Sirius’ heart turned cold. Anger bubbled in his gut. He squeezed the trigger, and the gun went off with an almighty bang, sending Jon flying backwards. He hit the polished floor, coughing and spluttering.
“Nice… try,” he gasped, standing up. Sirius saw too late the steel breastplate that the head of the city guard had strapped to himself that day, a dent now formed in the center. It would have been a perfect shot.
The gun was knocked from Sirius’ hand before the butt of the spear came towards him, hitting him square in the nose and breaking the sensitive appendage instantly. He went down, clutching at his bleeding face and moaning. Pain burst in front of his eyes in a scattering of blinding white lights. He couldn’t see.
Another blow came down on him. Then another. Jon, normally so composed, so disciplined, felt a sick thrill when he felt bones breaking under his fists, under his boots. Sirius threw his arms over his head in a desperate attempt to protect himself. Finally, a surge of energy took him, and he threw himself to his feet, stumbling towards the door. “Oh no, you don’t,” he heard Jon growl behind him, but through tears and blood and swelling he fought his way forward, past the doors, into the hallway, before pelting down the blank white nothingness that his puffy, blackened eyes would allow him to see. He saw daylight, and stumbled towards it, arms flailing, but his hands met nothing but thick pane glass. Beating his fists against it did nothing, so he slid down to the floor, leaving prints and smears of blood in his wake.
It was over. This was it. He turned and sat against the wall, wheezing, small bubbles of blood popping past his lips. He watched as the dark shape of his maker advanced on him, spear in hand, ready to send the blade through his throat or his chest and stop his heart. Maybe he’d take his head from his shoulders. How his mother would cry. How his father would hate himself forever. How Tyna would be so disappointed, forced back into a life under her father’s boot if she was lucky. It was over. He’d lost. No matter what happened to the city now, he’d lost.
Xan, Xan, I’ll be with you soon.
He felt himself pulled to his feet, heard the sound of glass shattering.
“HERE IS YOUR HERO!” he heard Jon bellow. “HERE IS THE MAN THAT YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO ICONIZE! HERE IS THE ONE THAT IT ALL ENDS WITH! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS-” Sirius felt the breeze of a three-story fall hitting his face as he was pushed to the window. “- TO THOSE WHO DISSENT!”
The next thing he knew, he was falling. It was a strange sensation, and it only gave him a moment to process it, but it felt like an eternity that he was suspended in nothing, the world rushing up around him, his hair blowing in the wind. Sirius kept his eyes closed. The last thing he heard were the horrified screams of the people just before the impact of landing sent his consciousness scattering into the abyss.
***
“…Xan?”
Stupid boy. There was humor in the insult, affection. Sirius felt fingers running through his hair to ruffle the dark, messy mop. Or did he? He couldn’t tell, couldn’t feel much of anything. Did you do all this for me? For Kora?
“Yeah. Of course. I miss you. I want you back. I want to be with you,” his voice came out hoarse, pleading. Where was he? He couldn’t move, couldn’t see, could barely think, his mind lost to the dark.
Try doing something for yourself once in a while, kid.
“Xan, I love you. I love you.”
I love you too.
Just like that, the presence of his brother was gone. Sirius’ eyes flickered open, but were only able to part his lashes the barest amount through the swelling. He was in an unfamiliar room, the wall hangings and upholstery suggesting that whoever owned the little apartment was Airborn, able to afford such luxuries. He tried to sit up, but was rammed straight back down again by the shoulders.
“Careful! You’ll break his back!”
“He’s going to break his own back if he wants to, trust me.”
Tyna?
Sirius looked up to see his friend looking down at him, a relieved smile gracing her dark features. Her shoulder was in a sling, clean and fresh bandages binding it up. “You alright there? Sorry about my dad throwing you out of a window and all. He’s a real piece of work.”
Sirius’ head spun. Where was the crowd? The flames?
“What… happened?”
“Well, half the city was on fire, for a start. A lot of people said that they saw Tyna’s father chuck you out of a window. Luckily you landed on an old trading cart rather than the ground. You’ve got a few broken bones, hard to say what’s from the fall and what’s not, but…” Kaz appeared from apparently nowhere, a grin on their face. “You’re okay!”
