by Marc Mulero
He lingered in anticipation… breath held, other noises faded from his ears, the smell of discharged smoke singeing his nostrils. “Please. Break their ranks. Please…” his jaw slowly dropped… how could this woman calculate trajectory so fast, within seconds? How could it be that a massive hole was forming in the army’s lines just seconds before impact. Boom. The blast kicked up nothing but earth.
His head dropped down with disappointment in the failed strike. “We’re up against something terrifying, hermanos.”
“Don’t you go soft on us, too, you skinny freak,” Sabin said. “Aim that last shot at their squadron of jets. It will distract them, if nothing else.”
Lito pounded his chest to re-psych himself and scrambled to reload the launcher.
At that moment, Eugene lifted his head as if breaking an ocean surface after nearly drowning, breaking free from an internal struggle that was almost palpable. “I’ve let us all down once before,” he said, words slow and drawn out. “The time for being torn is over, isn’t it? It’s clear what I have to do,” he was talking to himself as much as he was his friends. “The Jen I knew died long ago.”
And with that, he repositioned his rifle toward the mass of Aura soldiers.
“Snipers occupying the mansions!” Eugene shouted into his radio in between shots. “Engage from the east end windows.”
“Their minds, they operate as one,” a deep voice echoed through the commanders’ channel. “She is the key, Sins, her thoughts control this army of red. End her… end the assault,” Orin spoke, concealing himself behind a wall. “Cover me if you value your home. I am the last thing standing between her and her prize. If the smoke pools over, the battle is lost. The time is now, Sins. Eyes on me!”
The Aura picked up the pace harmoniously. Their synchronized footsteps made for a disturbing sound amid the civilians’ cries for help. They fired at the will of their goddess, whose eyes darted rapidly. She targeted each combatant within an instant, sentencing that fighter to death with a mere thought.
“Hopefully this provides the cover you need,” Lito said to himself, jamming down the trigger to release his last rocket from its launcher.
An explosion, followed by the tumbling of large steel aircrafts compelled Asura to twist her head in distraction, giving Orin the opportunity to strike.
Lito dropped the expended launcher and peered over the ledge. Anxious, lip bitten down, neck hanging over like he was engrossed in a movie, watching the shadow of an old man traveling faster than anyone he’d ever seen, even Lesh.
Guts were everywhere, starting at the corner of the hive-minded army where Orin began carving, ripping through flesh and metal like a knife through butter, en route to the heart of the swarm.
Eugene fixed his eyes on the woman he once desperately loved. A clear glimpse of her face seized his muscles like he’d been encased in ice. He sat there, frozen, doing nothing to aid Orin in reaping hell among their ranks. Even when he tried to use his shaky trigger finger, a flood of memories came crashing to the front of his mind to stop him. An unscarred smiling face replaced the grimacing demonic one, and the undying love that they’d shared in a past life eclipsed his will to fight. Eugene shut his eyes and let his head fall from his scope. A tear escaped… for all that he meant to do and all that he couldn’t, letting the moment to finally take her out vanish with the wind.
Asura’s teeth were showing, head turned, eyes glaring at the old man she’d once shared words with, the one who rejected her gracious gift of smoke not long ago. He was approaching, and fast, slicing his way to the nucleus of her squad with attention fixated somehow on only her, ensuring that she wouldn’t disappear into the fray.
“Never…” she mouthed, hands thrown back, fingers flexed, halting the Aura’s advance by willing it. And then, unexpectedly, her body crumpled to the ground like a wilted flower. Did Eugene finally find the courage to shoot? No. No bullet wound. But she did appear defeated.
Finally, from the ball she’d curled herself into came a reckoning that started within rattling bones, echoing its way to muscle, through skin. Everything around her began to quiver until from the depths of her heart came an unhinged shriek that shook the grounds of Senation. Within seconds, her body spawned an avalanche of red smoke that flooded the scene and tossed the reins back to her. A world of crimson now surrounded the exiled, with her as its queen.
