Variance

by Josen Llave

  “I can’t keep moving you like this forever.” Siren appeared in front of him. She slapped him with a nice, firm open hand.

  Somehow, that made him feel better. He could not process his own body normally. The tornado maneuver had drained him, and only sixty seconds had passed. He needed assistance.

  Siren highlighted nearby fighters. “Someone’s heading to Corda.”

  He made his way toward Corda and fought through all the elements without error. Lava climbed its way to his elevation, and he flew around the swirling, sweltering rock. A stream separated and chased after him.

  Corda blasted water with missiles to break up the flow. She used projectiles to break up rising lava and flying earth. Her suit’s mechanical strength broke through ice boulders and held against sharp gusts of wind. The outline of an Abstract fighter appeared on the Legacy suit and began to cut through the suit’s neck.

  Paul shared his travel path with Corda. “I’ll handle the Abstract fighter.”

  He stopped and used his shields to channel a lava stream toward the Abstract fighter. The fighter deflected a clean shot to the head, using unique shapes of material to return it back to Paul. Missiles zoomed around Corda’s suit and exploded around the fighter. The fighter broke through the blasts and flew toward Paul.

  Time and all the elements slowed around Paul, almost freezing in space. The Abstract fighter launched an offensive of fifteen attacks per second with a variety of tentacles, spikes, and swords. The combination of Siren and Paul’s brain’s processing power countered at a higher rate and weaved material toward the Abstract fighter’s body. Strands of white material interlaced into a complex network of webs, moving and shifting to find an opening. In an acrobatic aerial move, the fighter dodged and attacked from a higher elevation.

  Paul closed the distance and engaged in another intricate exchange. Shields and spikes slammed into each other, and Siren identified an opening in the fighter’s abdomen, a location of the least protective material. Paul shot a spike of material through the opening, missing his and the fighter’s material. The spike turned into a flat plate and punched the fighter.

  Paul anticipated that the spike would penetrate the fighter’s stomach instead of inflicting blunt force.

  Siren looked at him, wide-eyed. “You tried to injure her.”

  He ignored Siren. He grabbed the fighter out of the danger and moved to a relatively safe region.

  The fighter requested verbal communication, and Siren accepted.

  “I don’t need help from your kind.” The fighter’s adolescent voice reminded Paul of Statice. Her material shriveled back as her hands rested over her stomach.

  I can kill you now if you’d like.

  Siren floated in front of him to make direct eye contact. “What are you thinking?”

  “She’s upset at me for saving her life. That doesn’t make any sense.” He dodged several boulders of rocks and released the girl.

  “I hope you die, Utopian,” the girl said, and she flew away.

  Siren turned him around toward Pela and Nyle, who were hovering in the distance. “Go.”

  That ungrateful bitch.

  Siren pushed him. “Paul.”

  A surge of regret filled his chest with a heavy weight. What am I thinking? What am I saying?

  He flew toward the couple and watched them work together. Pela’s army of drones flew everywhere in groups, breaking up the elements before they could reach close proximity. Nyle converted water and ice into vapor, transformed lava into dust, and defeated tornados with a wall of high-pressure air. They seemed unstoppable.

  A noticeable concentration of rocks appeared all around Paul and the couple. A vacuum sucked the drones and the couple from their position, rotating them upside down. Rocks, lava, and water flew into the vacuum from a higher elevation. When the debris formed into a ball, he realized that it was not a vacuum. It was a gravitational point with high radiation.

  Siren changed his view to a multicolor scheme to identify dangerous radiation zones. “We have to keep away from the red regions in the core of the sphere.”

  Nyle attempted to counter the radiation with his own. Curtains of plasma danced everywhere as Pela’s drones formed into arches to extract them. The plasma curtains melted the drones and made the structure unstable. Drones kept Pela’s suit above the piling dirt. Dirt buried Nyle. Corda, flying with the gravity field, blew the dirt around Nyle with her rockets.

