Anatali: Ragnarok

by A. C. Edwards

  Still-moving severed limbs flopped away from the cloud as it slowed. The horde reformed behind it, closing the street, uniform ranks of swaying shoulders. The mist evaporated. Jessica aimed, but hesitated; Bunny still couldn’t find a target. Smoky lines drifted in every direction, creeping along the pavement as much as licking the sky. The fade revealed four silhouettes: one male, two short females, and a kid at the rear. The outlines’ body language spread between slumped shoulders, clench-fists, and hands-on-the-hips.

  One girl stepped forward from the dissipating mist. Low-rise designer jeans, a green bikini top, and deep tan skin, she looked every bit like the girl from two days ago, though redressed. While her jet eyes seemed to flare with their own light, her expression held more curiosity than rage. Fiona. The original black-eyed from Marsden.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said, straight at Jessica. Her English sounded fluent enough, even if her Latin accent was lazy. “You’re not a hostage.”

  “No, I’m not,” her sights set steady on the girl, whether Bunny offered a targeting solution or not.

  Fiona looked back to her group. Frumpy Kati wore a tattered flower print, the hem fluttering with a current of smoke swirling from sandals to fists. Same black eyes, except through glasses, her face twisted in a sneer. At her side, Anton leaned off-center, expression blank, staring forward through cloudy-whites. The corpse slack-gripped a needler, barrel pointed down.

  “Sister?” Fiona tipped her head to the last figure.

  Jessica’s jaw trembled as the kid stepped from Kati’s shadow. From silhouette to detail, her eyes widened to dinner plates, a garble caught in her throat.

  No.

  Pale skin, and a head shorter than the girls, Jacob walked with living grace, wearing unfamiliar clothes, a dress-shirt and tie. A wide strip of white ribbon blindfolded him, tied in a bow among blond hair. His attention was focused behind her—she spared a glance—Dillon knelt, massaging his temples.

  She had punched Jacob charred, skinless, eyeless, and hairless. Dead.

  He lifted his arm, pointing a finger at the man. Fiona said, “Yeah, Jake, I see him too.”

  “We’re not here to fight you, Miss Marelli.” Shannon dropped to eye-level.

  “Oh, so you know me?” She smiled, the expression only creepy for her eyes. “You guys are the law, right? What are you doing in our city?”

  “Your city?”

  “You left Rose to us. We’re keeping it. Go back to City Centre, finish blowing the shit out of it.”

  “Jacob! H-How did…when?” Tears welled in her eyes.

  “He found them,” Dillon braced to stand, eyes glazed. “He was looking for you.”

  “You can hear him? I-Is he alive?”

  “Nope.” Fiona walked him to the front, then hugged him around the shoulders from behind. “Don’t even smell too bad, after we cleaned him up.”

  Their version of Kahn? A pet? Whatever his appearance; if he could still communicate—if his soul still lived in that body…

  “Let me take him.” She shook away her emotion, climbing off Nicky. “He’s my brother.”

  “Apparently. But he’s also our best lieutenant. You can’t have him—unless you want to trade.”

  “Trade?” Jessica followed her eyes back to Dillon. Christy was on the ground, supporting him, pistol in hand. “What are you doing here?”

  “Creating some order. We need more like him.”

  “You call burning down your city creating order?” Dolores said, restrained, but no longer resisting.

  “Herding.” She grinned, sweeping an arm across the horde. “I take it that little shower was your doing?” The sky had lightened, though a smokey pall hung over the vanners, mostly coming from Kati, who still appeared a breath away from flipping the fuck out.

  “He’s not yours to trade!” Christy said it to Jessica. “If he’s dead—”

  “I’m not letting him slave and die at their whim! He’s as real as Kahn.”

  “Comparing puppets?” Fiona pointed at the tiger, who still air-walked in rhythm. She clicked her fingers. Kahn fell limp in Nicky’s grasp. “I’m sure your man can tell you the specifics, if you ain’t already guessed.”

  “Don’t you hurt him.” Jessica stomped to the line, her rifle at the hip. “Bring him back.”

  “I guess you don’t get it.” Head cocked to the side, she clicked again. The animal resumed his stride as if nothing happened. “Your guy probably doesn’t either. He seems weak enough. We can change that.”