Lito, Sabin, and Eugene ducked behind the ledge to shield themselves from the smoldering cloud. Hands waved away smoke. Everyone felt hopelessly blinded and overwhelmed, unsure of how to adjust to such madness. Then, beyond the sea of red engulfing them, came a rumble in the distance. Something airborne. Something unknown.
“Reinforcements have arrived,” Biljin declared through radio. And to complement the announcement, came a squadron of silver Dactuar jets peeling through dissipating smoke at a crucial time for the rebellion.
“Yes!” Lito punched the air, frown rising to a grin at the sight of friendly cavalry. “Your timing, hermano, woo.” A sense of hope lifted his heart from the depths of despair. “Couldn’t be better.”
He’d dropped his radio, watching as the smoke pulled away in front of him like curtains starting a show.
“What… what are you doing?”
Silence.
“No. Stop.” His voice went from a whisper to a deep shout.
Out came a tragedy, the likes of which he couldn’t possibly have imagined. Eugene, in all of his melancholy, all of his faults, and all of his history with them, twisted away from the ledge, whipping his rifle to disengage the enemy and turn on a friend.
“Stop!”
Still rubbing his eyes from the effects of the smoke, Sabin was unaware of the betrayal that befouled him, the betrayal that stared at him in the form of a smoking barrel.
Lito’s heartbeat pulsated in his eardrums. It was surreal. It had to be fake, a trick from the smoke.
He wouldn’t…
The sniper’s eyes shook with conflict… iris’ vibrating like drum symbols refusing to still. A moment of hesitation? Could it be a chance to stop this? He was stalling to pull the trigger, but why?
No time for questions.
Lito’s body unfroze in what felt like a timeless dimension, two steps forward, mouth hung open, screaming, shouting, he could barely hear himself. Was he calling out his friend’s name? Trying to warn him? Sabin. His brother.
God. No. Don’t do it, Eugene.
This was something beyond adrenaline – Lito was living six scenarios at once. Different scenes of his life burned through his mind, not memories. No. He was living them again – the doors he was forced to close on the poor civilians left outside in Bulchevin. Brower sacrificing himself for his people. Briggs… shielding his son. All of what he’d learned and all that he’d sacrificed in a lifetime of exile worked to empower him. Here. Now. To stop this madness!
Or the next best thing.
He clutched Sabin by the shoulders and flung him from harm’s way, just as the ripple of flame propelled a bullet into his own chest.
A gasp.
Those instances that he was reliving rewound into one. The present. A moment of starkest betrayal.
Eugene, we were brothers…
Thrown backward from the force of a point-blank shot, he left a spatter of blood on the roof before he spun off of it.
Eyes whitened with death as he fell. He could see them so clearly now… everything he cherished in life… this last reel of thought – family… madre, hermano. They were at a festival and it was perfect.
Let me stay here, mama. Let me stay…
A tear slid from his eye as he plunged, grasping for what he saw.
Chapter 20
Amidst the rocky lands of Old Naples sat a vast Hiezer bastion known simply as “the Dome.” A military base tucked so far away, so out of reach, that those who stumbled upon it instantly froze with fear. Ominous and daunting, it rested between two mountain peaks with a shadowy cover - like an upside-down bowl used to keep
a bug from escaping. It stretched for miles, outlined in signature gold to remind all to whom this plot belonged. A tunnel at its foreground was most uninviting… intricate, metallic, and overlayered with security latches, extending out into the flatlands like an entrance to a haunting futuristic theme park.
Researchers had been testing inside for years uninterrupted. Muffled explosions that sometimes shook the land were commonplace. Now however, the tremors, real tremors, were here, the ones from Mother Earth herself, and native Sins had nowhere to go for protection.