  “Help!” Pela’s suit sank into the ground.

  Paul sailed toward Pela and rotated upside down, with the lava horizon over his head. He landed on the growing sphere and created wide plates under his feet to combat gravity. His body felt heavy, and every breath required a grunting effort. He snaked material around Pela, lifted her up, and slid plates underneath her. The drones detached off her suit and sank into the ground.

  “Incoming.” Siren highlighted a Frequency fighter emitting red energy at them while landing.

  Paul used the remainder of his suit’s material to block the waves and attack, with Siren cycling the damaged material for repair. The fighter attempted to step back, but his legs stuck to the ground, and Paul’s material cut through the suit and severed critical power connections. Paul sucked the suit’s energy supply and retracted his material. Flying dirt and rocks surrounded the helpless fighter.

  Paul lifted Pela and himself above the dirt. With a gigantic rock heading toward the fighter, he shot material to lift the fighter out of danger. The rock reached the fighter before Paul’s hook and crushed the fighter, penetrating halfway into the ground.

  Shit.

  “We tried.” Siren scanned the area for life.

  Lava from above floated in rippling layers and drew closer to the growing sphere of debris. Paul’s suit compensated against the gravitational pull on his body and organs by applying external pressure. However, it was not enough.

  His vision blurred, and limb coordination became difficult in every move, even with Siren’s help. Every shallow breath burned. His plates sank into the ground as the dirt compressed. The first layer of lava increased its acceleration toward them.

  Corda said, “Brace yourself.”

  A blast rocked him as he held on to the ground. The layers of lava and fireball spread and curved outward with the gravity field. Another explosion broke the ground below and launched him and Pela forward.

  They flew along with everything that made up the gravity sphere. Pela soared limply toward the lava pit. He grabbed her with a tether and formed his suit into a hollow cone large enough to cover Pela’s suit.

  The cone tip crashed into the lava pit. He moved Pela’s suit upward and formed a protective plate below his feet. Lava flooded the interior from the top and contacted his footplate. Siren recycled material as fast as she could without taking away from the cone.

  He could abandon Pela and fly out; cut Pela out of the suit, which would cause injury to both; or die with her.

  Cut Pela out.

  Siren agreed.

  Lava rose above Pela’s mechanical feet inside the cone. Paul climbed the ten-meter suit and ripped off the front armored plates. He pulled out her cockpit shell and raised her close to the top. The lava rose up to his knees.

  “We don’t have enough material to escape without getting rid of the cone. I can’t find the others.” Siren severed his artificial legs. “We’re running out of material.”

  He screamed as lava burned his thighs and his suit. With 5 percent energy remaining, he wasn’t about to sacrifice his scrotum and penis before fainting from lack of oxygen and pain.

  Paul shouted as he tried to form wings from the cone. “I’m getting out of here!” Holes in the cone sped up the fill, and lava splashed over his wings.

  Siren retracted the cone material and catapulted them high into the sky. After his failed attempt to make a decent set of wings, Siren comple
ted the materialization. He hovered over the lava pit as it swallowed Pela’s suit and frozen Variance sections.

  The energized dome faded, and the environment turned silent.

  It was over.

  Snow fell from the sky. With Siren in control, Paul glided toward the nearest deck. His arms shook. His eyes drooped. He could not breathe.

  He gently laid Pela’s cockpit on the metal deck before crashing next to it. He looked up at the sky and watched the terraformers float away. Steam danced around him.

  Beautiful snow. Who the hell thought it was clever to use terraformers to create hell? Who the fuck thought it was a good idea?

  Siren, busy keeping him alive, lifted him up and created artificial legs for him to walk. “You sound like Ryan.” She patched whatever remained of his thighs.

  “How could anyone stay positive through all this?”

  Ryan, fighting off a flood of fanatics and reporters with curses and kicks, approached Paul while walking backward through the crowd. He spoke through Audials. “If you want to see Shadow, you’d better go now, regardless of your injuries.”