“The kids we couldn’t save the first time around, where are they?”
“They’re fine. We got them out.” Tyna placed a soothing hand on Sirius’ shoulder, who, upon being able to look around gingerly, saw that a great deal of the Missing Ones, including everyone who had made that long trek back from the desert, were standing in the room. Even Zak, despite being out cold with sweat lining their forehead on the other side of the room, was present and as well as they could be.
“Am I… dead.”
A laugh went up. Someone nudged his shoulder with a fist, though gently.
“You’re a funny guy, Sirius. No you’re not dead. You’re fine. Everything’s going to be fine. The Skyborn are still locked up in their tower with half the Earthborn guard at their fingertips, but the other half are either dead or run away or joined us. We can win this. We can chase them out of the hole they’ve hidden in, and then they’ll be paying for their crimes.”
“And after that?” Sirius asked Tyna, looking up at her with quizzical green eyes. She shrugged, winced.
“I don’t know,” she responded honestly. “I truly think that we’ve got a chance of rebuilding here. But we won’t know until we try. Right?”
“We’ll have to deal with all the problems they were dealing with. The water shortage. Distributing food. Resources. That sort of stuff.” A black cloud formed over his mood for just a moment at the thought. “Is there really anyone out there that could do that? Without it turning back to the way things were?”
“I don’t know that either.” Tyna smiled slightly. “But I do know one thing. Maybe the water problem might not be so much of a problem anymore.” Sirius blinked at her, confused, but her smile only grew wider. “Listen.”
And then he heard it. It was like the sound of dry sand rolling around in a clay pot, being turned over and over.
“What is that?” he asked.
“We’ll show you.”
They were holed up in one of the terraced houses that sat on the fringes of the city, but close enough that they could see the Skyborn’s towers clear as day in the distance through the window. These houses had little balconies of their own, accessible through ornate doors of glass. Sirius squinted, his eyesight failing him slightly after the beating he took. Something about the world outside was wrong, very wrong.
“What IS that?!” he demanded, a little afraid this time. Tyna slipped one of his arms around her shoulders, and Ziggy got the other. Together they helped Sirius up, a beefy shoulder in hand, and assisted him in half-limping towards the door. They opened it and lead him outside. He gasped.
Rain, fat, full drops of it, cascaded down from the sky. It was a sight nobody in living memory had ever seen, but today the skies had chosen to take pity on the smoldering city. Small plumes of smoke still climbed the sky, but the rain washed through the streets, killing the flames and leading children outside to dance in the puddles, laughing and screaming now that the violence had been quelled. Above them the clouds roiled, a dark, slate gray blanket over the world, and a flash of lightning lit up the sky. Sirius tilted his head back, his split lips parting to catch a little of the precious water on his tongue.
“What does it mean?” he murmured, looking to Tyna. Her own face was now speckled with rain and impassioned with a quiet and gentle expression of victory. Their bare feet sloshed when they moved,
sitting in about a half inch of water, the strangest sensation to people who had lived their whole lives treating it as it was; the most precious and rarest resource in their world.
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “But I do know this; the first drop brought the spirits with it. We won. The Skyborn are locked in their tower and will eventually starve or give up. My father’s lost his mind. The whole city wants to be free, and anyone still loyal to the Skyborn have nothing to do about it. This is the start of something, Sirius. We’re going to be alright. Everything’s going to be alright.”
Sirius looked at her, as though seeing her for the first time. He didn’t notice Kaz tactfully slipping out from under his arm and heading back inside, instead transfixed on the way that Tyna’s face looked when her jaw wasn’t set into a hard and intimidating expression of determination. Or greater still, the way it looked when her eyes weren’t clouded with worry and stress.
“I was worried for you. You really scared me when you got shot.”
“I scared YOU?” Tyna chuckled. “I was on my way to rejoin the fight when I saw my own dad throw you to your death. I can’t believe the cart was right underneath you.”
“I can’t believe the first rain in two hundred years came just as the city started to burn.”
“I can’t believe that truck was in that town.”
“Me neither.”
They laughed, but Sirius’ expression soon grew serious. “We don’t have to depend on luck and chance anymore.”