  Christy shouted. A fireball arced over the line, bursting halfway. Jessica scrambled away as flames sizzled the debris. From her knees, she saw Kati lower her palm.

  “We can always take you both, chica. You can leave this sell-out traitor and her pets to these dipshit robots and actually have a chance with us. They haven’t exactly led you to freedom, have they?”

  “I-I trust Jessie. She saved us!”

  “But she’d trade you for her dead brother—wouldn’t you?”

  In a heartbeat.

  “They are no one’s possessions to barter with,” Shannon said. “Please return the boy to his sister and leave us to our business. Within the hour we’ll foil the missile strikes and send word to the media. Relief will arrive by evening.”

  Kati snapped forward. Anton followed as if yanked by a tether. Fiona broke into laughter, from chuckle to maniacal. “Oh, so that’s what you’re doing! No seriously, who are you guys?”

  “The remainder.” Nicky said. “The city itself never had a hand in this loss. The decision to evacuate, to salvage the survivors, we have fought for it, and died, such as my brethren you defeated on your approach. Even now, there are others like you, like Jessica, waiting for order, fighting to escape. Allow us to fulfill our purpose and we will allow you your own.”

  “Pretty words, robot.” Fiona strutted even closer, staring up Dani. “How about I defeat another of yours just to show you who’s calling the shots. I think we’ll just take your talent instead.”

  “I’m afraid your time’s up.” Shannon pulsed. The pair of Sixes on rear guard abandoned their patrol for the crater. Immediately, they chucked slabs of concrete and dug with their axes. A rumble filled the air. A point of light approached from The Mission.

  Kati’s gaze snapped to the missile, her motions more stiff, more unnatural than Jacob’s or Anton’s. She flashed a palm before clenching her fist. The ordinance exploded as it approached a mile, raining fire and smoke over Valance River, Rose City’s dividing line.

  “Reinforcements, eh?” Fiona laughed, hands glowing. None of the bots broke rank or threatened.

  “An enemy.” Shannon said. “We’ll leave the Feds to you, or you can escape. Either way, we have shit to do. Dolores, if you’d be so kind.”

  The Sixes released her. She paused, then whirred a nimble reverse and about-face to the crater’s center, adding her arms to the excavation. Jessica still didn’t know what they were looking to accomplish with the hole; there’d been no time to ask before, nor now. Two more missiles detonated—boom, boom. The vanners seemed at a loss. Nicky urged the lovers towards the digging, leaving Jessica.

  What was Jacob now? A thinking puppet, a slave, or a free-willed soul choosing his own actions? The answer was as important as everything, yet totally meaningless. If he existed at all, she wanted him either with her or destroyed, set to peace. Seeing him resemble as he’d been before the flare, running with these bitches—her hands flexed around her gun. As Kati and Fiona stared to the horizon, Jacob stood in the open, his head tipped to a shivering Ayla.

  “Jacob!” she screamed. His head twitched to her. He slowly raised his hand to her, palm up, inviting. Jessica stepped forward. Whatever he was, he existed, something like Jacob, he recognized them. Attention split, Kati air-punched towards her. A wave of deep blue obscured the group, and sizzled the wet dirt in a circular line, just feet away from the bots' retreat.

  “Valkyrie, come!” Nicky shouted.

  She stepped forward.
“I can't leave him, not again.”

  “You won't survive,” Shannon said, floating over the crater as the bots dug deeper.

  Did it matter?

  A deafening explosion rebounded off the vanners, enveloping her in a crush of dust and pebbles. Coughing, Jessica stumbled back. A rock dug into her foot, the pain brief, but sobering. Letting momentum guide her, she slid another step, then another, gripping a still-warm slab with her toes. Ayla circled, following. After more shouts from the bots, and another wave of debris, the girl turned her back and picked her way through the crater’s edge. The FireBot perimeter finally collapsed, retreating.

  “Don’t think we’re done with you.” Fiona raised her hands alongside her friend, deflecting the latest barrage. A pair of aircrafts dipped and turned in the air, braiding the missiles’ paths. “This won’t take long.”