  “I need his location.” Paul grunted as he straightened his posture.

  With the location marked on his map, Paul flew away from the crowd. Siren gave him a boost of energy to get his heart pumping at a normal rate after the blood loss. He flew toward the flight deck of a tall building. Commercial and personal transportation ships followed him as he flew with 1 percent remaining power.

  Women displayed their bosoms. Men displayed their asses. Anti-Utopian spectators clashed with his supporters in midair. The number of ships grew into a chaotic cluster just before he entered the flight deck.

  Honks and cheers could not hinder the rage building up in his mind. Crazy, fucked-up people.

  Inside the building, he flew and crashed through several hallways and stairways, dodging people wherever he could. Some people dove to avoid him, and others ran. He reached a massive lobby with a single door and two Crimson guards.

  Approaching the guards, Siren detected and analyzed the growing gravity fields. She needed time around them, even though they had 30 percent less material to capture data.

  He accepted their text communication.

  The Crimson guard wrote, “Suit. Out.”

  Paul wanted to kill them, even if the guards were innocent of the crimes committed on Azure. He could barely walk and stumbled before his first step.

  “I can’t,” Paul replied. “I’ll die.”

  At first, the guards looked at each other. Then they lowered their fields and opened the door.

  Paul stood in between the guards for a moment. He remained in place until a guard turned toward him. He continued forward and sent a final text: “Go fuck yourselves, assholes.”

  Inside, a man stood with arms crossed, alone in a vast and empty hall. With a blank milky-white face mask and Shadow’s voice, the man said, “Well done, Paul. Well done. Ryan tells me—”

  Siren prepared data and a message for Kaiser to start the revolution. She smiled with a nod for him to proceed and then tilted her head at Shadow. “Something’s strange about Shadow.”

  Paul tried to hold back from yelling. “Where’s Shadow?”

  One of the Crimson guards entered the room. The man waved the guard away. “I am Shadow.”

  Paul’s vision blurred. He had to continue talking. “We have to renegotiate terms.” He could not take full breaths, let alone shallow breaths. His rib cage broke in several places because of the gravity sphere, and Siren kept him from falling back. “Return Ryan’s family. Championship match now. If I win, my people are guaranteed safety in Forever Spring.” He took a moment to rethink his impulsive proposal. He had to make the terms appealing for Shadow. With a heavy breath, he said, “If I lose, you can kill us all. I will even give you details of Forever Spring’s hideout in my dying breath. Bring your secret weapon.”

  Shadow’s voice remained indifferent toward Paul’s last words. “You’ve changed significantly, Mr. Benedict. Are you convinced, or do you still need some persuasion? Would your family even recognize you?”

  Paul’s fists clenched tightly enough to generate several echoing cracks. He grunted and spat blood onto the white floor. “Don’t talk about my family.”

  Shadow also tightened his fists, only to loosen them. “Because of your magnificent performances, the entire world is plugged into our sport. I would like to see your true limit. I will grant you a three-match championship series, one per day, starting in the next two days for preparation and publicity. I will free and return Ryan’s family. Simply provide the location.”

  Paul messaged Ryan to send Shadow the drop-off location.

  “Until the final match, leave us alone.” Paul stuck out his gloved hand and sent his digital signature.

  Shadow shook it and accepted the signature. “Agreed.”

  Paul pulled his hand away and turned toward the door. He kept his anger at bay and refrained from crushing Shadow’s hand or sending material through Shadow’s arm, through the arteries, and into the heart.

  As he walked away, confusion replaced anger. The renegotiation had turned out easier than he’d anticipated, but something was not right. He knew Shadow wanted him to continue into the championships, but why? He was too weak to find out now. The door blurred before him.

  Shadow raised his voice. “You’re a celebrity now, Paul. Why don’t you enjoy life and the riches available to you? You could be anything you want here on Xameeshee. You can free yourself of the self-doubt that troubles you when you sleep and just accept that you are like the rest of us. Just admit to the world that you are human and that Utopians are evil.”

