniel said dropping into a crouch. Parting the gnarled branches of a bush he pointed.
"Who'd want to miss this?" Katelyn said, squatting beside her brother.
"Yeah,” Sierra agreed, sitting, her back against a tree. "Front row seats."
Daniel turned sharply. "We need to get out of here! Katelyn, guys! This is like a warzone!"
"No shit,” Ka
telyn said, folding her arms. Her facade of excitement faded with a frown as she weighed her sibling's reaction. "I'm pretty sure those guys meant business,” she continued.
"Obviously,” Melissa said, half sitting, half crouching beside Alex. "But is there any guarantee we'll be safer following the crowd? I'm not a sheep, and I don't want to end up dead like an unlucky lemming who got swept off a cliff, another victim of the herd mentality."
"I didn't think of that,” Alex admitted.
"Yeah,” Daniel said, with a nod of agreement, looking more anxious than he had before.
He looked at Melissa. "I guess you're the one with the cooler head."
"So?" Sierra asked, her gaze falling on the violet eyed girl. "What's the plan?"
"Um..."
"Figures,” Katelyn said. "Against those guys, all you can do is hope."
Daniel poked her in the side. "Katelyn, optimis—"
"Fight and you'll end up like Mrs. Quill. Get distracted and the hole in your head will mirror Mr.—"
"Katelyn,” Alex said sharply.
"What? It's true; the damn principal was way in over his—"
"Shut up!" Alex took a breath. "Ju-just shut up."
Katelyn held up her hands, compliantly backing off. "Fine, but it doesn't change the fact that he's gone. What?" Her eyes returned Sierra's glare and she smirked. "You gonna cry again?"
Sierra curled her hands into fists as she started to stand, her puffy eyes murderous.
Melissa grabbed her arm. "Sit down—"
"To the creek!" someone yelled, as they sprinted past the group's hideout. "For the bridge! Head for the bridge!"
Sierra sat without another word, head tilted back against the tree. She stared aimlessly into the sky, her eyes daring to stare down the sun.
A flash caught Alex's eye and peeking through the bushes, he observed the bright white of electricity flaring up. Connecting the light to its source, Alex spied the outline of a figure, who he assumed was one of the monks.
Haruki floated above the tier one building, his blue robe billowing about him as clouds gathered overhead in a continuous swirl of flickering lightening and dark condensation. Arm outstretched for the sky, and palm up, he created a streak of lightning that struck down to meet it. In the few moments that passed, in the steady inflow of power, the man's robe, influenced by the current, transformed from a dark oceanic blue into a bright unyielding shade of turquoise.
"What is he doing?" Sierra asked, voicing Alex's thoughts.
"It's like he's absorbing lightening,” Daniel said.
"I think he is,” Melissa said.
Dropping his arm, the monk pointed to the building below, redirected the current, and in an explosion of power, blew out its windows, cracked concrete, and crumbled brick. Screams rose as shards of glass and chunks of brick fell upon the fleeing crowd. Students were struck hard, leaving the bodies of the unconscious and dying, littering the grounds.
The crowd scattered. People ran into people in the search for cover. An inherent need to get out of range gave birth to yet more chaos. The ground opened up under the feet of some. For others, spontaneous walls of earth and stone, roots and plants from the ground slowed their progress. A few desperate students even pulled up slabs of sidewalks and paths before their classmates which dropped the unprepared by the dozens.
Mini-fights broke out but were restricted to short bouts of fists to faces or minuscule titus exchanges during which the victors were more often than not downed by the horde. Corpus Academy was a high school overflowing with drama and favoritism. It was a complex that had once breathed the very air of arrogance and privilege. A place too lax to be even remotely military and still stubbornly clung to its roots and prestige, even as it crumbled.
Falling in on itself in an implosion, the Tier 1 building collapsed. Its shadow presided over a number of its former charges as it began its descent for soil.
The monk sent forth a hot, fierce blast of electricity down into the building's heart. The man, gaining an inch took a mile and intensified the onslaught. He linked his very cells and being to the powerful current coursing through his body and veins. He shook the Tier 1 building’s base and melting it, dismembering it; he destroyed its very foundation. A loud low creek filled the air, resounding, echoing, and rebounding within all ears across the campus as the foundation of the building tilted.
Though the majority of the crowd had escaped the building's shadow, Alex's eyes were drawn to and zeroed in on a heavy-set student. Engulfed in a titus cloak of deep blue, the weighty tier two lagged and dropped inevitably to the back, even as he floored it for his life. The kid stumbled, tripping over something...it was a moment of life, defined and shaped, immortalized by a single mistake. Just seconds later a large chunk of concrete broke away from the building, and came down upon him. It was as if a cherry had been crushed by an anvil.