They’d been scouring the grounds for days, and every minute lost felt like a clock ticking down to the end of their lives. Nothing. They found nothing. Of course they wouldn’t turn to a Hiezer base… anything elite-related was suicide. But what would happen at the eleventh hour, when there was no hope? Just flimsy huts and growing herds of people. What then? Short of finding a blimp to live in for the foreseeable future, death became more and more certain. No such options were available, and after sane decisions fleeted, they were forced to look to a new potential home like a mirage of water within an endless desert. Even if it was hopeless, they had to try. As luck would have it, they weren’t alone…
Lesh, Volaina, and Drino powered down their jets, formed their squads, and led their respective armies on a straight path to a gathering at the front of the channel. Burning marks shined to tell the Naples Sin militia that their allies had come.
The assassin pulled in front. That tunnel is a one-way path to certain death. If we engage, we’ll be trapped, bombed, smoked out. Look at their pathetic faces. This is psychological warfare at its finest.
She came to a halt at the crossroads, eyeing the head of the militia like he’d bathed in garbage.
A middle-aged, hardened man with a rounded belly glanced at Lesh’s arm and then to the commanders backing her. “Reinforcements?”
The blackened rims of the assassin’s eyes amplified her already agitated look. “What makes you think you can march into Hiezer territory with no plan of action and make it out alive?”
The man narrowed his eyes, looked to the score of ad-hoc fighters behind him, and back again. “Dunno who you think you are… or how you could claim there’s no plan, bu-”
“Look at you,” Lesh spoke over him, presenting a disheveled mess with her hand. “Barbarians… Vikings, thoughtless ones at that.”
The crowd behind him stiffened at the callout.
“Stand down. That’s a fucking order.” Lesh took another step closer to him.
He leaned back upon losing ownership rights to his personal space, and then shook his head. “Can’t do it, lady. Our soldiers are already in there… this is Squad Two. Again, who are you-”
Lesh scoffed and Drino sneered at the idiocy.
“Guys,” Volaina exclaimed, “they’re all going to die if we don’t get in there now. Look at them. They need us. Why are you staring at me like that? We traveled all this way… we should do what we can!”
Lesh shut her eyes for a long while, acknowledging the noise coming from her distraught friend… but that’s all it was to her - noise. She wanted to slap her, maybe even worse, but instead she just kept facing forward, to the other oblivious Sin before her.
“Pull your fighters out. Now.”
The burly man shook his head. “You feel the rumblings, little lady. This invasion is the only shot my people have to survive what’s coming. Besides, there’re no military Hiezers in this fortress, just scientists and strategists.”
You idiot. All valuable personnel are situated in Nepsys. Anyone left in that Dome is there to thin your herd.
He was about to keep on, but just as he opened his mouth, a lanky woman came forward, tapped his shoulder, and whispered something in his ear, something that must’ve been quite jarring, for his eyes bulged from his head before he immediately bent into a bow.
“Commander Lesh, my apologies for not realizing sooner. I’m Rayn, co-leader of this Sin advance. Forg-”
“Listen, you stubborn prick,” Lesh tightened her jaw. “Whoever gave you access to this tunnel is leading you straight into a trap. If you’re going to bow to me as a commander, you best back down on my order.”
Fearful of the infamous assassin, Rayn lifted his radio in a panic. “Come in, Yuditz.”
No response came through, only static.
“They’ve already cut you off,” Drino growled.
“How… how do you know that our spy is against us?”
The echo of metal clamping together was loud enough for all to hear, the sound stemming from within the long tunnel.
“Fah!” Drino spat, “They’re locked in now. Too late for them.”
“What?” Rayn barked back. “You’re talking like they’re already dead!” He turned to the crowd. “Hell, if I’m going to leave half of our family in there to get slaughtered. Hell if I am!” He pounded his chest to amp himself and the others up. “Charge!”
A blur of bodies was already howling as they ran past, leaving the commanders to deliberate.
Volaina’s eyes followed the hopeless militia. “We… have to help them. I still believe it.”
Lesh stomped up to her, cold eyes meeting timid ones. “Let me ask you something, spy: do you think this will make amends? Well, do you? Do you think that the guilt eating you up alive is just going to what, go away? Hah, get a hold of yourself Volaina. Don’t drag us into your death wish.”