  Fiona clenched her fist. The shuttles remained airborne, unharmed. The vanners gritted their teeth and tried again. Dvorak ranks swarmed the intersection. The crafts opened fire, massive tracers preceding sprays of black and gray. The rounds ricocheted off the girls’ mist, shredding a Mark Three’s torso. The bot rumbled on without pause. The vanners disappeared behind their fog, and Jacob with them.

  Jessica cast one more look over her shoulder before descending head-below-sight into the crater.

  ~ 34 ~

  Rosebed

  November 31, 4124 — 12:20 PM

  “Easy, damn it, we ain’t made of metal!” Jessica winced, climbing to her feet just in time to catch Ayla, a five-foot drop. “I said slow down!”

  “You’ve proven yourself sturdy enough,” Shannon oversaw the evacuation from halfway down the pit, “quit whining.”

  “I apologize, Valkyrie.” Under care of Mark Six tentacles above and below, Nicky settled to the rubble and treaded away for clearance. After Dolores and Dani were lowered, the five moderns weaved a tentacle net for the final two. Bellies purged, the last Sixes dropped as anvils into the pit, caught one at a time. Flawless.

  “The Threes?” She stared up the fifty-foot pit.

  “Already progressing up Lux to safety. Please take cover. Nicky?”

  “Sire.”

  Jessica couldn’t be bothered to complain anymore, wrapped and lifted, carried away. Christy yipped, Dillon huffed, they left the overcast light for absolute darkness. The empty expanse hadn’t featured anything but even-spaced pillars and inches of black water flowing north. The thrum of Shannon’s pulse rebounded off the pit’s walls, painful even at a distance. A cacophony of cascading rubble followed, erasing the beacon of daylight. The avalanche continued, muffled, the battle above ground was now felt more than heard.

  She activated Bunny’s night vision. The screen offered little to see, but was a comfort over blindness.

  “Your brother,” Christy said. “I hate this…sorry.”

  “Can’t be helped, right, Nicky? Like I always say, us breathers don’t have a choice. When you say ‘get in the hole,’ I don’t need to know why. You’re always right and we’re always weak. Just as long as you apologize after, we’re all good, all the time.”

  “It could not be helped.” He slowed, waiting for Dolores, Dani, and Shannon. “And you needn’t mock us. I respect you as an equal, Valkyrie, and I have no trouble…trouble saying…”

  “Quit fucking whining.” The stun-globe whizzed past before L-turning away.

  Jessica aimed and fired. “Asshole.” The shot splashed against a pillar; Bunny raised an eyebrow. Twenty-five foot ceilings and she still couldn’t see the walls. “So this is the Rosebed. How’s it help?”

  “It’s quiet here.” Dillon sat upright in his steel hammock.

  “Ok. How’s it help truth and justice?”

  “It is not merely a drainage contrivance,” Dani entered the circle, Dolores hanging back at Bunny’s edge of vision. “Power supply regulation and high frequency emergency communication relays are not localized, but interspersed, networked as to sustain maximum reliability.”

  “Eh?” And she’d thought Nicky was cryptic. “How’s it—?”

  “Lord Odin would explain it better, but I believe it is possible that we can end this entire struggle with one action.”

  “I’ve heard that before!” she shouted. The echo sounded foreign to her ears. “Either put out or I’ll try something else: sneaking up the coast, holing up in that pawn shop. Everything you guys do ends up a clusterfuck, and my luck runs out real goddamn fast. We have nothing!”

  “We are fighting gods, as gods. You remember me saying such, and it is truth. You’ve seen hundreds of their faces already among Hel’s ranks, survivors who have fallen.”

  Dani picked it up. “First hour survival rates for a beta-level dark energy flare were twenty-eight percent, considering fallout and a city limits epicenter. We estimate fourteen thousand residents survived the flare itself.”

  “After that, you’d think the odds would get better.” Dolores wedged the water, her tone softening. “Search and rescue outweighs radiation poisoning and Dvoraks in every mathematical scenario—when the rescue comes. But without national or federal aid…”

  “The variable had not been added into our probabilities,” Dani continued. “I consulted this scenario against the formula and found that any living beings existing after thirty-six hours was as improbable as—”

  “The dead coming back to life?” Jessica said.

  “No,” Nicky rolled slowly—pacing? “That much even Vidar could predict, as could we all. Your survival is impossible. Holly and the other Sevens throughout Nome offer a dwindling census. We cannot afford to falter—”

  “How many?”

