by Hanna, K. T.
The hub itself is far taller, and the top stands about fifteen feet high. Dom leverages himself off a metal part at the bottom and jumps until he can grab the top. He reaches down to help Sai up as well. There are no grooves for her to dig her feet and hands into, and damaging it with sharpened adrium might not even be possible in the time they have. They search around and finally find the canister intakes on the diagonal of the opposite side. There are four of them. For the four canisters they have.
These are far easier to manipulate than any of the ones before. They can both insert their own canisters at the same time, making the process easy. Just a digital button and automated rising and lowering of the content. Luckily the current filters are on orange, so it’s easy to just press the button to eject them. Once the canisters are in place, it simply sucks it down and locks itself.
“That’s it?” Sai sounds a little disappointed.
Dom nods and closes his backpack before slinging it back into place.
“How are we for time?” Sai massages at her arms and cricks her neck back and forth, wincing every now and again.
“We have a few minutes.” He watches her for a moment before batting her hands away. “Stop that. You’re doing more harm than good.” Her neck is one huge knot, and he works at it, trying to soothe it and cause her neck less pain. Her skin is soft and warm, so similar to how Sai is as a person.
She gasps a few times and closes her eyes. “I did a number on it, huh?”
Dom shrugs and realizes she can’t see it. “I can’t do much for the joining points in your spine, but your neck isn’t helping them either. There’s some cream in Mele you can use for it when we get back. Remind me.”
Sai nods.
“We should probably go now.” Dom lets his hands fall back to his knees and pushes himself to a standing position.
“Yeah…” She puts out a hand and waves it about. “Help me up. My neck is sore.”
Dom chuckles softly as he pulls her up, the noise sinking into the soft whir of the machines in the room. For a moment, she’s close to him, close enough to push the parasite down and away for a bit. Close enough that he doesn’t want to move because the silence in his head is golden.
“Don’t ever say I don’t take you anywhere nice.” He grins at her and reluctantly moves away as she laughs.
“Time to head back.”
Dom nods and leads the way to the door. “We should still have plenty of time,” he says as he pushes it open—only to walk into all the guards they’d subdued on their way in…and more.
Damn, is the first thought that runs through Dom’s mind. The second is to get Sai to safety, and the third is to just get them both back to Mele. It takes a split second for him to process, grab her hand, and barrel through the line of men just as the one in front raises a crossbow to his shoulder.
“Phase,” he yells, knowing she will understand instinctively exactly where they need to meet. The first one is a wild phase, and he almost careens into a wall. Behind him, it doesn’t sound like Sai is having quite the same problem. It’s always been more her forte than his. Two steps turn into another phase, and he hears the clank of a crossbow bolt fall where he was a second before.
He makes it to the ventilation shaft turnoff before Sai and waits, hoping the men don’t run abnormally fast. Phasing might be quick, but they’ll catch up eventually. Sai overshoots the shaft by a few feet and doubles back, accepting his outstretched hand.
They stare at each other, the echoes of running feet coming too close for comfort. “Here goes,” he whispers.
Sai smiles crookedly at him.
Phasing through the fans is nerve-wracking at the best of times, but with twenty guards hell-bent on chasing them down, it’s a lot worse. Dom overshoots his landing, morphing one foot into a sudden grip while the other flails in the air.
Time slows down and Sai reaches out to grab him, his right hand snaking its way around her arm and his fingers digging in so hard that he knows she’ll have bruises. Just as his grip solidifies, his one grounded foot shoots out from underneath him as well. Dom holds on to her so tightly that he can feel her shoulder just about to pop in protest. With a violent swing, he leverages a spiked foot into the mortar below, and she yanks him back onto the ledge. He looks up at her grim face as he regains his balance. She’s sallow, and he can see her anger at his rashness glowering through. That was far too close for comfort.
Undamaged, and now unburdened by the canisters, Dom chooses to return the favor straight away and sling her onto his back.