  Paul kept his gaze forward. “I will never be like you.” He continued walking and exited the hall.

  Shadow said something, but Paul had stopped listening. With the doors closed, he turned to one of the guards. The guard stood a half meter above him. With Siren’s new upgrade from all the data she had analyzed, he had a way around Crimson’s technology.

  He had to test it.

  In fractions of a second, Paul shot material, and the guards raised gravitational defenses to pull the material away. Compensating for the pull, Siren directed the material to rotate around the gravity fields with centripetal force. Multiple blades lingered a millimeter away from the guards’ heads. They ceased their fields.

  Paul absorbed his material and limped away. He found an empty staircase and sat at the top. Exhilaration flooded his nerves over the pain and fatigue that were poisoning his body. Uncontrollable rage caused tears to run down his face, and he wiped them away with extreme pressure.

  A quarter of 1 percent of his energy remained. With twenty years remaining for his life expectancy and most of his legs gone, he believed it was worth the sacrifice to make a stand against Crimson. His jaw and fists tightened. His anger translated into his suit, and material spiked into the walls. He wanted to tear the building down. Chunks of concrete walls fell around him, and dust filled the stairway.

  Siren sat next to him with her arm around his broad and bulky shoulders. She soothed him and calmed him down by changing something in his hormones. His suit retracted all the spikes from the walls. Boulders tumbled down the stairs, and lights around him flickered behind dust.

  What am I doing? He had almost injured the Abstract fighter with a spear. He wanted to hurt people, yet his own words contradicted him.

  After several breaths, in a whisper, he sobbed. “Thank you, God, for taking me this far. Please forgive me for my sinful actions and vulgar language. Thank you for taking care of my family. Please forgive me. I am trying. Save me from this rage.”

  Save me from this rage.

  9

  Radiance

  PAUL WOKE UP from his medical capsule. The blue light faded, and the lid opened. He sat up and felt empty. He had one day to recuperate, three d
ays left of battle, and four days till his family’s arrival.

  In a massive, clean bay that housed Ryan’s patched Legacy suit, two rows of five cots each, and several bathrooms, Ryan walked up to Paul with an unfamiliar display of soft emotions. He embraced Paul in a tight, loving hug. “I owe you my life. Thank you.”

  Paul put his arm around Ryan. “You helped us get this far. I should be thanking you.”

  Ryan stood back, wiped his tears away, and chuckled. “I had to give up everything to buy you time. But in each match, you gave your all. Now I can see my family again.”

  “Help me up.”

  Ryan helped Paul stand. Material moved from the sphere and dressed Paul in a bodysuit. He wobbled a few steps and regained his posture with a deep breath. His body felt normal, even though it had an expiration date.

  They walked past a row of ten medical capsules. Above the capsules, he could not help but eye the banners and emblems displaying his serious face and his bulky white suit, surrounded by bold-lettered names and logos of sponsors. The word Killer appeared everywhere, more than he wanted.

  Ryan noticed his stare. “Gotta love them. I took care of the ass-ton-sized legal contract for you to represent them. Soon we’ll have massive shipments of food and other supplies that I asked for. I also arranged for the delivery of Kaiser’s equipment from Forever Spring so that you could get more material. I had to trade a lot to make that happen. Oh, by the way, you’re going to have to replicate the sponsors’ names on your suit. You can do that, right? Because I promised them that you could.”

  “Yeah, I think so. Why would they care about a soulless, immortal violator of God?”

  “You’re making profits on their behalf. Money runs this world. They don’t give a shit.” Ryan shrugged.

  They walked toward the gigantic main gate to the bay, and it opened. A bright orange light filled the interior as they narrowed their eyes. In the distance stood towering silver structures with yellow stripes that pierced the skies through different cloud layers. Mountain ranges of colorful woodlands snaked around the surrounding cities. To welcome him and provide him a facility to live in, Forever Fall must have loved his performance.