  “You do not need to—”

  “How many!”

  “Fifty-two souls confirmed. Including Ehwaz and those Vanir. The rest have perished or been collected by The Mission.”

  “Safe-houses included, with an error rate of twelve percent in favor of those who may be in hiding,” Dani said. “Sixty survivors at the reaches of probability among unconventional models.”

  Jessica had never thought much about the numbers, at times thinking she was Nome’s only survivor, and at others believing there could be thousands bunkered-in that she simply hadn’t found. If their vanner encounter represented one tenth of Nome’s population—the stakes weren’t any greater, but the odds were beyond zero, as they’d apparently been for days.

  “Fighting gods, as gods,” she repeated, finally understanding his eulogy for the Winslows. “Ragnarok.”

  “Everyone left is special in one way or another.” Nicky stopped his roll through the shallow ocean. “The radiation has incapacitated or killed the strongest who’ve suffered its predicted effects. Vidar’s loss was honorable compared to the suffering he would have undergone these last few hours.”

  “If that’d been the case, we would have taken our chances with the feds.” Jessica frowned. “Then again, why don’t we now? I get that they’re keeping their cover-up by chasing Shannon, but the politics of it—none of that means shit to us, especially now. If you’ve been listening, all we want is out. This Anatali-Shannon-Sol-Union bullshit is just going to get us killed.”

  “You think that you’re on the wrong side.”

  “Prove we’re not! If we’d held up in Holly’s warehouse, sending a beacon—if we hadn’t gone to The Spire…”

  “Vidar and Vali would be alive and Yggdrasil would not have been destroyed.”

  “Yeah.” Jessica leapt off the box, re-soaking her pants up to her calves. “You talk like sacrifice is noble, but this is just a fucking story to you, an obsession. We’re the one’s dying! I can’t believe I’ve been buying into this!”

  “I told you she was weak,” Dolores said. “And I knew your myths would get people killed. Some Valkyrie.”

  “Fuck you!” She hurled herself though the darkness, rifle gripped for a stock-smash. Four steps and she collided with steel at her knees, far closer than she’d expected. She bounced off a rubber belly and fell back in t
he water, smacking her head on hard ground underneath. She gasped, icicles filling her mouth and throat. Swept with the current, Jessica flailed, found footing, and rolled to her hands and knees. “Fuck,” cough, “you.”

  “If you’ve forgotten,” Dolores yanked her to her feet, “the feds didn’t intervene until their control was threatened. They don’t care about you, aren’t interested in saving you, and will do anything to silence you. Any evacuations may as well be executions.”

  “How can you be sure?” Dillon said, released and wading, outlined on-screen “Maybe they’re just making sure we’re not sick.”

  “You’re all sick. Your survival proves it. It may not be infectious, but your life as you knew it is over. Dark energy exists evenly in the universe, DETH technology condenses it. Even if you escape, you’ve become living conduits, forever connected to it.”

  “Nicky,” Jessica tore free of Dolores’s grip, or rather, the FireBot let go, “what’s she saying?”

  “Unproven theory. She speculates.” He paused, lowering Christy—bipedal splashes. “As we’ve said, the situation is complicated. Your altered biology is a second concern to your continued survival.”

  “Easy for you to—”

  “We cannot change the fact you weathered your Black Wind, nor the fact you’ve been forced to absorb three days of residual radiation. That was out of your control, and ours. We must continue moving forward with the opportunities we have. I would never offer you or your companions to an uncertain fate such as the Vanir or Jotuns. Either would exploit or destroy you for the strength you’ve fostered.”

  Jessica felt a warm, firm hand on her arm. Dillon said, “I don’t know what to think, but I don’t want to be another corpse. If you think the feds can save us, we need to go.”

  “I agree,” Dolores said.

  “No one asked you,” Jessica snarled. “I…Nicky—”

  The screen flashed to blank white; Jessica clamped her eyes shut as the pillars became glowing columns across the Rosebed. The lighting softened to a shadowless, incandescent wash. The human trio stood compass-center among the bots, Nicky dangling a downcast Ayla and normalized Khan. In every direction, the pillars continued until meeting in perspective singularities. There didn’t appear to be any chambers in the expanse, let alone passages up or down.