He can hear the guards cursing behind them. One of them shouts out to another to get the fans shut down. It’s all the incentive he needs. With Sai clinging to his back, Dom begins to edge along to the opposite side and the creaky rusted door. She swings off his back and through the door as they get there, making it easier for him to follow.
As they step through the corridor, Dom strains his ears to hear something that might tell them if their would-be murderers are anywhere near them. He can’t hear anything and motions them forward.
Sai breathes an audible sigh of relief as they sneak through the door to the creepily lit area. The lights still flicker and the occasional footstep echoes in the distance. Sai reaches out and grabs his hand. Dom doesn’t yank it away. The contact comforts him.
The way back to the other ventilation fans is free of interference. Dom frowns and stops at the entrance to the shaft.
“What?” Sai asks, trying to tug him up to the fans.
“Too simple. Surely they would have sounded the alarm.”
Sai shrugs, but he can see the same thoughts dancing through her eyes. “Regardless of who they’ve told or who might be coming, we need to get out of here and to Mele. May even have to call it off for the rest of the PCs. It’s like they…”
Suddenly white as a ghost, Sai falls to her knees, clutching her head. Her eyes water and the tears stream down her cheeks. “Damn it,” she gasps out after several seconds. It sounds like she can’t get enough air into her lungs, gulping like a drowning swimmer.
“Sai?” Dom places a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Bastian.”
Dom crouches to be at eye level as she squints the tears of pain out of her vision. “What?”
“They know. RUN.”
“What do we do?” Sai whispers, her face ashen.
He whips his head around. “We go out the way we came in.”
“There’s no other way?”
His mind is racing through the schematics in his memory, regarding and dismissing options almost instantaneously. “Not that I’m aware of. You’ve seen the same schematics I have. Does anything different jump out at you?”
Sai shakes her head. “Is there anywhere that could be dangerous for us to run through? Ambush areas?”
Dom shrugs. “I don’t know. Was he specific?”
“No, but the ‘run’ part was pretty forceful.” She cracks a smile, but it looks more like she might cry.
“Yeah.” Dom glances around again. The other patrol should have been through here by now. Something is definitely not right. “We should have been found by now. None of our intel is good anymore. We’re going to have to wing it.”
She rises, and he stands with her. “We can always phase through them if we need to, right?”
“As long as they don’t knock us off-balance,” Dom says, still on high alert as he scans the areas.
“We can do this.” She nods at him, a fire returning to her eyes.
The words give Dom a false sense of security, but right now he’ll take it and wear it like a badge. Phasing through these fans is easier without a host of guards chasing them. Hoisting Sai up on his back again, Dom levers himself out onto the ledge. This shaft is so dark he can barely see his own hand in front of his face. It’s later now, and no moon is visible in this section of the city. Buildings overshadow what could be some illumination and leave nothing but a shaft of light stabbing the dark like a warning.
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He inches along, straining at the handholds and extra weight on his back. Adrium is not the lightest metal in the world, and though Sai’s synaptic activity might drastically reduce the weight, he’s still carrying two of them. It’s the ladder that kills him. Though his muscles aren’t technically human, unusual stress is still telling.
They wait, poised on the top rung as a patrol walks by, and then count to sixty. Dom nods and Sai leverages the small grate open.
Suddenly she’s no longer on his shoulders. Dom hears a scream followed by a thud and jumps out of the hole only to take a right hook to the face. In the back of his mind, he wonders just how much that punch hurt the guy and how long his hand is going to have to be in a cast.
Sai is visible off to the right, angling a pretty decent flying kick into a large man’s gut. The grunt makes Dom smile despite the situation, and then there’s no time to concentrate on anything other than what’s in front of him.