“The only reason these people are fighting for their lives is because they’ve heard of what we’ve accomplished,” Volaina argued. “We would be going against everything we’ve fought for if we don’t get in there now.”
Lesh watched the amateurs like they were less than human… animals being shepherded to their execution. “We’ve only made it this far because of strategic advantage. And now you would throw it all away? Suddenly the intelligent spy devolves into the hopeless hero?” her voice cracked and eyes scolded. “And did you bring this brute because you knew nothing would turn him on more than a bloody slaughter?”
Drino smiled and flexed, like he was happy to be called out. “Two against one, deadly little thorn. You could always go sit in the den and wait.”
The assassin scoffed and turned away from them.
“I thought not, Spade,” he snarled. “It’s settled then.”
Sheepishly, Volaina readied her silenced rifle and Drino hand-signaled for the army to prepare.
“A Hiezer general or high-ranking elite is at the forefront of this,” Drino voiced his suspicion. “Ruden wouldn’t have released the intel unless he was sure of victory.”
“If there’s any way to end this shitshow, it’s not to rush in blindly with these fools,” Lesh said with disdain. “We have to gain tactical advantage. As soon as we get past that wall, spread out and find the springer of this trap. Cut off the head of the snake.”
The three Sin commanders noticed that the shouting from the first squad on the other side of the steel door had died down and the rush to save them had curtailed to a halt within the tunnel.
The commanders then proceeded slowly into a brightly lit enclosure to find the fighters stopped in their tracks. Moaning and banging voiced a collective frustration, and the sight of sunken faces marked a militia stuck with nothing to pillage. Ill-equipped to ram the steel door, their battle-ready energy quickly morphed into dread, falling further when screams from their families pierced from the other side. The helpless men and women of Squad Two parted for the legendary Senation fighters making their way to Rayn at the front of the pack.
Volaina pulled out her radio and asked, “Rodest, can you break the controls of the Old Naples Dome entrance?”
All that returned was static.
Rayn desperately hurled the butt of his axe into the reinforced door and yelled, “Good people are dying in there. Do something!”
The noises on the other side were harrowing – cries for mothers, banging against metal to let them out. It was nothing short of a slaughter, and everyone knew it. The
militia was stunned stiff as they watched Rayn act out all of their grief. Guilt was obvious, in silence and in rage, but then all heads turned toward the sound of electricity hissing from behind them. What was this? The Naples Sins parted again, only this time with hesitation… who were these people? They bore no marks. This group of one hundred green cloaks appeared in the divide. Should they raise their weapons or extend their grace to more guests?
“At the request of our late forerunner’s son, we will get you through this, as you once did for us,” Coe proclaimed, raising his metallic-coated arm.
“And how the hell are you going to do that?” Rayn snapped.
“The Templos helped build these reinforced behemoths. It would be embarrassing if we couldn’t unmake them.”
Jayce stalked forward, eyes locked like a black-haired lion who’d spotted his prey - Volaina, murderer of Rogues. An enemy in every right in his mind. “Just because Coe has decided to help the Sins, doesn’t mean I’m through with you,” he said, raising the point of his gasoline-doused harpoon to the spy commander’s neck.
A knife unsheathed from Lesh’s ring, and flipped to stop at the pyro’s face. “I’ll carve you where you stand…”
“Jayce!” Coe shouted while examining the control pad of the steel door.
The pyro lowered his spear, looking down on Volaina through narrowed eyes.
Suddenly, a burst of electricity shot from Coe’s arm and into one of the circuits. He traced the massive panel all the way down to the floor, in search of the other trip that would disable the system. Once again, his finger spat a spark of electricity, causing the metal door to part at the horizontal opening from its center.
Vleece, the bald Templos overseer, stepped forward and swung down her massive hammer, further widening the gap. She swung again, this time from the ground up, smashing the top half of the steel door into its chamber.