“No. We’re going to make our own. Right?”
He turned to face her, the rain still pelting the domes of their heads. His hair was already soaked, plastered to his head as the smoke in the distance finally broke free from the ground and floated up into the sky to dissipate, as though it was never there. Tyna smiled again, her face looking remarkably soft in the rain.
“We’ll make our own.”
They stood there, looking out onto the city as it healed and began to knit itself back together anew. The sound of rain hammering down on cobblestones, tin roofs, their skin, filled the air until they could hear almost nothing else. Sirius tilted his head back once more, ignoring the agony in his twisted neck and letting out a long peal of laughter. Tyna joined him, her side pressing close into his.
For the first time in his life, a feeling that had evaded Sirius since he was born started to burn in his chest. It was a feeling that escaped him in the city, in the tunnels, even out in the desert with nothing and nobody for miles around. It was a feeling that he knew he had been fighting for all this time, and now that he had it, he would never let it slip through his fingers again. He could keep fighting, the way he had, for the rest of his life if it meant keeping hold of this sensation, never again to let go.
For the first time in his life, he was free.
Epilogue
Kora didn’t know how long she’d been walking, but judging from the way the skin of her feet was blistering and burning against the red-hot sands, it was too long. The water canteen that she’d taken by Celeste’s advice was all but dry. The sun had risen, set, risen again, but without turning her face up to the burning fury of the sun, she had no way of knowing what time of day it was, and was hardly prepared to do that. Her head hurt far too much.
Finally, she was reaching the foot of the mountains, having been told that this was where “the spirits are calling”. Kora’s face pulled down in an expression of absolute anger. There was nothing here but more sand, leading up to scorched earth and sharp, slate-like rocks covering the landscape. Celeste had lied. Had done this just to get rid of her in a way that wouldn’t bring the city guard pouring out after the others. In a small way, she understood, but her blood boiled for it all the same. A sob escaped her but no tears flowed from her dry eyes. She was simply far too dehydrated.
Once the ground began sloping upwards, she followed it, up towards a small valley nestled in the mountains. She didn’t know exactly where she was going or why. She simply knew that if she stopped now, if she even took one moment to seat herself on the hot ground, she would never get up again. Her fingertips and nails soon became shredded and bloody from the climb as it became more and more difficult, scrabbling for holds on sharp rocks and rough ground. Wheezing, on the edge of screaming, she finally pulled herself up onto a ledge, reaching the edge of the valley. What was that beneath her feet as she rubbed the salty sweat and grit from her eyes? It was soft, cool, brushing her ankles as she stepped forward and shielded her face so that she could see past the glare of the sun.
When her vision cleared, her eyes widened at what she saw before her. Green, countless strands of it, covering the ground beneath her feet. Trees, small and sparse but still very much there, lined the landscape, growing determinedly from the still rough, stingy soil. What truly amazed her, however, what brought her to her knees and had her almost sobbing again in gratitude and relief, was the glittering pool of water set before her, bubbling up from deep inside the mountains. It was beautiful. No wider than a small hut, no deeper than a bathtub, still she dived into it instantly and felt the near-freezing cold of the mountain spring rush over her body. When she resurfaced, she broke the water with a deafening cry of victory, the sound of a creature that the world tried its best to kill but came out kicking, fighting, biting and ready to take over. She threw her arms out, sending sprays of water everywhere, running her hands through her braided hair and laughing.
A dark shadow fell over her, chilling her slightly. She looked up, mouth falling open in amazement. Far above her, rushing across the sharp blue sky, the rain clouds above obscured the sun and began to let loose fat, life-giving drops of water.
Note from the Author
Thank you for reading my latest novel. I hope you liked it as much as I loved writing it. If you enjoyed this book, then I would like to ask you for a favor:
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Yours truly,
Stephen Kelik
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***
CHAPTER ONE – ALLY
JFK airport was chaotic that morning. It was the kind of organized chaos that was found and tolerated in airports around the world.
The chaos began with the family travelers. These were the ones who had more bags than common sense as they crisscrossed, ran and hauled themselves through the masses in an attempt to make a flight that they always seemed to be running late for.
Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction: The Missing Ones: A Dystopian Adventure Page 12