Nine people and a lone Damascus soldier surround him. It only takes a second to scan them and register their weaponry and to wonder where this soldier’s lieutenant is. Going on the weapons alone and their ready stances, the others have to be members of a special forces units, though he doubts they’re from Markus. Someone high up fires a crossbow and hits Dom on the shoulder. To anyone else it would look like the bolt is sure to sink in, but the adrium ripples briefly and it falls to the ground with a harmless clatter. Dom only hopes his body can keep up with the damage prevention because he has a feeling these aren’t the only attackers coming.
The parasite knocks at his mind, trying to coax its way in. He ignores it.
They can’t risk phasing out and being knocked into a wall by a stray projectile. Staying is less risky than landing in a wall. Nine men and one solider. Easy enough, right? Dom shakes his head, trying to banish the pull and the need to simply just do away with all of them.
One of the men runs at him, brandishing a knife. Dom knows it’s a very fast movement, but in his mind, everything slows. The man finally reaches him. Dom feints and grabs at the knife while ducking slightly. Using his assailant’s momentum, he scoops the man up at the last possible moment and sends him flying in an arc, up and over. The man lands with a sickening crunch, but Dom kneels swiftly to draw a sharpened forearm over the jugular just to be safe.
One down, nine to go. Three of them run at him simultaneously. It’s a beautiful game of who is fastest. The one on the right goes down first with a sharp kick to the groin, accentuated by the sharpened toe that rips where it connects. An arc of blood spurts out in gushes, beading on Dom’s legs and rolling harmlessly into the street.
He dodges a punch to the throat from second and returns it with his own, tearing clean through most of the woman’s neck, leaving her head just this side of severed with another river of blood to flow down the shaft.
The third assailant has just enough time to realize the error of his ways, but not enough time to escape Dom’s well-aimed kick to the head. Sharpened adrium cuts through the skull, slicing a good portion of it off, brain matter and blood spattering all over the pavement as the sliced half falls to the ground.
Dom circles, a grin on his face as he licks the blood off his hand. Why has he fought this for so long? Why did they insist on maintaining his humanity? The parasite isn’t begging anymore; it’s simply part of him, a delicious, no-holds-barred hungry part of him.
And so many people just waiting to die.
Four down, six to go. He blinks, though. Two are gone, probably moved over to Sai. Out the corner of his eye, he glimpses one of them standing open-mouthed in shock. The man looks up and grimaces with determination or idiocy before charging at Dom. This time Dom moves so quickly it barely registers in his mind. The darkness has spread, encompassing everything he is, and the ease with which his body morphs, the glee with which he disembowels the man before severing his head, sends tactile shivers down his spine.
He turns to see the Damascus soldier just watching, like it’s in a strange sort of stasis mode. On hold or not, it’s a danger. Dom kicks the side of its neck, a well-aimed slice that catches it under the protective plating, severing wiring from the rest of the body. Dom crunches his heel in its face, sick of the dead eyes watching him, and turns around to find twenty-five people armed to the teeth.
He’s not sure where they came from, but there’s a rush of joy in his ears. These fighters are well-trained, and their black garments resemble something similar to Sai’s body armor, though not quite as advanced. They hold themselves slightly forward in anticipation, and their weapons are a variety of hooks, axes, and bolt guns. He takes it all in, analyzing each of them.
Then all he sees is red. There’s nothing left to give over to the parasite as the bloodthirst flows through him. Each death means a sliver of electricity to feed the leech through its host, and the strength, the sheer ability he gains from that small difference, makes his reflexes completely alien.
His ability to care diminishes, and after a few more attackers, he stops trying to dodge their onslaught. He loses count. After all, it’s only wasting time. He’s made of adrium. He’s invincible. He is Domino.
Another head rolls, followed shortly by a body sliced from shoulder to groin. The gaping mouth on the over-balanced half with the head is almost comical, but his attention switches to the next attacker even before the body has toppled to the ground. It takes a moment for Dom to realize a portion of his thigh isn’t knitting back together properly. Failing to dodge his attackers might not have been the best decision. The adrium can only absorb so much damage before the humanity in him makes him weak.