Alex could only watch, gaping. Somehow even though he knew he couldn't help his own uselessness, it wasn't his fault someone had dropped dead. Still something within him wrenched.
It was painful...his vision blurred and tears touched his eyes. His breathing came faster before his dinner all came up in a heave. Ham, side dishes, and chocolate cake for desert already mixed and mingled by his stomach acids presented themselves in a tantalizing display of vomit.
"Gross,” Katelyn said recoiling.
"Are you okay Alex?" Melissa asked placing a comforting hand on his back as he wretched.
"Yeah...I'm fine…"
His eyes, as if traveling to it on instinct, fixed on the slab of cement. Blood trickled out from under it and a sleeve of fabric puffed up by flesh ended at a hand that in life had reached out in desperation.
Reaching out.... reaching out in Alex's direction.
"No!" he screamed, his face twisted with guilt as he brought his hands to his head and grabbed fistfuls of hair. "No! No! No... No I didn't...I didn't..."
"Alex! Alex?! What's—"
"It wasn't my fault...you were too slow...too fat...I—I didn't kill you!"
"Wow, he's lost it!" Katelyn exclaimed.
Daniel dragged his eyes uncomfortably from his shocked friend towards the falling building and the creek.
"It'll hit the bridge."
"No, it'll miss it,” Katelyn said. "But not by much."
The building's foundation gave way and exploded, shooting debris in all directions. The snug hideout where the tier ones sat was no exception.
"Duck!" Melissa ordered.
No one needed to be told twice. Turning, they put their hands together before transferring them instinctively over their heads. Taking cover, they cloaked themselves with titus.
When it cleared, Alex removing his hands from his head, peeked out, hesitantly at first. Then he jerked his head up, eyes wide, and began to cough as the cloud of dust caught in his throat.
Lying in ruins was the tier one building, a skeleton of itself, destroyed.
As screams filled the air and the group stirred, Alex realized with a hand over his mouth that the concrete flattened student was not the first casualty and wouldn’t be the last.
Silently, the group led by Melissa stepped out from what was once a tiny glen. A gathering of trees, bushes, vegetation and wilting flowers had been reduced to nothing but scattered green, misshapened stumps, and trees keeled over.
The air was muddled with slowly dispersing dust lifted with the cries of the wounded as they identified whose blood was whose and the injuries that followed. Reality hit, as abandoned kids, fearing the same fate, panicked. Those that could walk and all that could crawl made a beeline for the land behind the bridge. The bridge, however, was still weakened and cratered with holes, a lasting imprint from Alex's attempted escape less than two days past. It forced many to sludge through the creek’s cold water rather than trek across its uneven ground.
The few that stayed behind, less than a handful in number, made themselves useful by dragging and carrying those still alive across the creek. While a few c
rossed back over the creek to help, the vast majority of the hundreds who had survived stayed put and stared across the waters with wide eyes.
The group of five tier ones on the other hand, walked, and walked, and walked. Walked past it all, their heads twisting this way and that, their eyes glazed and their faithful legs on autopilot they were carried away from it all. Over debris, they picked their way through and around the crying and pleading of their peers.
Numb to the sharp metallic tang in the air, their eyes failed to register severed limbs and crushed body parts. Looking over the crimson liquid dying the grass, drenching ground and coating pavement, they were blind to those that bled out, deaf to the racking coughs, groans of pain and shrieks of shrill unmistakable agony.
Dazed and uncomprehending about the destruction and the havoc, they were at their limit. It was all the tier ones could do to ignore the suffering, block it out, and fade it into the background... No, that was an excuse; they didn't want to see it. So strong did they will it that their bodies complying blurred out that which surrounded them as something other than what it was—reality; their reality.
Haruki, the blue robed monk, knew his reign of terror was far from over. Dropping from the sky in an onslaught of electric currents, he swept, dove, and raided the scene at random. Shocking and killing indiscriminately, he stoked fires in the grass and upon the trees in a fine blaze of destruction. Relishing it all, he did his upmost to leave an imprint of misery in his wake.
Chapter 33
Grief and Despair
Rounding a corner, Aaron sprinted down another hall. Glancing to the side, he skidded to a halt. The doors of the auditorium were all shot to hell. One sported a hole wide enough for a person to slip through and the door hung open at an awkward angle from its missing hinge.
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