Vaguely he recalls an axe that tried to sever his leg. It belonged to the one he split in two. But it’s of no consequence. He is alien. He is Domino. He is invincible.
Cuts and dents start to appear on his arms, and he uses the next axe that tries to decapitate him to pull the culprit to him before he slices the man’s neck.
Except he can’t lever it out. It’s wedged in there tightly—far too close to his humanity. Not even the replenishment of electricity that was pulled from the bodies as they died is enough to staunch his wounds.
The parasite flees to stitch what it can together, leaving Dom drowning in his own internal darkness at the actions and memories, at the deaths and his own blood. He stumbles and coughs, a strange feeling, not something he’s ever done before. The blood rage still howls inside him, wanting more death, needing more blood—but the energy is gone.
“Shit,” he says as he stumbles to his knees, a hand still resting on the haft of the axe buried in his chest. He sees Sai running sideways toward him just before he passes out.
Sai’s own movements are a blur to her. So many people keep rushing at her she doesn’t have time to think. Reflexively, she pulls from her core, striking harder and faster, switching to reinforce each punch with adrium-strengthened psinoics. Smash through a jaw here, crush a windpipe with medical efficiency there.
Right now there is no right or wrong, only dead or alive, and she doesn’t want to be the dead one. A couple of times she wants to flee, but a glance back to Dom makes that an impossibility. His eyes are red, like she’s never seen them before. An eerie glow encases his entire body, somehow making him seem more shadow than human, but then, he’s never really been human.
She can’t leave him to fight alone in that state of mind, and the number of crossbows in sight make the idea of phasing foolish. She’d have to channel what energy is going into her protective shield to fend off the crossbow bolts into phasing, and that would end in disaster. Slowly, she starts to make her way over to where Dom’s fighting, hopefully to jolt him out of whatever trance he’s fallen into, but the next wave of attackers puts an end to that and requires all of her focus.
Her body aches, her arms feel like they’re tearing out of their sockets, and the last two hits have left her body armor cut open at the sides. The small hairline of her skin that managed to get nicked is beading with blood. Her hair is damp and
sticks to the nape of her neck, and once again her eyebrows are failing her. The saltiness of her sweat stings her eyes, but she refuses to be distracted, least of all by the pain in her gut and the warmth of her core. Almost like it’s beckoning to her, telling her everything will be all right if she just lets it take her away. It’ll protect her, keep her safe and warm, and she’ll never have to hurt herself or anyone else again.
Sai shakes her head to try and clear her thoughts with barely enough time to dodge a very nasty crowbar. She pushes some more energy through her core to her shields, grateful for all the time she’s spent building up endurance. The power washes through her in a silty mass, leaving grit on her tongue.
After striking the heel of her palm to their solar plexus and exerting just enough power to crush it inward, she pulls away from her assailant ready for another, despite the current effort it takes just to stand. Vision swimming, she looks around and realizes they’re gone. All of them are down. Beneath her feet.
“Dom?” she calls out, trying to coax her eyes into better focus in the dim light. “Do—” And she stops short, eyes suddenly sharply focusing on the sight in front of her, not ten feet away.
Just as one man falls, an axe bites deeply into Domino’s chest. If he’d been human, it would have cut through him. Instead, it’s lodged in his chest. Sai can’t find her voice, trips on a limb, and stumbles, hands out in front to right her from the bloody street.
Everything slows down as Dom uses the axe to tug his assailant to him, and with one clean motion, he slices the man’s neck. The feeble attempts to dislodge the axe would be almost comical if he didn’t seem so pitifully alien.
Those blood-red eyes and the way his body flows back and forth from shadow to black, solid to almost liquid. His eyes blink in surprise, and a strange concoction flows from his lips. Dom frowns down at the axe in his chest, suddenly looking like his human self once more, and finally, as he begins to fall sideways, the eyes that focus on her drain back to pale silver.